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Christmas Village shoppers no longer will be allowed to enter booths
- josephcsible 21d agoAnother ADA disaster, along the same lines as when UC Berkeley was forced to get rid of all their free online course videos, because they didn't have the budget to have someone write captions for them. You should never have to take something away from people who aren't disabled just because making it accessible isn't feasible.
- infotainment 21d ago> You should never have to take something away from people who aren't disabled just because making it accessible isn't feasible. The ADA is a horribly-designed law precisely because it encourages this behavior. Reforming it is necessary, but doing so would be so politically toxic that it will probably never happen.
- ChickeNES 21d agoYeah the ADA can both be a good idea, while also having perverse incentives/externalities. Reform is the answer.
- kaseijin 21d agoReally just a case of needing common sense judges and enforcement or this law. Temporary event and with an accommodation solution for the minority of disabled guests shouldn't have to inconvenience everyone just because a few people "feel" inconvenciend for having to ask for the accommodation. It's not like this is a subway station, public building, or some other kind of venue where a permanent access solution is needed. I think some people who are disabled are just miserable people who go around trying to make everyone else miserable too. That's the only reason these lawsuits are filed.
- AngryData 21d agoI agree but also is it really that difficult to use some sort of auto-caption program with maybe an asterick not assuring accuracy? I feel like it would be impossible to legislate the quality of captioning and it isn't like mistakes don't happen even with a human transcriber.
- tekla 21d agoHow does one auto-caption a white/black-board in a world before insanely cheap computer vision?
- galleywest200 21d agoCaptions are for audio. I presume if someone is reading captions they can read the whiteboard. Now if you are talking about the blind then sure thats different but the blind don't need captions.
- tekla 21d agoAre you sure? When I went to college, the whiteboard was a supplement to the lecture, so either/or would not have worked. What if they are hard of sight and can't read the whiteboard or blackboard, even if they might be able to read a captioned video? Lord knows I remember barely being able to read some professors handwriting, even in person, or being able to understand what the hell a professor was saying in person. How many people are there that can efficiently caption complex mathematical equations?
- krackers 21d agoAutomatic Captions are not ADA compliant. https://www.speechpad.com/blog/ada-compliant-captions-vs-auto-captions https://www.speechpad.com/blog/ada-compliant-captions-vs-aut... If you have a risk of getting sued because someone notices a transcription error versus just not uploading videos, people will choose the latter.
- professoretc 21d ago
- susiecambria 21d agoSeems to me both are examples of institutions not complying with the rules (laws, regs, etc.) by choice. The Philadelphia government could have budgeted for ADA compliance and it chose not to, just as Berkeley could have budgeted for captioning. Budgets reflect our priorities. It is clear from both examples that meeting the needs of people with disabilities is not a priority.
- strken 21d agoWhy would Berkeley budget for captioning on a series of videos that they're giving to the public for free? Expecting them to accommodate everyone for loss-making global educational philanthropy is a ridiculous overreach. It has made the world poorer and entrenched the disadvantage of everyone not in the US. Thanks, disability advocates.
- galleywest200 21d agoCounter point is captions are also really cheap. I presume the lecturer read from a script, just use that.
- strken 21d agoThey were archival footage of old lectures. But also, "really cheap" is only cheap when something is done for profit. When it's done as a charitable side gig then pretty much any expense is expensive.
- galleywest200 21d agoMy response to that would be “Hey intern/grad student, enjoy your new assignment”
- kube-system 21d agoFor many charitable activities it may be, but also, the University of California system has a 53.6 billion dollar budget. They could pay some people to caption them if they cared to do so.
- deleted 21d ago[deleted]
- kube-system 21d agoThe ADA isn't some surprise gotcha that crept up on any of these people, it has been around for 36 years. The problem is that 36 years later, people are still ignoring the fact that disabled people even exist. Whether or not we want to admit it, this stuff happens because people think and act like it is okay to disregard accessibility.
