Proposed ADA Requirements May Affect Public Internet Use 420
An anonymous reader writes "The Associated Press is reporting on federal officials who want to expand the application of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to require accommodations by public websites, call centers, and technology providers. Hearings are scheduled in Chicago, Washington, and San Francisco. New rules could be implemented as soon as 2012. 'For more than a decade, the Justice Department has interpreted the ADA to apply to websites that offer goods and services. But now that idea could be clarified, and timetables for compliance could be set. ... The Justice Department is considering making it clear that some personal, noncommercial content would not be affected.'"
Fine with me (Score:3, Insightful)
I use a content management system which, if it does not already implement alt tags for all images, can be easily coaxed to do so. And I use (so far as I am able) standards-compliant markup, so this is not going to affect me.
It's even long been possible to have accessible flash. So what's the problem exactly? It's not like the web would lose anything but dead weight...
you know.. im all for.... (Score:2, Insightful)
if store X does not want to cater to group Y (for whatever reason, infrastructure costs to accommodate group Y or simple dislike for group Y It should be the store owners prerogative.
In this day and age, if people are THAT upset about it, they can organize boycotts until store X either changes, or goes under.
here is a perfect example in NY
smoking indoors is banned.... NOW I believe the store should have a right to dictate whether or not they want to allow smoking in their PRIVATELY OWNED establishment
the customer will either complain, and ask that smoking be not allowed and not go back until it is, or if enough people are bothered, he will see it on his balance sheet and ban smoking himself.
the government getting involved is always the answer to a question NO one asked.
Re:Fine with me (Score:3, Insightful)
That it takes a LOOOOOOOOOT more than a few alt tags, standard compliant markup and Flash that can be screen scraped to be ADA compliant. Its a freagin nightmare, and a lot of people who think they are compliant, are not, unless their web site is EXTREMELY simple.
For all practical purpose, its impossible to ACTUALLY be compliant. They're just a bit soft over it...
It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
There are too many flashy (pun intended) websites without any secondary way of seeing them. A proper public website should be navigable with a screen reader. As "Web 2.0" has marched on, it has only gotten worse. Some are even so user hostile that even those wanting a bit of privacy without Flash or javascript enabled are simply locked out.
Exceptions should be made for personal pages, but for organizations, governments, and commerce sites that deal with the public, there shouldn't be any excuse.
--
BMO
OK (Score:2, Insightful)
How is this not a first amendment violation? If person X, or lets say even company Y doesn't want to make their articles/website/cartoons/jokes available in specific format, what right does the government have to come in and do anything about it?
And why is this any sort of priority for the justice department? I have news for the feds, your airplane terrorist watchdogs are molesting children right now, find something more important to work on. Mkay?
Re:Fine with me (Score:4, Insightful)
For all practical purpose, its impossible to ACTUALLY be compliant. They're just a bit soft over it...
How hard is it to use HTML and CSS the way they were meant to be used, and to provide alternative content? Sorry, not buying this one at all.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately I think this kind of thing is necessary.
You can't rely on businesses to go out of their way to provide access to a relatively small group of people because, and I say this with no intended cruelty, they're probably not worth it. You can argue about PR and being "good guys" .. but at the end of the day, money is what makes the decision.
Unless you sell a very niche product, chances are the amount of business you do with disabled persons probably won't come close to covering the costs of providing access.
I think you really do need "the man" to come down and dictate that you have to make efforts to accommodate disabled persons.
Lets just hope they don't do so in a way which actually makes things worse (which they will, they always do..).
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The market will always decide for whatever's cheaper, and will bias itself to cheaper now even if that costs it money over the long run. Unless the question is "How do I maximize to reduce costs to the lowest level" where cost is a single variable of money, using a market based solution is NEVER the right answer.
Equality is something that is not broken down into mere money. So a market based solution will never address it. That's why we have government- to protect those who don't have the power to do so themselves (in this case, the handicapped). That's what's called "civilization". And yes, it takes a government to enforce it.
