
Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible - justadudeama
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-07/blind-person-dominos-ada-supreme-court-disabled
======
mltony
Blind programmer here. Just a glimpse of my life. Blind people have to live in
an environment where X% of web sites and programs are not accessible, where X
varies somewhere from 20% (for web sites) to 50% (for desktop applications).
That's just my approximation of the state of accessibility these days. Now
imagine that you live in the world where you don't know which printer or wi-fi
router to buy, since maybe half of them you won't be able to use. Imagine that
you cannot order from some online stores. You cannot fly certain airlines. And
apparently you cannot order some pizza online. Worst of all you don't
magically know whether a web site is accessible or not. You just go to web
site and try it, spend some time to learn the layout - it typically takes
blind peple longer to familiarize with new web sites, spend thirty minutes to
fill out the details of your order and then when you try to click the submit
button, you figure out that it wouldn't click for some reason. Being a
developer you open HTML code just to realize that this is some weird kind of
button that can only be clicked with the mouse, but not a screenreader. But
hey, your screenreader can route the mouse cursor to this button and simulate
a click. So you try a real mouse click and it still doesn't work for some
reason, and I have no idea why. Finally, you give up. I hope I managed to
convey a typical sense of frustration with a web-site that is not that
accessible. I do get arguments of other people that it might be hard for small
businesses to make their web sites accessible. and I don't know where to draw
a line, but I need to say that Domino's is a large enough company and even
though I hate counting other companies' money, I must say they're big enough
to be able to afford to make their web-site accessible.

~~~
cwkoss
Is there a lint-like tool that you would recommend to developers to scan their
web application for accessibility issues (and ideally suggest alternative
best-practices)?

EDIT: found this Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List with 132 items
listed! Anyone have advice on which ones are best?

[https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/](https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/)

~~~
cwkoss
On a related note, our app has a lot of charts. What are the best practices
for making time-series graphs accessible? I'd imagine just listing the values
wouldn't be particularly helpful for graphs with hundreds or more points - and
being able to programmatically summarize the interesting takeaways from an
arbitrary chart would probably be useful for our sighted customers as well.

~~~
Angostura
Just pondering whether there is a system that converts line graphs into series
of rising and falling tones, while a voice reads out the x axis markers.

If you have multiple series, you could have different sounds running in
parallel - sin wave, square wave or perhaps musical instruments each denoting
a different series.

That might actually be usable if there was an automated system for creating
them on the fly.

There's also this kind of approach
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk)

------
coreyp_1
Small personal story:

My father is an amazing salesman. He used to sell for Schwan's food in the
90's (those big yellow trucks that delivered frozen food to your door every 2
weeks).

He had a blind couple (husband and wife) that were on one of his routes, and
they bought a little bit of food every time he came by. But they could never
read the menu, because Schwan's only had printed brochures. One day, he had me
and my siblings record on audio cassette the entire menu and their prices.

His sales from that couple shot through the roof! All of the sudden, there
were all of these options for sale that they didn't even know about before,
and now they wanted to try them. From that time forward, they were very
faithful and consistent customers. And, of course, they were very appreciative
of the gesture!

Every 6 months or so, when Schwan's updated their menu and/or pricing, we
would re-record the menu, until Schwan's finally figured out an audio offering
of their own.

A few years ago, my father ran into the couple when he happened to pass
through their town (my father no longer sells for Schwan's, but now sells
insurance and investments). The couple remembered and asked about each of us
children by name, these decades later.

It's neat to see how just a little consideration (and a bit of extra work) can
make a huge impact on someone else's life!

~~~
mruts
Is this argument for government regulation or against? I see ss an argument
against, but I’m sure most people disagree.

~~~
coreyp_1
I actually thought about this very question when I was writing the story.

Truthfully, I don't have an agenda.

I can see, though, how easy it would be for someone to use this story to back
up their particular viewpoint, when, in fact, it was just a memory about an
experience that I had as a child... A memory that I didn't realize had such a
big impact until decades later.

------
couchand
Despite the somewhat misleading headline, the Supreme Court didn't really say
anything new here. They declined to hear Domino's appeal of the Ninth
Circuit's (unanimous and clearly correctly decided) reversal of the District
Court's absurd dismissal.

Domino's tried to claim that their due process rights were being violated
since there is no federally-mandated standard for accessibility. But the ADA
is clear: businesses have a legal requirement to ensure that disabled
customers have "full and equal enjoyment" of their goods and services.
Domino's made the tenuous argument that the lack of a specific standard meant
that they didn't receive fair notice.

Robles, the plaintiff, argued that the appropriate standard to apply was WCAG
2.0. Instead of offering a different possible standard (which would have been
a defensible legal rationale), Domino's position was basically, "fuck off".

It's really not hard to make your websites accessible at a basic level. Follow
the standards. Make sure your content and markup are reasonably semantic. Use
standard form components for data entry. Where more complex, visual-first
designs are employed, make sure there are text-based fallbacks.

If you are a professional software developer, doing this is not just your
legal responsibility, it's your moral responsibility.

~~~
pakitan
> It's really not hard to make your websites accessible at a basic level.
> Follow the standards.

Do _you_ follow the standards? If you show me a web site that you've developed
I'll show you a site with multiple violations of WCAG 2.0. Hell, JAWS' own
site is littered with WCAG violations! Yes, "accessibility at the basic level"
is easy but WCAG 2.0 is not "accessibility at the basic level". It's a huge
set of rules that are often unclear and ambiguous. And that's fine because
WCAG 2.0 is just something that you should aspire to. But if you start
defining accessibility by whether a site conforms to WCAG 2.0 or not, then I
can guarantee you that every single popular site is non-accessible.

We got sued and believe me it has nothing to do with blind people. Our site is
of zero interest to them. Companies are sued by scumbag lawyers, who have made
a nice little racket out of this thing. It's really unfortunate that the HN
crowd is siding with them, as if they are championing the rights of disabled
people. It's all about money.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
That is a natural consequence of the way in which the United States chooses to
enforce rules like this. In some other countries, there are regulators who do
this kind of thing and issue relatively small fines and compliance notices.
Since the regulator itself is publically funded, it does not need to live off
the fine income.

In the US, the choice was made instead to create a private right of action and
to allow legal fees to be recovered. That means that lawyers who make this
their business have to aim high to cover their costs (including from cases
they lose) and are no incentivised to let a company off with a compliance
notice and a deadline to improve.

As a result, there are a certain percentage of ADA cases which are not brought
in good faith but that is the system the people have decided they want.

~~~
pakitan
> but that is the system the people have decided they want

The people haven't decided anything. As usual, someone comes up with an absurd
law, or an absurd interpretation of the law and there are not enough people
affected to bother challenging it. But that doesn't mean "the people have
decided".

