
A blind coder who makes Facebook accessible [video] - jackgavigan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p049l1p7
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notyourwork
Prior to my current role I worked at a very large public university.
Accessibility was always a "requirement" for our projects but as 1% of our
audience it was less tested and less focused during development cycles. This
was frustrating to me as it always felt like we were leaving an audience out
of the equation but usually these discussions were treated no different than
debates on which versions of IE we would support.

My last year at the university accessibility became a up front and center
focus. This was a strange shift from my prior few years but it was told to me
that there is a group of attorneys that are targeting public institutions who
lack accessibility and suing them for discrimination. It was presented
similarly to the way patent trolls operate. Find a large target (public
university or government entity) and sue them into a settlement.

Internally I was conflicting because on one hand this was forcing us to
finally support an audience that deserves to be supporting and treated
equally. On the other hand taking advantage of this situation and scooping up
legal fees in the process was not something I felt was proper.

Anyway, my point here is it is great to see companies like Facebook support
this. More specifically by having part of your target audience on the dev team
you end up actually being accessible and not just following the standards.

~~~
brudgers
In the US, Title II of the ADA is applicable to government institutions. It
allows collecting 'reasonable attorney fees' [1] but not punitive damages. It
is only state accessibility laws that can go beyond this.

Keep in mind that ADA is civil rights law, and that from a legal standpoint,
not serving the disabled is similar to not serving people based gender, creed,
or ethnicity. Having been the law of the land for more than a quarter century,
it's hard to cast failure to achieve accessibility as burdensome, it's just a
cost of doing business and a sudden increase in effort is a symptom of lack of
previous effort.

[1]: [https://www.ada.gov/qandaeng.htm](https://www.ada.gov/qandaeng.htm)

~~~
SamReidHughes
On the Internet, accessibility requirements aren't just burdensome, they're an
infringement on free speech.

~~~
brudgers
Curious if there is a legal ruling to that effect.

~~~
SamReidHughes
I believe not.

------
dpflan
Here is another example of improving accessibility, this time by Microsoft:

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=R2mC-NUAmMk](http://youtube.com/watch?v=R2mC-
NUAmMk)