I do hope that they do this the right way though. Businesses under a certain size should be exempted, perhaps on a sliding scale due to the costs of implementing this. Also, mere presence of an ad or two should not make it commercial, unless those ads bring in sufficient revenue. Large organizations like Amazon, Google, WalMart, Target, etc should absolutely be required to be accessible. Small sites like my local pizza joint likely can't afford it.
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why we have government- to protect those who don't have the power to do so themselves (in this case, the handicapped).
This is so depressingly true.
Simply put.. it's not worth it financially to make your site accessible unless you are very large or sell certain niche products. For the vast majority of sites, the costs of making a site accessible (especially if you are required to rigidly follow some standard that you _know_ is gonna really suck and probably be counter to the purpose) are going to far outweigh any profits you reap from the handful of new visitors you bring in.
It doesn't help that most technologies designed to assist the disabled only work if your site is ultra simple and has all kinds of added "helpers".
Unfortunately you really do need a government to come in and say "ok, we know you're gonna take it in the shorts financially.. but you live in a civilized society and you have to suck it up and do what's right".
Re:Some businesses will buck any change... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention the possibility of large fines when my (commercial) websites aren't compliant with some obscure requirement in the new guidelines. And the cost involved in me dropping the 10 other things I'm doing to read the guidelines, check all my websites, make sure they're compliant or if they're not, spend time and money to fix them.
So, no, my anxiety is not just about "uncertainty over what those changes will involve".
(And people wonder why small businesses are not hiring!!)
Let the Market Decide (Score:1, Insightful)
What the fuck is with the government wanting to tell *PRIVATE* business who they have to make non-mandatory (ie. entertainment) products available to?
ADA is mostly bullshit anyways. Hey, let's also make sure we have a wheel chair ramp for bungee jumping, because you never know when some cripple with deteriorating bones might want to plunge down a hundred feet with only their legs attached to a giant rubber band. Why not require the same Closed captioning devices for normal theater (plays) as well? How about all sporting events too? Gotta have CC devices at the seats so you can hear the refs calls. Maybe we need to throw some braille street signs in there too, wouldn't want the blind to be discriminated against when driving a car, you know?
The bottom line is, if there is money to be made, some company *will* do it voluntarily. If the market can't support it, oh well, tough break, it doesn't happen.
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I kind of see the point of those who say the government shouldn't force private businesses to run their business a certain way. But I also see that that is the same argument of the manager who refused to serve black customers at the Woolworth's lunch counter.
It boils down to the age-old questions: the conservative asks "what kind of government can we tolerate?" and the liberal asks "what kind of society do we want to be?"
So I think you're going too far to say "there shouldn't be any excuse --" private property rights and general freedom from government interference are strong and valid arguments. On the other hand I don't want to turn back the clock to 1963, either. Life is better with civil rights legislation. It's easier to be proud to be an American. So I'm inclined to take your side and say to Web site operators, "suck it up, follow the law."
I also think the government should be the first to implement its own usability requirements... stating with the Web site of the court that handed down this decision.
Re:OK (Score:4, Insightful)
My employer is publicly traded. I'm unaware of any rule/law/etc that requires us to produce braille product literature.
Explain to me HOW a website with the same information is ANY different.
Re:What's next? (Score:3, Insightful)
I always figured it was because the keys were mass-produced, and it's cheaper to just make a few more with braille still on them then to create special "Drive-through ATMs"
Re:Fine with me (Score:5, Insightful)
HTML and CSS can not accomplish what the ADA is demanding.
Think about screen reader technology for the blind. Today even the best of these can not even handle a mildly complex page. I've tried them out at a friends house.
So, people will be encouraged to stop making needlessly overcomplicated sites. It sounds like nothing of value will be lost.
They are crap.
Assuming you mean the sites that don't work well when spoken, then yes. Assuming you mean the readers, then I disagree.
But it doesn't stop at your content. You are also responsible for all the advertising on your site, even when you don't create that advertising. Why should you serve a page without advertising to the blind? If that's how you make money for your site, you need to serve the ads to everyone.