~~~
diffeomorphism
"The people have decided not to bother to do anything about it" sounds like
the same thing to me.

~~~
pakitan
On the contrary, the power dynamics is completely different. It's one thing to
come up with a ridiculous policy (which is easy for a politician to do) and
put the onus on minority of affected people to fight it, while the majority is
neutral. And it's another thing to ask everyone to vote on the policy before
it's enacted.

Fighting the status quo is immensely more difficult than keeping it, even if
the effect of that status quo is provably harmful.

~~~
diffeomorphism
The politician is not some random person removed from reality. He/she
represents the people, is accountable to them and campaigned on how they want
to represent them.

The majority is not neutral but assumed to be in favor of their
representative's (!) proposals.

Of course, politicians can and do deviate from this, in particular where legal
bribery (lobbying) is involved, but that is the base assumption of
representative democracy.

------
kls
So somehow along my career I fell into accessibility dev for a while. Funny
enough it was one of the most lucrative dev jobs I did and there was always
plenty of work. It is easily outsourced to a remote developer because all you
really need is a browser and a screen reader. In my opinion there really is no
reason for even mom and pop sites to not provide even a base level of
accessibility, it really is just setting tab indexes in correct order, as well
as making sure items have alt and title tags so that the readers can pick them
up and actively describe the page. No I am not saying that this provides a
great experience for the blind but it at least helps them to be able to get
around the site.

I personally an color blind, which is not a disability but it is a pain in the
ass at times, especially give that color has the ability to convey data
visualization in a rapid manner that is subconsciously parsed by the user.
It's extremity effective if one can see color. It is kind of how I got into
accessibility for a time. By simple adding a secondary reference of
iconography for the color blind a site can convey the same info. (e.g if you
show red put a small stop sign on it, yellow use a triangle etc.)

I see no reason why even the smallest sites should not be able to provide
access to the blind, whereas larger sites should be striving to go the extra
mile to make it accessible and easy to parse for everyone.

~~~
dorgo
> it really is just setting tab indexes in correct order, as well as making
> sure items have alt and title tags

Sounds like it could be part of SEO effort. If it can be checked
programmatically then search engines should add accessibilty to their ranking
algorithms. It worked for mobile.

~~~
dansingerman
This is a great comment.

Imagine the investment that would suddenly start in accessibility if Google
publicly announced it was an important part of search engine rankings.

~~~
marktangotango
These scanners exist, and they can serve a dual purpose; scan the web for
websites to sue. And yes this is happening.

It's important to note that not every site on the web falls under ADA. The
crucial part of this issue is that the business must have a physical “brick
and mortar” location to fall under the ADA. Presumably purely online retail
businesses are not affected.

~~~
bluGill
IF google would make it part of their rankings it doesn't matter if you could
be sued or not - you will make sure you are accessible to avoid being not
found.

I wonder if google can be sued for not making it part of the ranking thus
misleading blind users... Interesting angle for a lawyer. I hope someone at
google is reading this and mitigates that risk.

------
dexwiz
I see a lot of negativity in the comments. I imagine much of that is gut
reactions of web developers hearing they need to do more work.

As a web developer that has had to pass an accessibility review from a person
who is actually blind each release for the last two years, I can tell you it’s
not that hard. Make sure you have a sensible tab order and labels on forms and
you are 80% there. The hard issues are creating hidden buttons for drag and
drop interactions and announcing changes in the view.

Honestly it’s more keyboard nav than label work anyways. For as many vim
lovers as I meet, many developers seem to falsely believe you need a mouse to
use the web.

~~~
sgustard
But the Domino's site didn't have "labels on forms," it was a whole goofy
animated game where you'd drag ingredients on a pizza to order. There's no way
to make that accessible without building a whole separate web app. You can
argue that goofy animated games are a dumb way to run a pizza website, and I
can agree with you, but we all know the web is full of that kind of thing
which is now waiting to be a lawsuit magnet.

~~~
chrisco255
I assume it's making REST calls behind the scenes. It's probably not too
difficult to make a text based version of this system.

~~~
csande17
Indeed, they (sort of) already did; their mobile app includes a gimmicky
"chatbot" feature.

Admittedly, I don't think the chatbot can actually do everything the website
can. But it's a start!

------
ccleve
On the surface, this sounds like a fine thing. Who doesn't want accessible
websites?

But it really opens a can of worms. What's a place of public accommodation?
With brick-and-mortar, it's easy; if you have a physical location open to the
general public, it probably qualifies. But on the web? Does my personal
website count? What if I sell t-shirts on it? What if I don't sell anything,
but have forums where the public can discuss things? What about a site which
is primarily about communications, i.e. speech? Does a requirement that you
put ARIA labels on things amount to compelled speech?

What if accessibility standards change? Am I compelled to upgrade my site?

This issue is a lot hairier than the court imagines. Does the court really
want to get into the issue of which websites need to comply and which don't?

~~~
freeone3000
No, your personal website does not count. Yes, it does if you sell t-shirts.
No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business. Yes, aria
labels are compelled speech, but they're upheld[1]. There would be an
exemption if the burden was "undue", but you're not going to meet that by
claiming it's a few extra hours of work. If accessibility standards change,
you are compelled to upgrade your site if you're under the ADA.

And yes, courts really do want to get into the issue of which businesses need
to comply and which don't, regardless of whether they exist physically or as a
website.

[1]
[https://www.ada.gov/briefs/uc_berkley_lof.pdf](https://www.ada.gov/briefs/uc_berkley_lof.pdf)

~~~
Mirioron
> _No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business._

But this means that almost every forum does count.

~~~
oblio
Most community forums are not businesses.

And if you're a business, just use forum software that has accessibility in
mind.

------
jcranmer
Some clarity on the matter:

The Supreme Court didn't say anything. All they did was decline to hear the
appeal.

From skimming the petition and responses, it looks like the situation is that
the 9th Circuit is allowing the case to go ahead to determine whether or not
Domino's website is violating accessibility requirements, which means that
there's not a lot of facts and administrative record for SCOTUS to attempt to
decide if the reasoning as to how to determine how the ADA applies here. In
other words, this does feel like a case that SCOTUS rejected in large part
because the petition is way too premature--the respondent's brief definitely
feels far more persuasive to me than the petitioner's (Domino's) briefs.

~~~
gnicholas
This is actually a big deal because what was ruled on was the _legal matter of
whether a business could be sued based on their website_.

The facts of what constitutes a sufficiently-accessible website necessarily
have not been discussed, because Dominos was trying to boot the case before
any factual determinations were made.

Their argument was that, as a matter of law, they could not be sued under the
ADA based on their website. This argument prevailed at the District Court,
lost at the Ninth Circuit, and was unanimously declined to be heard at SCOTUS.

That sends a loud and clear message, and this will essentially become the law
of the land for at least the next few decades.

Note: I have not deeply read all the opinions, but I am a lawyer who is
familiar with appellate procedure and the ADA.

