5 ms·

This has the potential to destroy online commerce in the US, and severely damage one area where mom n' pop stores can still thrive in America. Amazon and other

This has the potential to destroy online commerce in the US, and severely damage one area where mom n' pop stores can still thrive in America. Amazon and other giant retailers could still survive, even if they where made to comply with all of these requests (although it would slow innovation considerably). Small online stores couldn't afford it and would simply shut down. This is bad for everyone. This reminds me of what happened in Julian, CA - a small mountain town. An overzealous lawyer decided to start suing everyone with steps into their tiny bookstores and coffee shops as a means to extort money out of them. Several just shut down. http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/news_1n29pinnock.html http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/news_1n29pinnoc...

runarb 14y ago
bookstores and coffee shops as a means to extort money out of them. Several just shut down. (http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/ http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/ news_1n29pinnoc...) Sounds intresting, but the link is broken...
- socalnate1 14y ago
  Fixed
rpedroso 14y ago
I think some are overstating the potential difficulties of making the ADA apply to American websites. A large part of compliance is just utilizing the accessibility tools built into HTML: semantic markup, proper use of alt and title tags, etc. I do still see the possibility of predatory litigation. To protect small businesses, maybe the burden should shift to the web developers that they hire. Much like we expect contractors to know the ins-and-outs of building codes, we should come to expect web development agencies to understand their clients' legal obligations.
- obviouslygreen 14y ago
  Absolutely not. There is a huge difference between something like plumbing where you do one or a few sets of well regulated activities and building infrastructure for businesses across many industries. Web programmers have a lot to be aware of just to do their own work, suggesting they should be responsible for their employers' or clients' legal obligations is completely unreasonable.
  - rpedroso 14y ago
    Who should be responsible then? If you shift the burden onto small business owners, that seems pretty unreasonable to me. Imagine a small business owner asking their web developers if they used alt or title attributes properly? Absurd, right? I can't name a single plumbing instrument other than a plunger, and I don't have to because there is a division of labor. If my toilet gets backed up and it's not as simple as making sure the ball in the tank didn't get jammed, I call a plumber.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    And that's why businesses don't have to comply with any security or privacy laws on the Internets. Innovation! Disruption!
  - Sanddancer 14y ago
    If I hire a general contractor, I expect them to be abreast of the law enough as to when to bring in the specialists. Shifting the responsibility onto the person contracting to manage all of this is both unreasonable and unacceptable.
  - SolidT 14y ago
    http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist Look at this list, most of it you should be doing as a developer anyways. Edit: I fail to see how this is any different than making sure your webpages are not vulnerable to SQL Injection, XSS, CSRF...etc. Surely you protect your websites against those, and write code accordingly, right?
- jt2190 14y ago
  > A large part of compliance is just utilizing the > accessibility tools built into HTML: semantic markup, > proper use of alt and title tags, etc. This "just" is actually quite a large and expensive: Developers and their management need additional tools and training, and extra hours must be spent every release cycle ensuring that compliance is maintained.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Also remember this doesn't apply to every website. Just ones engaged in commerce.
  - bdcravens 14y ago
    AirBNB, Teespring, Uber, Kickstarter, Dropbox, Twitter, App.net ....
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Dropbox probably doesn't fall into it nor twitter nor kick starter. AirBnB, Über, etc, should fall under the ADA because their meat space counterparts do.
      - bdcravens 14y ago
        My understanding was that anyone who conducts commerce could be held accountable.
        rayiner 14y ago