How do you serve music to the deaf? Hmmm mmmm dum de dumm ta ta de da mmmm de mmmm?
And how do you serve online game content to the guy typing with his one hand, or his feet.
If you think this is easy, why don't you try it. The tools don't yet exist to do this in any economical way. If enforced to the letter, this serves only to drive most product advertising and support services off the web, shut down thousands of hobby sites, and shutter eCommerce.
I doubt you'll actually get many complaints for lack of advertising, especially considering that isn't really your "content." I've never heard of an ADA case where a blind person complained that they couldn't read a posted advertising flyer on a bulletin board in a store. If it does mean that the horrible chain of dozens of domains and layers of Javascript for ads has to go away so you just serve your ads yourself, meh. I'm still having trouble finding a lot of problems with this. You serve music to the deaf the same way you do everybody else. They just won't listen to it. Wall-Mart sells music on CD's. Deaf people are allowed to buy them. WalMart doesn't have to have employees to interpretive dance on command for deaf people who want to buy a CD but can't hear it. How do you serve content to the guy with one hand? Same way as everybody else. He'll probably just suck at league play against people who can push more buttons faster.
ADA compliance isn't about making every cripple get to win the Super Bowl, and every blind person win an Academy award for cinematography. It's about making minimal reasonable accommodations so that a person can live their life to the extent that is sensible. The government is involved, so there will probably be a few inane edge cases, but the basic principle here seems sound.
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:2, Insightful)
IF bars could still offer smokers an option, i would wager that the bars that DO offer it would increase their revenues fairly quickly because people like me would go there and not to the place we cant smoke.
One of the reasons why British pubs are closing at record rates is because most people who used to go to pubs smoked, and all those non-smoking drinkers who were supposedly so eager to go to non-smoking pubs failed to suddenly materialise after smoking was banned.
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:5, Insightful)
ADA is itself a messed up system that doesn't make anything any better for most people, only adds to the cost of doing business often to the point of driving people out of business.
Locally there is a lawyer and a "disabled" person who do nothing but sue anyone for anything that is not ADA compliant. Wheel chair ramp off by 1% ?? Rail bar off by 1", door not exactly right ... anything.
All the guy does is drive around town suing people. It doesn't help the "disabled" it only helps the one guy, the and his own pocketbook. Meanwhile the cost he's adding to the businesses has put several out of business. Nice huh?
And not one disabled person complained, not one had problems getting service because THAT is not the issue, the issue is "legal compliance" and getting whatever fixed doesn't stop the lawsuit, because it isn't a "fixit" type thing. So they sue, and get their pound of flesh. It is a racket.
Guess what, being disabled sucks. We should try to help people as best we can, but when asshats like the one lawyer and the "disabled" guy he sues for come knocking on your door, don't come complaining to me.
Re: NOT A HELLUVALOT.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have food allergies. I expect an honest answer if I ask you a question about ingredients. If you don't know, tell me you don't know and I will go somewhere else.
I do NOT expect everybody on earth to remove all traces of soy from everything so that I don't get sick. That's ridiculous.
You want to know what's also ridiculous? I have seen parking spaces at busy malls that go unused for YEARS because they are handicapped spaces. Why are there so many spaces when there are so few handicapped people? I appreciate the spaces for people like my friend who was handicapped for many years, but even he agreed that the sheer number of spaces was way too high.
I like America's sense of caring for certain unfortunate groups, but the balance is too far the other way these days.
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Requiring wheelchair ramps and website tags will not cause the local muffler shop to move to Bangladesh.
But it could well be the extra regulatory cost that leaves said local muffler shop unable to compete with the national chain shop next door which outsources all non-customer-facing work to Bangladesh, thereby pushing the local shop out of business.
This is why big business _LOVES_ this kind of regulation, they can easily afford to comply where small business can't. The funny part is that the kind of person who has the hots for this kind of regulation is usually also the kind of person who hates big business.
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Do you smoke? if you did you would know how much it sucks going to a bar in january and having to go outside to spark up. I understand not all people want to be around smokers, but it should be the establishment who decides.