~~~
BurritoAlPastor
It’s a little more tightly scoped than that. From what I’m seeing, no parties
are arguing that websites are themselves Title III “public accommodations”.
Rather, the 9th circuit held that the Domino’s websites were part of the
Domino’s services at their brick & mortar restaurants.

In other words, this case only directly applies to physical businesses with an
online component (buy-online-pick-up-in-store or similar).

I’ll be curious to see – assuming that Robles eventually wins – if this case
is ever used to argue that an online-only business is subject to Title III. It
doesn’t seem like a slam dunk connection.

(Not a lawyer, but I do enjoy reading court documents.)

------
westurner
"a11y": Accessibility

[https://a11yproject.com/](https://a11yproject.com/) has patterns, a checklist
for checking web accessibility, resources, and events.

awesome-a11y has a list of a number of great resources for developing
accessible applications:
[https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y](https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y)

In terms of W3C specifications [1], you've got: WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility
Initiative: Accessibile Rich Internet Applications) [2], and WCAG: Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines [3]. The new W3C Payment Request API [4] makes it
easy for browsers to offer a standard (and probably(?) already accessible)
interface for the payment data entry screen, at least.

There are a number of automated accessibility testing platforms. "[W3C WAI]
Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List" [5] lists quite a few. Can someone
recommend a good accessibility testing tools? Is Google Lighthouse (now
included with Chrome Devtools and as a standalone script) a good tool for
accessibility reviews?

[1]
[https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topic...](https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topics/specification.md)

[2] [https://www.w3.org/TR/using-aria/](https://www.w3.org/TR/using-aria/)

[3] [https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-
guidelines/wcag/](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/)

[4] [https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/](https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-
request/)

[5] [https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/](https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/)

------
jasonhansel
There has been a long standing precedent around the ADA requiring web
accessibility:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_B...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_Blind_v._Target_Corp.).

A number of companies have been (more or less) blatantly violating the law in
this area. Framework authors in particular have often ignored the value of
accessible, semantic markup. Many devs come to the web knowing only frameworks
(and not the underlying web technologies), which is dangerous if those
frameworks aren't accessibility-focused.

Hopefully this decision finally scares companies into action, and inspires a
lot of valuable future litigation on behalf of the visually impaired.

~~~
supernova87a
I hope you know that's not a very strong legal precedent, which is why it
keeps getting appealed to the Supreme Court from various jurisdictions. You
speak (or seem to hope) as if the law is clearly on one side, which it isn't,
at least not that strongly.

There is contradictory case law (like Southwest Airlines 2002) that says the
ADA does not extend to virtual / online stores.

Companies are policing themselves on this issue out of liability to be sued,
which is a far cry from a declarative right to have accommodations online. It
is not that certain.

~~~
belltaco
I guess a lot of things going online and some going online-only in the
intervening 17 years since 2002 has redefined "place of public accommodation"
to include cyberspace.

------
litoE
I know the owner of a small brick and mortar store in California. She decided
to create a web site to sell her products on line. She got a domain name and a
hosting account and installed a canned platform (OpenCart) which allowed her
to create her own web site and started to try and sell. Total sales on the web
site over three years: about $3,500.

Then she received a letter from a lawyer in Florida,telling her that a) her
web site is not ADA compliant; b) If she doesn't fix it, they'll file a law
suit; and c) She needs to pay the lawyers $4,000 to "cover their time in
handling this unfortunate situation".

With her sales, she can't justify spending an additional few thousand to pay a
programmer to fix or redo her web site to be ADA compliant. Her only option is
to just shut down the web site.

The only winners here were the lawyers.

~~~
chillacy
Sounds like whoever sold her the theme didn't bother with accessibility. I
think laws like this are good, but at the same time they will end up pushing
people to stick to larger sites like shopify or just listing on ebay/amzn to
avoid all this.

~~~
esyir
This just sounds to me like "I like regulation, but hate over-regulation".
Except that here, like potentially many other cases, there weren't any sane
bounds on said regulation.

~~~
CathedralBorrow
Sometimes I think it's "I like regulation, but I hate regulation that puts a
burden on me."

~~~
esyir
To be fair, proposing regulation on people is really easy if you're not
affected.

And individual rules can often sound nice at first glance, only to have
disastrous consequences in practice. Add in the fact that repeal of regulation
is an... onerous process, and things get even more tricky.

~~~
CathedralBorrow
True.

And also to be fair, it is very easy to dismiss advocacy for regulations as
naive ideals from inexperienced people who like things that sound nice but are
ignorant of the realities of the world.

------
yostrovs
Does the ADA really apply and enforced at all publicly available businesses?
Does every Chinese restaurant in Chinatown have a Braille menu? If we really
start enforcing this, only larger businesses will survive.

~~~
tibbon
It’s a myth that reasonable accommodations are too much of a burden for a
small business to handle. Having a menu made into Braille for example isn’t
going to cost a ton. On the upside, they would also now have business
available that they didn’t have in the past.

~~~
chrisco255
I wonder why Domino's having a phone number to call in orders isn't enough of
an accommodation in this case?

~~~
Pinckney
My understanding, from a quick 5 minute skim, is that it may be. It's being
sent back to the district court for reconsideration.

Basically what seems to have happened is this:

1\. Robles sued Dominoes alleging their website violated the ADA.

2\. The district court dismissed the suit, saying the DOJ needs to provide
guidance on the standards that websites must meet, if the court is to hold
them to the ADA. They don't examine the question of the phone.

3\. The appeals court steps in and says that no, the district court was wrong
to dismiss it for that reasons, and sends it back to the district court.

4\. Dominoes appeals to SCOTUS, saying "help, the appeals court got it wrong,
please step in!" SCOTUS declines to get involved, so the case will go back to
the district court, which may still find that the phone access provided is an
adequate accommodation.

------
alkonaut
I wonder if there is a good rule of thumb for what software and features are
acceptable to _not_ be accessible? What does it mean for a drawing program to
be accessible by the legally blind? You can follow accessibility guidelines
(for UI navigation and so on) but does that mean you made the program
accessible if the bulk of the operations you can actually do in the software -
draw - still requires seeing what you are doing? Are you expected to invent
workarounds that allows people to use your software, or can you assume that
"nah, no blind person is likely to be drawing anyway"? It seems there is a
gray area where it's just not economically feasible to add some extreme
bespooke types of accessibility, but at the same time not doing it will make
it self fulfilling - of course no blind people will draw in drawing programs
so long as they don't get the tools.

~~~
couchand
Well, the law provides for a number of balancing tests to ensure that a court
will respect the rights of all parties. A rule of thumb is unlikely to be
specific and precise enough for any practical use. For specific details,
consult an attorney.

Since it only applies to "public accommodations", it's highly unlikely that a
drawing program will be covered, unless it's tied to a good, such as if you
can have the drawing printed up for you.

------
Meekro
If you're blind, can't you just call up a Dominos to order your pizza? "Talk
to a human and order your pizza" sounds like a friendlier approach than the
automated screen reader or whatever they'll come up with to resolve this
litigation.