- kaseijin 21d agoAlready had accessibility. Now there's none.
- infamia 21d ago> The ADA isn't some surprise gotcha that crept up on any of these people The ADA was written in an extremely non-specific way that allows unelected bureaucrats to reinterpret it every so often. To be honest, the US would probably have a more accessible society if the law was better written.
- kube-system 21d agoThat's a problem with executive political appointees more so than the unelected bureaucrats. Career civil servants working in a regulatory capacity are typically very consistent experts who do a good job of taking vague shit that congress would otherwise fuck up trying to define more specifically and interpreting it in a way that makes practical sense to people who know what the fuck is actually going on. It's the political appointee leadership that tries to pull the creative reinterpretation nonsense you're talking about.
- rpdillon 21d agoThis is exactly the case that came to mind when I saw the headline. They had gobs of course videos that they released online so that anybody could watch them. I was incredibly delighted to see a state funded school doing this. And they had to pull them all because they didn't have a feasible way of adding subtitles.
- Sabinus 21d ago>At the 2025 market, vendors and Christmas Village staff had temporary ramps that they could place out to accommodate shoppers who used wheelchairs or walkers. >"Well, it was a great approach, but a very small group of people do not like that they need assistance to enter booths which able bodied don't need to ask for," Bauer wrote. I wonder if that small group of people are pleased with the outcome.
- userbinator 21d agoThis is why envy is a sin.
- HoldOnAMinute 21d agoI'm tired of this world
- cindyllm 21d ago[dead]
- delichon 21d agoThis is a very Harrison Bergeron outcome, enforcing equality with a least common denominator. I wonder how many bureaucrats could read that story as a guidebook.
- fuzzfactor 21d ago>how many bureaucrats could read that story as a guidebook. All of them This required a solution so creative and comprehensive that it took 32 months of many stakeholders and the best legal minds they could get. If you can't add access for all, then add barriers for all. Too bad the regulators didn't spell out plainly that the default under imperfect conditions is always more barriers not less. They should have made it obvious that the law primarily requires more barriers the whole time without having to waste almost 3 years to achieve clarity. And the additional barriers have to be so effective even the most able-bodied can't overcome them. It's the law. I liked it better when there were more able-minded regulators.
- kube-system 21d agoOr maybe the designers of the booths could have simply familiarized themselves with the most basic of laws they were required to comply with before designing the damn thing with an unnecessary step.
- fuzzfactor 21d agoThat's the problem right there, only with "bureaucracy as usual" it can be virtually forbidden to do any root cause analysis. That could be so shocking that the whole chain-of-command could have a heart attack :\
- codersfocus 21d ago[flagged]
- piva00 21d agoFuck the poor ones that can't afford that, right?
- codersfocus 21d agowheelchairs, mobility scooters, and screen readers aren't free
- deleted 21d ago[deleted]
- kube-system 21d agoNah, people with disabilities aren't an exception that can be safely ignored, they are real humans who exist and who deserve to be respected and accommodated equally by those who build public accommodations.
- codersfocus 21d ago[flagged]
- kube-system 21d agoIs the problem negligibly solved by technology or is it a huge compliance burden for public accommodations? It's one or the other. The reality is that many things are in fact not accessible in very real ways, and people like to pretend that the problem does not exist when their paycheck depends on them pretending it does not exist.
- codersfocus 21d ago[flagged]
- deleted 21d ago[deleted]
- twiceaday 21d ago"And the trees are all kept equal / By hatchet, axe, and saw"
- rpdillon 21d agoThank you for the reference. A really, really good one!
- JohnTHaller 21d agoReminds me of all the smaller/local newspapers and stations in the US that geo-block the EU from their content because complying with the GDPR - and paying the appropriate folks to ensure you are in compliance - simply made no business sense.
- sjs382 20d agoMalicious compliance strikes again. Alternatively, they could have designed booths without unnecessary steps. But sure, blame it on the ADA.