It also sucks if you want to avoid smoke, but you can't afford to quit your job and find a smoke-free workplace to get hired at.
As a customer you are only there for a while. The staff is there all day.
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:1, Insightful)
I used to be libertarian at one point. I grew the fuck up.
Rand Paul, and his idiot son - the torchbearers (or maybe they should be pallbearers) of the ideology - demonstrate just how bankrupt that philosophy is. It's like Communism - looks good on paper until you involve actual human beings.
I laid it on thick, but it seems like those who hold such thoughts are leeches upon society. "I like all the benefits of civilization, but don't you fucking ask me to contribute to it"
Taxes and regulations are what we pay for civilization with. I'm ok with this. TANSTAAFL.
--
BMO
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's next? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actual reason for braile on drive up ATMs: it's cheaper to make one model of ATM buttons and have some that don't get fully used than to make two molds for ATM keys
That analogy just doesn't hold true on the internet. There are dozens of browsers, hundreds of protocols and underlying technologies that were designed to present information visually, often in a multimedia format. An ATM serves a single purpose -- even just the tiny section of the internet we call the web serves a nearly infinite number of purposes, and have so many competing technologies and layouts, ways of doing things, etc., that applying any kind of standard to it is largely a waste of time. The protocols that run the internet and the design decisions and processes that created them are organic, occasionally irrational (browser cookies come to mind), and surprise the hell out of anyone who's studied it in any detail that it works at all. Bottom line: It's gonna cost a lot of money.
"The Justice Department is considering making it clear that some personal, noncommercial content would not be affected.'"
And 'some' is where the whole thing falls apart. I see no such legislation saying that the government is willing to pay web designers (or their companies) a stipend for the labor required to make their site ADA compliant. And even if they did, the conversion/update costs would vary wildly from site to site, with some needing very little work and others requiring a complete overhaul. It is neither fair, nor reasonable, to expect any business to redesign their websites to be accessible to 5% of the population. And not to be callous, but from a business standpoint -- why would you try to market to a small portion of the population that lives on disability checks? They don't have much disposable income, so it is unlikely they'll be buying whatever you are selling.
And excemptions for personal or noncommercial content is questionable as well -- we've already had states try to force people to buy a business license for running a blog that (le gasp!) had a few advertisement banners by calling it a "commercial enterprise". The government is still (30 years on) completely retarded when it comes to understanding how the internet works. I mean, they still think pissing away billions on copyright law enforcement is doing some good.
If these people are serious about making the internet more accessible, they need to start by investing money at the head of the problem, not papering over its ass -- they need to get involved in standards committees, work with companies to produce protocols, technologies, and access methods that simplify the process of organizing and processing information that is usually presented visually in a non-visual way. And they're going to have to deal with a lot of resistance from advertisement companies and private industry that have thrived on bypassing standards, screwing things up, and being generally annoying in order to eek out a little extra profit.
Projects like NoScript and AdBlocker are damned useful for this because they cut out the crap on a webpage and reduce what's there to what is important ... rather than listening to "Breaking news -- A fire has broken out in... try out the new 2007 lexus... 2031 West 94th street, where a mother of three was ... have you tried new Charmin Ultra?" You get the idea. The first step in accessibility is clutter elimination and reducing the design to its barest essentials; Because while we can browse through a page in a few seconds, when you have to LISTEN to the page being read to you instead of speed reading, now you're looking at minutes of time.
Just a thought...
Re:'Bout time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, well, I also keep pointing out to people that the original design of HTML was intended to make it easy to build documents that would be readable on a very wide range of screen sizes and shapes. This was done by "marking up" the document with hints to the rendering software about the structure of the document, so that the software could format it sensibly on whatever screen you had, or even with no screen for the visually impaired or for people (e.g., drivers and airplane pilots) whose eyes are busy elsewhere.
But the "designers" sorta took over, and worked from the attitude that they were producing a work of art that should only be produced in exactly the same format that they designed. They specified the exact size, shape, and screen position for everything, and did their best to make sure that it wouldn't work well any other way.