~~~
colejohnson66
Some deals were online only. Presumably to encourage people to use the website
and not bother employees with having to answer the phone.

~~~
Meekro
That's a fair point. Sounds like this can be resolved with a simple new rule:
if you're blind, you can get online-only deals over the phone.

~~~
verroq
So now everyone can pretend to be blind to take advantage of online only deals
on the phone?

~~~
sincerely
I mean, they could already get the deals, by going online. I'm a little
confused about what you see wrong with this scenario.

~~~
belltaco
The discounts are given since orders on phone cost the company more than
orders from their website, in terms of employee labor and cost of manning the
phones.

------
Pinckney
Here's the ruling from the 9th circuit:

[http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/01/15/17...](http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/01/15/17-55504.pdf)

A denial of cert doesn't mean the supreme court necessarily has an opinion on
the merits of the case. Courts in other circuits can still rule otherwise, and
SCOTUS might eventually decide to hear such a case at a later time.

------
evunveot
I tested the Domino's home page with WAVE (I had to install the browser
extension for some reason) and it found no errors and what looks like healthy
use of landmarks and ARIA, though I didn't dig too deep. Would any blind HN
readers care to comment on to the degree to which
[https://www.dominos.com/en/](https://www.dominos.com/en/) is accessible to
them, personally?

The stress around website accessibility comes from the lack of any authority
who can tell you you've done enough and you can't be sued, perhaps by someone
using an outdated screen reader/browser combination you'd never think to test
with. It brings back bad memories of things like trying to support IE5/Mac at
the same time as IE6/Windows. (Protip: embrace quirks mode.)

~~~
lucasmullens
They've likely added accessibility since the lawsuit started. Maybe check
archive.org?

------
rudolph9
I would consider this a good thing. It really doesn’t require very much effort
to be compliant and it ultimately results in UI that are more easily
accessible by not only bling people, among other disabilities but also
encourages better extensibility for creative purposes
[https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-
guidelines/wcag/](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/)

------
etaioinshrdlu
Accessibility seems to be thrown under the bus under MVP style thinking. You
are trained not to focus on issues that only affect a small number of users. I
know I do this all the time. The reason is money.

At what point do we just accept that security, accessibility, and similar
properties are actually important, and that we shouldn't accept half baked
products anymore?

I don't have a clear answer. But regulating the software industry is just
going to make running a startup almost impossible. No more jobs for self
taught hackers. All platforms will be a walled garden, including the web.

I'm leaning towards the viewpoint that companies (or anyone) should not be
responsible for accessibility problems.

~~~
tremon
MVP is primarily a development strategy, not a lifecycle strategy. I see no
conflict here. Your product owner should include legal requirements in the
project scope, it's not something individual developers should have to
prioritize themselves.

~~~
etaioinshrdlu
And what about individual developers who own their own projects? Open source
projects? They typically have no warranty.

------
brickpaste
Target.com is accessible because of a similar case from 2006. This appears to
be a decent summary: [https://www.jimthatcher.com/law-
target.htm](https://www.jimthatcher.com/law-target.htm)

~~~
zaroth
Are screen readers still as terrible as that article makes them sound?
Regretfully, I've never actually tried to use one, nor worked with anyone who
needed one. I imagine they are basically horrific to use on almost any modern
website.

My inexpert suspicion is that investment in better _screen reading_ technology
could make millions of sites accessible which currently are not, and that
there should be some way to meet in the middle -- perhaps companies funding a
consortium to push screen reading tech forward while at the same time making
it an order of magnitude easier for a site to be accessible.

~~~
mattl
Mac OS X has one built in, if you are looking to play around with one.

~~~
mwcampbell
Specifically, you can turn on VoiceOver on Mac with Command+F5.

Windows also has a built-in screen reader called Narrator. On Windows 10
version 1703 or later, you can turn it on with Control+Windows+Enter. As of
version 1903, it works reasonably well with Chrome, Edge (both Chromium-based
and legacy), and IE. Another popular option on Windows is the open-source NVDA
([https://www.nvaccess.org/](https://www.nvaccess.org/)).

Disclosure: I'm a developer at Microsoft, on the Narrator team, but as usual,
I'm posting on my own behalf.

~~~
AgentME
A lot of people in this thread and others have recommended devs to try out
screen readers to get familiar with developing for them, and I added to my
mental checklist "look up screen readers and try to find a good one to try out
eventually", which really I'm not sure I'd ever get around to, and even if I
did, I'd probably get distracted from choice paralysis because I wasn't sure
which screen reader is worth trying.

Immediately after reading your post, I pressed a key combo and started playing
with it. I would not have guessed that getting started was literally just a
key combo away. Thanks.

------
DoreenMichele
FYI for those interested, there is a Google Group called _blind dev works_ :

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/blind-...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/blind-
dev-works)

It's a small, low traffic group. I'm one of the admins.

------
kd5bjo
> The ADA mandates that places of public accommodation, like Domino’s, provide
> auxiliary aids and services to make visual materials available to
> individuals who are blind

I haven’t read the actual ruling, but Domino’s provides a phone number that
you can call, and a person will tell you any of the information on the website
and can perform all of the services the website can perform. How is this not a
sufficient “auxiliary service to make visual materials available to
individuals who are blind”?

~~~
qtplatypus
There where web only deals you couldn’t get via making a call.

------
bocalogic
On another note, there are services that are already scraping thousands of
websites and testing them for ADA compliance. If the website fails the test,
the website or lead is sold off to an attorney. The attorney will then find or
hire a straw client to sue the website and the company. Its very prevalent and
lucrative because a lot of the law has yet to be written and the companies
being sued are settling very quickly.

~~~
UncleMeat
So? If lawbreakers can be identified at scale, should that change the
situation at all?

Imagine if this were changed to tax fraud. Now we have computers that can
automatically find discrepancies and we can notify violators at scale. The
horror!

------
JumpCrisscross
Sounds like a great start-up opportunity. Turnkey and ongoing accessibility
compliance.

~~~
CaliforniaKarl
I really hope not. I don’t think “X compliance” is a good idea for a startup,
because of trust and liability.

Whomever does the compliant would either need a ton of liability insurance, or
would need contract language that actually gets them out of responsibility
(similar to the language in many travel insurance and point-of-dale service
plans). The former would be expensive, so you’d probably end up with the
latter.