        It's not "commerce" broadly defined, but "public accommodation" which is substantially narrower: "Under Title III, no individual may be discriminated against on the basis of disability with regards to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation. 'Public accommodations' include most places of lodging (such as inns and hotels), recreation, transportation, education, and dining, along with stores, care providers, and places of public displays, among other things." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990#Title_III.E2.80.94Public_accommodations_.28and_commercial_facilities.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act...
ishansharma 14y ago
Overzealous? Overzealous and mean. These kind of people are the reason I sometimes hate good laws. OK, making laws to help disabled is a good thing. But when lawyers like him go out and "make a living" this way, this is height. Now the associations are suing companies for not being accessible. This is ridiculous. How much of that money will go to benefit of people in need and how much will go to such people?
- socalnate1 14y ago
  If it makes you feel a little better, he was eventually disbarred: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/18/prolific-disabled-access-lawyer-be-disbarred/ http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/18/prolific-disabled... Agreed on good laws problem, good laws applied poorly are bad laws.
rayiner 14y ago
I think people like to throw around "innovation" as a smokescreen. What "innovation" has happened in online shopping UI's in the last decade that would've been hampered by ADA compliance? Last I checked Amazon works more or less the same as it did when I started using it a decade ago. I distinctly remember ordering a Dell desktop in 1998 from their web store, and in 15 years the store has only changed for the worse. I think 5-6 years ago they switched from a big list view to this weird wizard thing and it's sucked ever since. The "innovation" has been on the shipping/distribution side.
tibbon 14y ago
I really don't think its that hard to make accessible web interfaces. I personally ignore most on-page SEO trick things, and just focus on accessibility when I can. If a screen reader can handle it, Google can handle it and understand it. I'd rather focus on people than machines. If companies can take time to SEO-trick out their page, they can focus on accessibility.
gcr 14y ago
Hm. A lot of this should be easy for sites who care about modern design. A few anecdotes: - Any valid HTML site has an `alt` attribute in all of its image tags. This helps screenreaders read the image, and could probably satisfy the "spoken captions of images" requirement. - Sites that cleanly separate layout from presentation are already quite easy for screenreaders to parse. Go ahead and run `links -dump http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness` http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness` for example; it just has a bit of boilerplate and then the content begins. There's even "Jump to: [navigation], [search]" links that are hidden with CSS for those who don't use it. I think this will primarily affect sites that rely heavily on javascript to try and create the sense of a large application. This is another good argument to separate the presentation and logic from the content of the site.
- gcr 14y ago
  If we had some way for users to ask the templating engines in Rails, Django, ... to render a text-friendly representation of the sites they visit, that could also be a great technology-centric way of doing this.
qwerta 14y ago
Doing accessible site is not really that hard. Just make sure it has 'alt' in tags, works without javascript and does not use 'smart' layout. Most sites are not accessible because they have java-script only animations or menus. Using terminal (text only) browser such as Links is great way to test accessibility.
scott_w 14y ago
This is total nonsense. Most western legal systems already require websites to be compliant with accessibility guidelines. The Equality Act in the UK has much tougher provisions, and has for a long time under the Disability Discrimination Act before it. British business has not collapsed under the weight of supporting it yet. If you're really struggling to make your website compliant then you can go on the government website and it even tells you the appropriate guidelines. In addition, the W3C publish their own sets of guidelines for you to follow. For Add-Ons, you have Fangs to show you how a screen reader sees your page. There are simple tools that will tell you if there is sufficient colour contrast between your text and background.