With luck (and a bit of encouragement), maybe we can develop a new breed of designer whose aesthetic is based on clarity and comprehensibility for all, not just those with the best eyes and the biggest screens. And maybe we can get the browser makers to add a switch that disables all size= and width= attributes, to help defeat the designers' efforts.
Actually, people are always complaining about the way my screens are covered with lots of small windows, each using the smallest fonts that I can read. This window currently uses a 10-point font, which most people looking over my shoulder can't read because they're farther away than I am and/or don't have eyes as good as mine. But that doesn't matter. I have some visually-impaired friends. And sometimes my only Net access is via my G1 phone or my wife's iPhone. So I'm learning to design for them. Now if I could just figure out how to persuade people to pay me to work on such "design". I think it'd make the world a better place. But I've found that most professional designers, as well as most professional managers, don't agree with me.
(And my Mac's silly 2-finger resizing just spontaneously shrunk my font to maybe 8 points. But I can still read it. And it should be readable on your screen, regardless of its size. ;-)
Re:What's next? (Score:2, Insightful)
/offtopic
who says my male, erogenous nipples go unused?
They aren't erogenous. Guys just don't get off on nipple play unless they're on drugs or something. Maybe they just can't stand having to play with themselves for hours at a go on the off chance they'll get a happy for their efforts, I don't know... but the vast majority of men put their dick in their right hand and pull. I know this because I've caught them waaay too many times doing it. I will be well and truly shocked the day I walk in on a guy laid back in bed looking at pictures of naked girls... and have his hands down his shirt instead of his pants.
P.S. Lefties, I don't mean to leave you out. There's nothing wrong with fapping with your left hand, no matter what your dad said.
P.P.S. Mods -- have a sense of humor. Alternatively, don't mod this comment and instead get up, walk over to the bed, and prove me wrong. -_-
Re:Feds are just blowing smoke (Score:3, Insightful)
Its also a typical case of mission creep. Every bureaucracy must justify their existence and continue to expand in order to justify more money and more people. These federal monsters need to be clawed back before the US faces European rates of taxation to pay for it all.
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:'Bout time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh god, please. I hate when sites look good at one and only one resolution (whether 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or any of the newer ones, though most coding to a specific size don't go above 1024x768). They are too narrow sometimes, and too wide others. Frames, tables, and everything else that make it impossible to view reasonably in any size other than they designate.
Patent trolls -- now ADA enforcement trolls? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention the possibility of large fines when my (commercial) websites aren't compliant with some obscure requirement in the new guidelines.
As the fines and penalties becomes stiffer and the rules become more complex and difficult, will we end up with ADA trolls who find ADA issues and then either offer "remediation consulting services" or an anonymous phone call to whoever enforces the ADA?
Re:Let the Market Decide (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should someone who is disabled (most likely not caused by a choice) be given less access?
Also, you need to think things through a little. Requiring every company that does business with the public to have "blind software compatible web pages" or whatever will probably negatively impact a large number of people *without* improving the situation for handicapped. Let me give you an example:
My neighborhood pizza shop has a web menu. It's really basic, just some scanned jpegs of their actual menu. It's a convenience for me, and it probably costs the business like 30 bucks a year for a domain name plus some cheap shared hosting. For a business this is pretty well worth the investment as a convenience to their customers.
Now say ADA comes along, all of the sudden that business has to make their website menu "handicapped capable". The owner isn't an HTML writer. It's just some basic image tags on a red background. No way does he have the ability to write JAWS compatible code, etc. So now he has to look for a website admin to write and maintain the code every time he wants to change his menu, probably costing a thousand dollars a year or more plus lots of extra hassle. So what's the Pizza shop owner do? He says "fuck it" and pulls the web menu. The situation didn't improve at all for the hadicapped person, there is still no web menu, but now I no longer have a web menu either.
All this is going to do is fuck with small business a ton and make them less competitive or able to use the web to promote themselves. The large conglomerates will absorb the costs with their financial mass, and the little guys get hurt. Plus it just paves the way for another wave of troll-profiteering lawsuits.