Web accessibility compliance does require a human to look at (and interact
with) a site, and it requires people who either have training, or experience.
That costs more. I really hope we don’t end up with “Uber for accessibility
compliance”, with testers who aren’t paid enough, and who don’t get enough
time to test a site.

~~~
tibbon
There’s a lot of businesses that focus on legal compliance. Maybe they aren’t
“uber for compliance”, but there’s plenty of compliance centric work out there

------
miki123211
Blind person here. While I definitely appreciate any efforts towards
accessibility, I believe this is not the way. What people don't realize is
that, at a certain point, _most_ companies do accessibility anyway. Some of
them, like Apple or Microsoft, even turn it into a marketing advantage. There
are exceptions, sure, but this doesn't justify government regulation. I
believe the days of John and Chuck, two dropouts from MIT making a tech
startup and becoming billionaires are almost over. There's more and more
regulation introduced around technology, first the absolutely ridiculous
COPPA, then GDPR, then California's privacy initiative and now this. I believe
that, in five to tech years, our tech landscape will consist of a few big
companies who will have the resources to comply, and many walled gardens, as
each country will have their own laws, wildly different from any others. The
UK is already starting to go this way, i.e. with the proposal to ban Facebook
likes for users under 18 and introduce mandatory age verification. I think
that a small company making a website in 2030 is as likely as a small company
making their own car or drug now. Some groups might benefit from this, but,
ultimately, we, as a society, will be worse off. This one particular case
seems beneficial when consideret in separation from anything else. The wider
trend is not.

~~~
ptest1
I think accessibility is very important, but I share your worry about the
future for very small startup projects. I think it’s already almost
impossible.

I worry about it getting much worse, especially with the animosity the larger
tech companies face from the public. What people don’t understand is that
those big companies will weather any of these regulations, and that they will
stop smaller startups from ever happening.

------
robomartin
What happens to every game on Steam, every app in the two main app stores,
websites and software for 3D mechanical CAD (Solidworks, Fusion 360), ECAD,
etc?

Just trying to understand this. Where are the boundaries, limits and rules?
What happens if you use web technologies to control equipment, say, 3D
printers, robots, etc.

To clarify, this isn’t to say I have a problem with this ruling. Not at all.
Just trying to understand if this is a massive world-wide hammer anyone can
wield against any website and tangentially related technologies or if the
range, domain and impact have certain limits.

Put a different way: Should Mom and Pop lose sleep over the possibility of
being sued out of business any given Monday or sleep well knowing the process
is sensible enough to allow for a reasonable ramp to adoption?

There’s even stuff like, for example, if you have 200 domains parked with a
registrar who puts-up a non-compliant page on all of them. Are you exposed?

~~~
qtplatypus
IANAL but games are not public accomodations/commercial facilities in terms of
the ADA. There has been very strong law that restaurants are such a thing.

The act basically requires companies to make "readily achievable" changes. So
if it would bankrupt the company then it is not required. However you can’t
just sleep on the issue and pocket the profits for not putting in the effort.

~~~
robomartin
I need to do a bit more research on this. I live in a world where it is hard
to imagine blind people being able to perform. I say this admitting I might be
truly ignorant about this.

This is a world where we exist and do our work both in front of our screens
and in the physical domain. In this world we use tools such as Fusion 360,
Solidworks and online services such as Vention to design physical parts,
products, machines, tooling. Altium Designer and other EDA tools to design
electronics. We use both online and offline tools to manage manufacturing
workflow, quality, schedules, client interaction and more. We use online and
offline tools to program and manage our CNC machines, quote and manage aspects
of the transition from digital to real object in your hand.

I look at this ecosystem and peripheral elements to this and I am not sure I
truly understand both this decision and the context. Do you have to be a blind
person to truly understand it? Can a blind person design mechanical parts
using Fusion 360 or Solidworks? Or electronics using EDA tools?

Again, exposing my obvious ignorance on the subject here. Happy to do so too,
as I am sure some of the contributions to this thread will serve to educate me
as to some of the nuances, needs and issues in this domain.

What I fear with some of this stuff --and again, this could be truly ignorant
in this case-- is that these rulings will serve ambulance-chaser type
attorneys who, with a juicy new vector for revenue generation, will file a
massive number of lawsuits, extract blood from small and large companies and
individuals and, in the end, not necessarily serve the blind community all
that well.

In other words, the lady who owns a little knitting blog will be extorted out
of a few hundred bucks. After that she will either shut down the site --which
means everyone loses-- or she will deploy the crappiest minimal compliant
modification she can find, maintain it badly but still be in
compliance...which means her blind visitors lose. The lawyers, however, will
do very, very well, as they file thousands of these cases and rake-in the
profits. If you can't tell, I've dealt with lawyers enough over the last three
decades to have a very dim view of a certain subclass among their ranks. I
firmly believe they make things worse for society rather than the opposite.

------
ping_pong
This law is ripe for exploitative lawsuits. Instead of damages going to the
plaintiff, of which actual damages are very dubious, it should go to a fund
that helps web site developers increase accessibility. Maybe an open source
foundation that integrates this into regular HTML.

The money should NOT go to lawyers for their fees and plaintiffs. It just
creates the wrong incentive system.

------
throwaway_bad
Rather than crippling the rest of the world for the blind, why not improve the
tools for them instead?

Screen readers that are limited to structured inputs can't be the end-all
final solution right? It would be shortsighted to set this tech in stone with
legal precedents. Do we seriously want to require every blind person to be
fluent in reading html/React as the default way to consume sites?

We should be trying to improve the tech so they can consume the world just
like sighted people. There are already apps that can use computer vision to
caption and describe images. It can even connect you with real people if the
AI sucks.

I think pouring investments into those technologies might be cheaper relative
to the amount of work added to the industry as a whole.

~~~
thomasedwards
React/Vue/etc are all accessible. Almost all web technology that exists is
accessible. The trouble is you can’t just do what you want, and you have to
test it to ensure it’s accessible. Most companies put it to the bottom of the
list or forget about it. It really isn’t that hard, no new tools are required,
everything is already there: you just have to do it.

~~~
throwaway_bad
You are thinking of the most trivial of apps. For example I have worked on a
web-based image editor that is practically impossible to make accessible to
the blind. Not with current screen reader technology.

Another example is Reddit, where a good chunk of their content is just text
memes overlaid on images. For compliance, would you force people to describe
their images with an alt text before submission?

The better solution would be to do what Facebook does and have builtin tools
that will annotate a OCR/description with ML or crowdsourcing. In an ideal
world these tools would be available to everyone with no extra work.