runarb 14y ago

bookstores and coffee shops as a means to extort money out of them. Several just shut down. (http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/ http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/ news_1n29pinnoc...) Sounds intresting, but the link is broken...

socalnate1 14y ago
Fixed

rpedroso 14y ago

I think some are overstating the potential difficulties of making the ADA apply to American websites. A large part of compliance is just utilizing the accessibility tools built into HTML: semantic markup, proper use of alt and title tags, etc. I do still see the possibility of predatory litigation. To protect small businesses, maybe the burden should shift to the web developers that they hire. Much like we expect contractors to know the ins-and-outs of building codes, we should come to expect web development agencies to understand their clients' legal obligations.

obviouslygreen 14y ago
Absolutely not. There is a huge difference between something like plumbing where you do one or a few sets of well regulated activities and building infrastructure for businesses across many industries. Web programmers have a lot to be aware of just to do their own work, suggesting they should be responsible for their employers' or clients' legal obligations is completely unreasonable.
- rpedroso 14y ago
  Who should be responsible then? If you shift the burden onto small business owners, that seems pretty unreasonable to me. Imagine a small business owner asking their web developers if they used alt or title attributes properly? Absurd, right? I can't name a single plumbing instrument other than a plunger, and I don't have to because there is a division of labor. If my toilet gets backed up and it's not as simple as making sure the ball in the tank didn't get jammed, I call a plumber.
- scarmig 14y ago
  And that's why businesses don't have to comply with any security or privacy laws on the Internets. Innovation! Disruption!
- Sanddancer 14y ago
  If I hire a general contractor, I expect them to be abreast of the law enough as to when to bring in the specialists. Shifting the responsibility onto the person contracting to manage all of this is both unreasonable and unacceptable.
- SolidT 14y ago
  http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist Look at this list, most of it you should be doing as a developer anyways. Edit: I fail to see how this is any different than making sure your webpages are not vulnerable to SQL Injection, XSS, CSRF...etc. Surely you protect your websites against those, and write code accordingly, right?
jt2190 14y ago
> A large part of compliance is just utilizing the > accessibility tools built into HTML: semantic markup, > proper use of alt and title tags, etc. This "just" is actually quite a large and expensive: Developers and their management need additional tools and training, and extra hours must be spent every release cycle ensuring that compliance is maintained.
rayiner 14y ago
Also remember this doesn't apply to every website. Just ones engaged in commerce.
- bdcravens 14y ago
  AirBNB, Teespring, Uber, Kickstarter, Dropbox, Twitter, App.net ....
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Dropbox probably doesn't fall into it nor twitter nor kick starter. AirBnB, Über, etc, should fall under the ADA because their meat space counterparts do.
    - bdcravens 14y ago
      My understanding was that anyone who conducts commerce could be held accountable.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        It's not "commerce" broadly defined, but "public accommodation" which is substantially narrower: "Under Title III, no individual may be discriminated against on the basis of disability with regards to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation. 'Public accommodations' include most places of lodging (such as inns and hotels), recreation, transportation, education, and dining, along with stores, care providers, and places of public displays, among other things." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990#Title_III.E2.80.94Public_accommodations_.28and_commercial_facilities.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act...

ishansharma 14y ago

Overzealous? Overzealous and mean. These kind of people are the reason I sometimes hate good laws. OK, making laws to help disabled is a good thing. But when lawyers like him go out and "make a living" this way, this is height. Now the associations are suing companies for not being accessible. This is ridiculous. How much of that money will go to benefit of people in need and how much will go to such people?

socalnate1 14y ago
If it makes you feel a little better, he was eventually disbarred: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/18/prolific-disabled-access-lawyer-be-disbarred/ http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/18/prolific-disabled... Agreed on good laws problem, good laws applied poorly are bad laws.

rayiner 14y ago

I think people like to throw around "innovation" as a smokescreen. What "innovation" has happened in online shopping UI's in the last decade that would've been hampered by ADA compliance? Last I checked Amazon works more or less the same as it did when I started using it a decade ago. I distinctly remember ordering a Dell desktop in 1998 from their web store, and in 15 years the store has only changed for the worse. I think 5-6 years ago they switched from a big list view to this weird wizard thing and it's sucked ever since. The "innovation" has been on the shipping/distribution side.

tibbon 14y ago

I really don't think its that hard to make accessible web interfaces. I personally ignore most on-page SEO trick things, and just focus on accessibility when I can. If a screen reader can handle it, Google can handle it and understand it. I'd rather focus on people than machines. If companies can take time to SEO-trick out their page, they can focus on accessibility.

gcr 14y ago

Hm. A lot of this should be easy for sites who care about modern design. A few anecdotes: - Any valid HTML site has an `alt` attribute in all of its image tags. This helps screenreaders read the image, and could probably satisfy the "spoken captions of images" requirement. - Sites that cleanly separate layout from presentation are already quite easy for screenreaders to parse. Go ahead and run `links -dump http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness` http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness` for example; it just has a bit of boilerplate and then the content begins. There's even "Jump to: [navigation], [search]" links that are hidden with CSS for those who don't use it. I think this will primarily affect sites that rely heavily on javascript to try and create the sense of a large application. This is another good argument to separate the presentation and logic from the content of the site.

gcr 14y ago
If we had some way for users to ask the templating engines in Rails, Django, ... to render a text-friendly representation of the sites they visit, that could also be a great technology-centric way of doing this.

qwerta 14y ago

Doing accessible site is not really that hard. Just make sure it has 'alt' in tags, works without javascript and does not use 'smart' layout. Most sites are not accessible because they have java-script only animations or menus. Using terminal (text only) browser such as Links is great way to test accessibility.

scott_w 14y ago

This is total nonsense. Most western legal systems already require websites to be compliant with accessibility guidelines. The Equality Act in the UK has much tougher provisions, and has for a long time under the Disability Discrimination Act before it. British business has not collapsed under the weight of supporting it yet. If you're really struggling to make your website compliant then you can go on the government website and it even tells you the appropriate guidelines. In addition, the W3C publish their own sets of guidelines for you to follow. For Add-Ons, you have Fangs to show you how a screen reader sees your page. There are simple tools that will tell you if there is sufficient colour contrast between your text and background.