Also, not being able to do things like everybody else is the negative consequence of having a disability. I never said they chose to be disabled. However, reality is reality. If you are disabled, you just have to accept that there are some things you might not be able to do. Is it unfortunate? Absolutely, however, it's just how it is. The guy with no arms just isn't going to be very good at tennis.
You also need to realize financial resources are limited. We need to spend them appropriately where they can have the most impact. The needs of the many generally outweigh the needs of the few.
Re:Fine with me (Score:2, Insightful)
If this becomes mandatory.... some "accessibility auditing firms" are going to have a field day dragging sites through checklists, while consultants tell management what to make designers change, and some very expensive software is probably going to get sold for "WCAG Validation".
There could be an entire "ADA Web Content Accessibility Compliance Industry" crop up, to complement the "Sarbanes Oxley Security Industry"
Re:Let the Market Decide (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for making sure handicapped people have access to necessary services... however *requiring* movie theaters to provide closed captioning devices at every seat is ridiculous. Watching a movie is is not a life necessity. If the demand is there, and the people that need it are willing to pay a price that makes business sense, then the theaters will have Closed captioning equipment. If it doesn't make business sense, then they won't.
I think another poster more knowledgeable as to the technology vis a vis the deaf punched a hole in that, so I'll defer to the expert there.
What the fuck is with the government wanting to tell *PRIVATE* business who they have to make non-mandatory (ie. entertainment) products available to?
Can you think of another minority to which a broad array of what you'd call non-essential services are denied? As an example, we'll take the on-demand service provided by my cable company. There is absolutely no way I can access that service through my set top box without having someone sighted present ... which translates, really, to "no way that I can access the service through my set top box". Unfortunately, "letting the market decide" there is a bit problematic, since a large chunk of that market, and a large chunk of various television providers, think that blind people don't watch TV. If I had to wait for the collective ignorance of a society that generally defecates themselves when faced with my condition, or generally finds my navigating our local public transit system to get to work of a morning "an inspiration", to catch up with reality, I'd be waiting a couple of centuries.
ADA is mostly bullshit anyways. Hey, let's also make sure we have a wheel chair ramp for bungee jumping, because you never know when some cripple with deteriorating bones might want to plunge down a hundred feet with only their legs attached to a giant rubber band.
Oh, wonderful comparison. I'll not spell out the differences between lack of access because of a safety issue (no one with bones that fragile should be bungee jumping) and lack of access because of an ignorance issue (But wait! That iPhone has a touch screen! Wouldn't you rather have a special phone for the blind?)
Why not require the same Closed captioning devices for normal theater (plays) as well? How about all sporting events too? Gotta have CC devices at the seats so you can hear the refs calls.
Why not?
Maybe we need to throw some braille street signs in there too, wouldn't want the blind to be discriminated against when driving a car, you know?
There needs to be an equivalent to "Godwin's Law" to describe the invocation of either blind people driving (impossible due to current technological limitations) or blind people watching TV (possible, but assumed to be impossible) when these discussions come up. Looking at this logically, which you've completely failed to do here, if there were a means for blind people to be able to drive (cf. Google's self-driving cars), wouldn't it be more cost-effective to use, say, existing GPS infrastructure, already established map providers, and other existing technology? The navigation system to mitigate the lack of ability to see street signs is already in place (it's what allows me to download a map, copy it to my phone, and travel anywhere I take a notion).
The bottom line is, if there is money to be made, some company *will* do it voluntarily. If the market can't support it, oh well, tough break, it doesn't happen.
Again, that presupposes that the site's creator even presumes that blind people can use the Web. I'd wager that, until about five seconds before you read these
Re:Fine with me (Score:1, Insightful)
So (taking your example) all Google has to do is add closed captioning to every video on YouTube? Thats all? Oh, Thats super easy (according to you). Sure, they get 3000 video submissions PER SECOND, but according to you, its easy-breezy. All Google really needs to do is pass those videos on to you, and you will take care of all of them (The hundred million old ones, plus all the new ones) .... in a jiffy, just like you said. Same with Netflix and all those Hollywood movies. All the music sites, all the advertising. How easy is it exactly? Don't get me wrong, I think offering more to the blind on the internet is fine, but you go ahead and pay for it. You made it sound (snap) like a S N A P. But its not exactly a snap, now is it!