Don't settle for making the blind wade through a pile of HTML and call that
accessible. It would be a travesty if it became law to use alt tags, because
that is so far from the best we can do. Don't lock the world into dead
technologies.

~~~
qtplatypus
The law requires only "readily achievable"changes. So something that is
practically impossible isn’t required.

------
jameslk
Is there really any requirement to make a website accessible if you could
provide "full and equal enjoyment" via old fashioned phone support? I see this
being vastly cheaper and less risky to provide for most non-"web app" websites
(e.g. retail websites) for the smaller number of users who need it.

Edit: Found a source that seems to discuss it but it seems it hasn't been
tested in court: [https://www.adatitleiii.com/2017/10/telephone-access-
might-b...](https://www.adatitleiii.com/2017/10/telephone-access-might-be-
valid-alternative-to-accessible-website-but-court-needs-more/)

------
JJMcJ
I live to use keyboard shortcuts, mostly TAB. It's amazing how many websites
don't even have that working correctly.

Or a page has exactly one text entry box and it doesn't have focus when page
first renders.

That's just sloppy.

And for those with vision problem a major problem.

------
Seb-C
As someone now living in Japan, I think I can understand how frustrating the
user experience is for disabled people. While not disabled, I often need to
use Google translate or lookup for Kanjis/Words in a dictionary. There are a
crazy amount of websites (and mobile applications) where text selection is
disabled or where text is written inside images, which often completely
prevents me from using the website...

I'm not even counting the number of websites breaking the system scroll speed
of forcing a custom mouse cursor. I may be too sensitive here, but it is very
annoying so I now just close the tab whenever it happens.

------
chrisco255
According to the article, the Supreme Court did not rule on the case, the 9th
Circuit did. Sometimes the Supreme Court will turn down a case on a
technicality while still leaving open the possibility for future ruling on a
matter.

------
buboard
I really don’t see anything wrong with this. I blame the modern web a lot for
this As javascript hijacks functionality of the browser, and the browser is
typically better accessible

------
TerminalJunkie
Honest question from a web developer, and I'm ashamed I don't know more, is
there a clear concise guide to building accessible websites? I've had to
support ARIA for U.S. Government websites, and certain color schemes for color
accessibility, but I really don't feel like I know how to build a web product
with accessibility in mind. I am genuinely sorry that I haven't developed the
skill more, and would like to take this opportunity to learn more.

------
mygo
In fear of sounding insensitive, what if a business has decided that their
website is just one way that customers can engage with them (much like their
physical storefront is another), and that there are other ways as well that
customers can purchase from them -- such as via phone (, etc). They can handle
anyone's needs over the phone (, etc) if they can't use the website... much
like the website enables them to engage with customers who can't visit their
physical location, which could be in a different state or country. Can't visit
our location? We still want your business, buy from our website. Having
trouble using our website? We still want your business. Here, give us a call
(, etc) and we can take your order. Once we have your order ready, we'll give
you a secure PCI-compliant interface to enter your payment info for the order,
that's totally accessible in whatever form it is, but is certainly separate
from the rest of the not-so-accessible site, since your primary means of
interaction with our business for this purchase is via [phone call or some
other accessible interface separate from the website].

I say this after watching my mother struggle using the IRS' website this
Sunday. Even though she is not blind or otherwise physically disabled (she
doesn't use a screen reader, for example), she isn't the most tech savvy
person. While searching for a form she clicked on a link then scrolled down
straight to the footer, thinking the footer was the page's unique content, and
already starting to click on links in the footer, which wouldn't have gotten
her where she needed to go since what she needed was above the footer but she
missed it. If she had someone she could call she would have gotten done what
she needed to do faster than using the website. I helped her out, of course,
but it was still helpful to watch how she used the site on her own before
offering assistance.

So what if a company acknowledges that not everyone will be able to use their
website and provides alternate ways for customers to engage with them that can
still accomplish the same thing? When you define a business as more than just
a website, is having multiple different interfaces (physical location for
those nearby, website, voice call, etc) for a customer to purchase from a
business not one way to provide accessibility?

If Domino's will take my order over the phone and deliver it and I can pay at
the door, is that not accessible for me, even if their website isn't?

------
mlang23
This would be wonderful news. I am blind, and can report that accessibility on
websites is getting worse and worse with every new web framework invented.
Accessibility is usually bolted on as an afterthought, with all the quality
issues implied. However, I only believe this headline when I see the first
lawsuits being won. Lets hope this is no clickbait.

~~~
voltagex_
Can you provide any examples of sites that might be using particular
frameworks that are inaccessible? If open source, I reckon I could raise an
issue or two on your behalf if that's OK.

~~~
mlang23
I am sorry, but I dont believe that casually raising an issue here or there
will actually change anything. My experience is that it either gets ignored,
or you outright receive an aswer that explains to you that your needs are not
important.

Example 1: Reddit is on GitHub. At the time when I was still using Reddit, I
was pretty pissed with its lack of helpful accessibility. So I went on GitHub,
and wrote a PR which would wrap individual articles on a page in a so-called
"region" so that the screen reader could easily jump to the next article. The
PR was ignored for several months. After a while, I simply closed it out of
frustration.

Example 2: When I read about Bitwarden on HN, I tried it. As I am an iPhone
user, the iOS app was interesting, so I installed and tested it. No surprise,
almonst no button was labeled correctly, or labeled at all. So I opened an
issue on GitHub. The answer I got was: "Yes, we know we are not accessible,
but we are planning a rewrite anyway, so we will not change anything in the
existing code". Thanks for nothing. We are not talking about rocket science
here, just adding a text label to a handful of buttons. But yes, thanks, I got
the message. Nobody really cares about people with disabilities.

~~~
voltagex_
Yep. I get it. I'm in a wheelchair. But I can't not try, at least in some
small way. It's really frustrating that these projects don't take this stuff
seriously.

------
trashtester
The sum of all kinds of regulations like this one is great news for mega-
corporations. Economies of scale mean that the costs are small for them, and
proportonaly much bigger for smaller companies.

While I think it is a great goal that services should be accessible by people
with special needs or restrictions, would it not be better if this could be
achieved by incentives instead of hard regulation?

Perhaps as follows. 1) Create a registry for companies to self-declare that
they are accessible for a given user segment by some given standard. (For
essential utilities and government agencies, compliance can still be made
mandatory) For registered entities, make this statement binding, and follow up
breaches with fines that are sufficiently stiff that only companies that
comply will register. This registry could contain information would contain
information about standards that are already regulated, but could also be
extended to include other needs (dietary standards, child friendliness,
accessible to people with certain mental limitations, etc) 2) Make this
information open to the public, and attach a rating service such as
TripAdvisor where users can rate the degree of availability. This would make
it easy for the beneficiaries to find services suitable for them. The data
should also be made accessible through an API, so that special interest groups
can mirror it on their own infrastructure. 3) Step 2 will provide an incentive
in itself, but where it is not enough, introduce a tax incentive on top.
Companies with the necessary accesiblity could be given a tax benefit in the
order of 1-5%. This benefit should be on the profit, not the turnover, to
avoid putting companies with limited profitablity out of business over this.

