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One Saturday morning 3 months ago I got on my bike like I had the week before, and the week before that. Less than 30 minutes later I was splayed out on the gr

One Saturday morning 3 months ago I got on my bike like I had the week before, and the week before that. Less than 30 minutes later I was splayed out on the ground with my lower right leg broken clean in half and my tibia sticking out of my shin while an onlookers called me an ambulance. For 2 months afterwards I was confined to wheelchairs and walkers, and I only just recently was able to start walking independently again. - People make comments like this because they think it's a disabled market with disabled people, and another market beside... it doesn't work like that. No matter how young you are, how careful you are, how healthy you are, we are all one bad morning away from being disabled for an indeterminate amount of time. And we all benefit from accessibility because at any time we might need to rely on it. There's this mentality of seeing accessibility as an overpriced nice to have that's akin to seeing insurance as an overpriced nice to have just because you haven't made a claim yet We need laws like what the ADA affords to back accessibility because (for the vast majority of businesses) it will never be profitable to cater to the disabled at a high level of quality. I mean look at the OP. They pivoted to being a paid product yet still they're saying that they want to skirt the law by limiting the class size instead of paying some transcribers to add subtitles that would honestly benefit everyone (especially for technical content) The disabled deserve to be catered to regardless of profitability because the inverse is unjust: that they'd live with greatly reduced access to goods and services based on something completely out of their control

bombcar 4y ago
There's a vast difference between "businesses should have wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms" and "everything possible must be done for the disabled and borne by the people providing it". The US ADA has struck a pretty decent balance, few people are actively against wheelchair ramps, and elevators do add to the cost of a building but most buildings of that size are moderately expensive anyway. But imagine if it was determined that the ADA required wheelchair ramps be installed at any house that was offering candy for trick-or-treating. The result would be entirely predictable; trick-or-treating would die out. Much of this (and perhaps this case here) could be solved by forbidding the lawyers from profiting from it - you can sue someone for violating the ADA but you can't "win damages" - any such damages won would go to the state to help provide ADA accessibility.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  > There's a vast difference between "businesses should have wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms" and "everything possible must be done for the disabled and borne by the people providing it". That's a really patronizing comment. If we're going there, I'd like someone to point out the law that says that "everything possible must be done for the disabled and borne by the people providing it". - Did you read the article? The only requirement put on this person was to add subtitles. Asking someone to add subtitles to their videos seen by thousands is like "requiring wheelchair ramps to be installed at any house that was offering candy for trick or treating"? I mean even OP calls out the exemption for up to 500 users... that's a lot of trick or treaters for one house. While there have been abuses of accessibility laws, this isn't that. This is definitely a lot closer to basic affordances like wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms. Actually if anything I clicked the link expecting to see someone had weaponized W3C-style guidelines and was raking them over using #111111 instead of #000000 for black or something... but subtitles? They're even pivoting to running a for-profit business and still complaining about that basic affordance, so it's exactly appropriate to bring up those concepts.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Consider that for certain kinds of video (one or two people, minimal editing, not in english), subtitles could cost ten times as much as the video itself.
    - BoorishBears 4y ago
      Well yeah, it doesn't hurt that the video itself extremely cheap... The point of the law is that it should be the cost of doing business once you reach a certain size (in this case 500 users). No one is making you subtitle your class presentation. In fact I went to confirm the 500 user rule, the law was actually updated specifically to carve out extensive exceptions based on revenue. A website needs to make 30k a year, which is not a small amount of traffic: https://illuminea.com/israeli-website-accessibility-guidelines/ https://illuminea.com/israeli-website-accessibility-guidelin... At the end of the day OP is making a paid learning course of technical material and still whinging about needed to provide subtitles, yet that's exactly the kind of "pain" these laws should enforce. There are predatory lawyers looking to sue people for having .01" too tall of a lip at their restaurant's door or something knowing full well they'll lose in court but want to settle... that's where these laws can go wrong. Not basic subtitles. Honestly it feels like they wanted to launch a new paid service and got a free angle to share it from.
punyearthling 4y ago
Also worth noting, building accessibility into your product doesn't just help those with disabilities. Oftentimes it provides a good experience for all users.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  That's what got me about OP's case. I'd hate to watch a technical learning course without subtitles, and I can't imagine most people wouldn't benefit from them here.

bombcar 4y ago

There's a vast difference between "businesses should have wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms" and "everything possible must be done for the disabled and borne by the people providing it". The US ADA has struck a pretty decent balance, few people are actively against wheelchair ramps, and elevators do add to the cost of a building but most buildings of that size are moderately expensive anyway. But imagine if it was determined that the ADA required wheelchair ramps be installed at any house that was offering candy for trick-or-treating. The result would be entirely predictable; trick-or-treating would die out. Much of this (and perhaps this case here) could be solved by forbidding the lawyers from profiting from it - you can sue someone for violating the ADA but you can't "win damages" - any such damages won would go to the state to help provide ADA accessibility.

BoorishBears 4y ago
> There's a vast difference between "businesses should have wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms" and "everything possible must be done for the disabled and borne by the people providing it". That's a really patronizing comment. If we're going there, I'd like someone to point out the law that says that "everything possible must be done for the disabled and borne by the people providing it". - Did you read the article? The only requirement put on this person was to add subtitles. Asking someone to add subtitles to their videos seen by thousands is like "requiring wheelchair ramps to be installed at any house that was offering candy for trick or treating"? I mean even OP calls out the exemption for up to 500 users... that's a lot of trick or treaters for one house. While there have been abuses of accessibility laws, this isn't that. This is definitely a lot closer to basic affordances like wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms. Actually if anything I clicked the link expecting to see someone had weaponized W3C-style guidelines and was raking them over using #111111 instead of #000000 for black or something... but subtitles? They're even pivoting to running a for-profit business and still complaining about that basic affordance, so it's exactly appropriate to bring up those concepts.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Consider that for certain kinds of video (one or two people, minimal editing, not in english), subtitles could cost ten times as much as the video itself.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    Well yeah, it doesn't hurt that the video itself extremely cheap... The point of the law is that it should be the cost of doing business once you reach a certain size (in this case 500 users). No one is making you subtitle your class presentation. In fact I went to confirm the 500 user rule, the law was actually updated specifically to carve out extensive exceptions based on revenue. A website needs to make 30k a year, which is not a small amount of traffic: https://illuminea.com/israeli-website-accessibility-guidelines/ https://illuminea.com/israeli-website-accessibility-guidelin... At the end of the day OP is making a paid learning course of technical material and still whinging about needed to provide subtitles, yet that's exactly the kind of "pain" these laws should enforce. There are predatory lawyers looking to sue people for having .01" too tall of a lip at their restaurant's door or something knowing full well they'll lose in court but want to settle... that's where these laws can go wrong. Not basic subtitles. Honestly it feels like they wanted to launch a new paid service and got a free angle to share it from.

punyearthling 4y ago

Also worth noting, building accessibility into your product doesn't just help those with disabilities. Oftentimes it provides a good experience for all users.

BoorishBears 4y ago
That's what got me about OP's case. I'd hate to watch a technical learning course without subtitles, and I can't imagine most people wouldn't benefit from them here.