------
traderjane
Because there are a myriad of perceptual issues and the idea of reporting
specific perceptual needs is likely an unnecessarily severe data disclosure,
wouldn't it be best for non-app websites to have their content mapped out
according to some standardized API for consumption by their client?

------
randyrand
Would a chat bot interface to order pizza's count as blind accessible? Or even
a live person on a phone?

------
tyfon
This is already EU law. You can get fined if you don't follow accessibility
guidelines on your home page.

Usually that also makes for better home pages for other people as you don't
get the type of crap "creative" web developers tend to put there to make it
flashy but unusable.

------
Bostonian
Suppose I can't use a product because of a disability. Do I sue a company for
making the product available to others who can use it? The ADA says I have the
legal right to do so, but the mentality that "if I can't enjoy something,
nobody should" is immoral.

------
jelder
As a fully sighted person (well, I wear glasses to drive), I'm thrilled about
this. Websites that are easier to use for the blind are easier to use for
everyone. If your website is a giant picture of text, this is just karma.

------
sgjohnson
Misleading title. SCOTUS refused to hear the case, not ruled in favour of the
cause.

------
ashelmire
This sounds like it's great for web developers like myself. We'll have jobs
for years to come!

And it will force companies to really think about their functionality and
ensure that it's easy for common use.

------
aitchnyu
Is there a EU/Australian/British equivalent? I'm an Indian employee developing
for EU and want to scare people into cutting back the design madness that
makes sites unreadable and slow.

~~~
pmyteh
The UK has the Equality Act 2010
([http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents))
particularly parts 2 and 3. There is a private right of enforcement through
the county court.

I have a friend who is a wheelchair user who has been trying to get ramp
access to the shops where she lives. First avenue is a friendly chat, second
is a letter before action, third is court. She would much rather it was
enforced by the government like most other regulations - in addition to being
draining to go to court to argue for her rights, it leaves those who ignored
their obvious legal responsibilities, and the friendly chat, and the letter,
_personally furious_ that she took them to court. So even victory is fairly
Pyrrhic.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
Followup question for those in the know: If domino's hadn't had online-only
deals/rewards/etc, would the availability of the phone line have counted as
accessible?

------
ixtli
This is a just outcome. The disabled have a right to access society.

------
archie2
I don't get it. Why can't he just order from someone else that has an
accessible website? I choose not to use lousy webapps for all sorts of
reasons.

~~~
Forge36
Imagine the website is only partially accessible.

You jump though the hoops to make your order, make an account, choose your
pizza, and enter your credit card info.

You click submit. Nothing happens. Did the order go through? Do you call to
find out? Wait and hope? Order from someone else? In the future you'll have an
answer (or 4 different deliveries because you went somewhere else 3 separate
times until you found an accessible website).

What if you didn't have another option? Should we prevent the blind from
eating pizza?

~~~
archie2
> You jump though the hoops to make your order, make an account, choose your
> pizza, and enter your credit card info. You click submit. Nothing happens.
> Did the order go through? Do you call to find out? Wait and hope? Order from
> someone else? In the future you'll have an answer

I've had this happen to me multiple times, and I'm not even disabled.

> What if you didn't have another option? Should we prevent the blind from
> eating pizza?

We are talking about America - the place where people eat themselves to death
from over consumption of terrible foods - there is _always_ another option.

------
partiallypro
This opens a huge can of worms, given that there is no clear standard for
this. W3C has varying degrees of compliance, some of them near impossible to
abide by.

------
csande17
The issue here appears to be whether or not it's Domino's legal (and moral)
obligation to make their website compatible with some specific piece of
screen-reader software. To me, it seems like they probably should; the APIs
are relatively clear, standardized, and easy to use, and there are quite a few
people who can't use the website otherwise.

I do wonder how far this argument goes, though. Say someone creates a new
device that allows people with some incredibly rare motor impairment to access
the Internet. Is it now the responsibility of everyone in the world to add
support for that device?

~~~
freeone3000
"Undue burden" is the test used. Essentially, how much work is it to create an
accessible website?

Websites are navigable by screen readers and tons of other accessibility
software by default. Hacker News is completely usable in JAWS. It's the things
Domino's layered on top that broke it, so it's Domino's's job to fix it.

Having domino's create a new web browser for physical accessibility devices
would be an undue burden. Having domino's fix their aria tags and tab order is
not.

~~~
csande17
That makes sense, thanks!

------
nvahalik
This seems like overreach. Clearly the law doesn’t cover websites.

Why can’t congress just pass a law to make the ADA apply to websites? It’s not
SCOTUS’s job to create law.

~~~
0xEFF
The law has covered websites for decades. It used to be not that much of a
problem because screen readers worked well enough with plain html.

~~~
zaroth
Pretty sure the law doesn't say _anything_ in particular about websites.

I don't usually find myself scratching my head at SCOTUS. Full and equal
enjoyment of the goods and services is the pizza, not the website. The website
is just one means of obtaining said pizza.

~~~
pseudalopex
Robles claims Domino's wouldn't sell the same goods for the same price over
the phone.

------
ramoz
I'm not seeing much mention of Net Neutrality or what this means in the grand
scheme of open & free web vs Gov't control of it.

Any thoughts?

~~~
deckar01
There are already lots of regulations that target e-commerce [0]. Net
neutrality isn't about the freedom to serve any content you want, it's about
the discrimination and prioritization of certain types of network traffic [1].

[0]: [https://www.justia.com/business-operations/managing-your-
bus...](https://www.justia.com/business-operations/managing-your-
business/e-commerce/)

[1]: [https://www.eff.org/issues/net-
neutrality](https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality)

------
chrischen
Is there a checker to see if a website is accessible, and how to make it
accessible (like the ones for SEO and site-speed optimizations)?

~~~
couchand
Lighthouse is pretty good:
[https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/)

------
chrisweekly
I've read a bunch of comments; surprised not to see mention of DevTools /
Lighthouse Audits / Accessibility.

------
rblatz
I’m a bit shocked that the Dominos CLI wasn’t brought up as a defense.

[https://github.com/freecode/dominos-cli](https://github.com/freecode/dominos-
cli) Or [https://github.com/jkereako/dominos-pizza-
cli/blob/master/do...](https://github.com/jkereako/dominos-pizza-
cli/blob/master/dominospizza/urls.py)

~~~
austincheney
That does not in any way appear to be associated with, or endorsed by, the
Dominoes business, which is likely why it was never mentioned.

------
on_and_off
Good.

Part of my work is to make the service I work on accessible so I follow this
topic.

I find it absolutely disgusting that Domino would rather drag their case to
the supreme court than make their site accessible.

Anecdotally, while making an app or website accessible is not particularly
easy, I have found that there are some good benefits.

At least on mobile, it pushes you to avoid relying on hacky solutions and to
make clear layouts instead. This also makes your code more maintainable.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/RGxKw](http://archive.is/RGxKw)

------
slowhadoken
What’s wrong with using a phone to order pizza? Seems like a reasonable
alternative.

------
drummyfish
Great, now make it possible to sue owners of sites unusable without JS.

------
julianozen
How could this lawsuit cost less then just fixing the website?

~~~
pakitan
Because currently there is no accepted definition of "fixed" (accessible) site
and if they caved, people could come after them for various technicalities
forever.

~~~
julianozen
This is not true. There are lots of agreed upon standards (in this case the
plaintiff wants WCAG 2.0) and dominos needs to meet one of

------
bronz
what is a retailer? does this mean that if i make a website to sell my small
indie game, i have to follow all the ephemeral accessibility rules or else be
sued?

------
golemotron
I wonder why having having a voice ordering system by phone wouldn't be a
valid defense for Dominos. Should the ADA apply to every channel of sales if
there are supported alternatives by the same company.

~~~
conception
While on the surface that seems like a good argument, wouldn’t that mean that
as long as they had Braille and a wheelchair ramp at their stores they’d be
compliant? Etc etc

~~~
sb8244
I don't think that's a fair conclusion to reach. One channel can reasonably be
done from home while the other requires going to the store.

I believe web accessibility is net good, though.

------
jamisteven
This is the most PC shit ive read about this year.

------
kome
web dev should start using vanilla html + css, following w3c guidelines for
accessibility and stop all the fancy js shit.

------
aaomidi
This is such a good plan. So many developers don't care about a11y. This just
adds a cost to actually start caring and planning your code around it.

~~~
postalrat
Most only care to make it look like the mockup. And the people making the
mockups only care that the site looks like their design.

------
sabujp
I just became an a11y programmer :)

------
jakeogh
hiQ vs Linkedin was a Heller vs DC. This feels congruent.

------
zarro
The ADA law actually doesn't make sense to me. I get they are trying to stop
discrimination, but the means they take is misguided and an encroachment on
peoples rights.

If you have a business and are offering a service, you are doing so at-will.
Your not obligated to provide anyone with any product or service, if you were,
how is that not slavery? The law forces you to provide a product or service
without allowing you use your own judgement.

The law itself is unconstitutional. How did it even pass?

~~~
gamblor956
That is literally the opposite of the truth. If you have a business in the US,
you have a duty not to discriminate against protected classes that trumps free
speech rights.

Under the ADA, only new businesses (post ADA) are/were required to build
accessibility into their business. Older businesses were grandfathered in and
didn't have to make changes to existing facilities until they renovated them.
In terms of websites, this means only the oldest websites would have been
grandfathered in.

~~~
zarro
I don't see how its acceptable to use coercion to enforce an opinion of
"duties that trump free speech rights" that don't involve force, fraud, or
defamation.

~~~
gamblor956
In the US, more than two centuries of jurisprudence holds that commercial
activity is not speech, and is thus is not generally subject to the protection
of the Constitution. Moreover, the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the
power to regulate Commerce.

Doing business thus is validly subject to government regulations mandating
that businesses do (or not do) certain things. And some of those things
include not discriminating against the disabled, and designing your business
facilities to accommodate the disabled.

~~~
zarro
Given that commercial activity affects my unalienable rights to life, liberty
and property I would disagree that its not subject to the protection of the
Constitution.

I also find fault with the commerce clause of the constitution and think its
broad interpretation as an economic defense mechanism is archaic and filled
with undesirable effects (such as the drug war, limitations to trade and
international tariff wars), not to mention contradictory to the constitutional
principle of liberty.

~~~
gamblor956
Your personal interpretation disagrees with the Constitution that actually
exists and with the two centuries of legal cases on constitutional rights.

The Constitution was intended to give the government broad powers. It was
written in reaction to the Articles of Confederation, which created a
government with limited powers that failed with 5 years. The provisions of the
Constitution and the bill of Rights need to be understood within that context.

~~~
zarro
Its not my personal interpretation, and just because legal cases interpreted a
certain way for two centuries does not make them right. The constitution was
not intended to give the government broad powers, but rather to assign limits
to its scope. The context in which it "needs to be understood" is not for you
to define, but up for interpretation.

"The United States Constitution presents an example of the federal government
not possessing any power except what is delegated to it by the Constitution —
with the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution making explicit
that powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are reserved
for the people and the states."

Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_government)

------
Causality1
I'm in favor of requiring that all deals and coupons be available via all
methods of ordering, with things such as app-required deals only being legal
if the app is accessible to the blind. Other than that, I fail to see how
having phone ordering doesn't completely cover the accessibility requirement.
It's very easy to get silly with these requirements. Should comedians be
required to provide transcripts for deaf people? Should paintings come with
exhaustive descriptions attached to their frames?

~~~
wbl
They already are on TV.

------
anonytrary
Then the Supreme Court is wrong (which isn't impossible, by the way). If I
draw on my street with chalk, should I also be compelled to play a cassette on
repeat outside my driveway describing what the picture is? This is absurd.

~~~
cochne
This would not apply to your street art.

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990:

"No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in
the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges,
advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any
person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public
accommodation."

"a failure to take such steps as may be necessary to ensure that no individual
with a disability is excluded, denied services, segregated or otherwise
treated differently than other individuals because of the absence of auxiliary
aids and services, unless the entity can demonstrate that taking such steps
would fundamentally alter the nature of the good, service, facility,
privilege, advantage, or accommodation being offered or would result in an
undue burden;"

Are you arguing that the Americans with Disabilities Act is wrong, or that
making a website accessible is an undue burden? (while say, ramps for
wheelchairs is not)

~~~
anonytrary
Thank you for this snippet. The ADA is somewhat reasonable for having included
the "undue burden" clause, however, it is probably an undue burden for a small
online website to prove that supporting disabled users would be an undue
burden.

At the end of the day, this is just more red tape that will probably hurt
small sites or deter them from being made.

~~~
freeone3000
It's not an undue burden. Either don't break screen readers with javascript
bullshit, or un-break them by having a sane tab order and present aria tags
and image descriptions. Try it with keyboard navigation, listen to what it
sounds like, and if it's _functional_ , you pass. It's not that hard.

~~~
anonytrary
> Either don't break screen readers with javascript bullshit

It's _your_ site. You have the freedom to break your own property. This is
apparently a contradiction. This addition seems to say that I can't break my
own property if it means some people can't see it. How is this constitutional?

~~~
anonymousab
It's you're site that you can do with as you please right up until you're
running a business and selling goods. Everything changes then, even without
the ADA.