Re:Fine with me (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a very large difference between wanting to shove the "undesirables" (your word, not mine) under the rug, and wanting to be able to have an ad-supported internet venture without getting fined by the feds.
As someone who had a father who died of a degenerative muscle disease, and who benefited from ADA-won societal improvements for the 12 years he was wheelchair bound, I'm not going to trash the ADA.
But that same father also believed that there are limits as to how far you can go to accommodate people with disabilities. Forcing businesses to be generally handicap-accessible is one thing. Forcing them to be accessible to all handicaps, no matter what the disability, is quite another. Putting in a wheelchair ramp has wide reaching benefits to people in wheelchairs, people on crutches, and the elderly. Forcing a website to be 100% compliant with a standalone text reader benefits the vanishingly few people who are both blind and who visit that specific site.
The long and the short of it is, sometimes shit happens, and people just have to work with the hand they're dealt. I went to a college that had set itself up as a disability-friendly campus. I saw all kinds of disabilities there, and not all of them could be reasonably accommodated. I expect there to be curb cuts and grade-level entries to benefit the large number of people with wheelchairs, walkers, and canes. I do not expect there to be robotic assistance arms in every aisle of a store to benefit the tiny number of people who were born without limbs. This proposal would push onto internet vendors and hosts the same level of absurdity as would be required to push robotic assistance arms on brick and mortar stores.
TFA says exceptions will be made for some *personal* web sites. It doesn't say anything about non-profit or organizational web sites. Presumably this means I'm going to have to make my car club's web site (a public organization that is incorporated as a non-profit) accessible to the blind, despite the fact that the car club doesn't have any blind people in it. That is monumentally stupid.
Re:Fine with me (Score:3, Insightful)
How hard is it to use HTML and CSS the way they were meant to be used, and to provide alternative content? Sorry, not buying this one at all.
Kid, I started doing this HTML stuff when there was no such thing as CSS, and HTML pages were built in a text editor and optimized for 14k modem connections.
Yes, in those times it was easy, since the content was largely linear.
Today, I have tabbed websites which exchange the content of their tabs on-demand through AJAX calls. I have no friggin idea what a screenreader will do with that, and if they all behave the same way. Yes, I could find out. No, I don't see it as my responsibility to do so. How about making it, you know, your screen readers job to translate whatever I throw at him nicely, as long as it is standard-compliant HTML?
Re:Fine with me (Score:3, Insightful)
They said the same thing about forcing places to allow blacks and whites to eat at the same counter, or put in ramps in every public building. It wasn't true then, and it isn't true when you say it.
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let the market decide
The problem with letting the market decide is that the market does not decide responsibly.
We have an FDA for a reason. Ever read The Jungle? You want to go back to eating floor sweepings in your sausage?
The market is going to decide on what is cheapest and most profitable. If the market can get away with throwing together some tarpaper shack and calling it a storefront, it will. And then that shack falls on top of somebody because there were no building codes or safety regulations. And now somebody is hurt, and somebody else's store is a pile of wreckage, and people are unemployed and everything else. Or you could just avoid all that by implementing some building codes to make sure a structure is safe to use.
Similarly, if there were no regulations at all, very few stores would bother to put in a ramp or anything like that. It's an added expense. A negligible one, but an expense none the less. And you'd soon find a situation where there were basically no stores available for the wheelchair-bound.
In this day and age, if people are THAT upset about it, they can organize boycotts until store X either changes, or goes under.
Are you kidding me? In this day and age nobody is going to actually boycott anything. They'd organize a Facebook group and start up a blog and maybe whine on a talk show or two... But nobody would actually stop buying anything. Certainly not in a volume high enough to be noticed.
here is a perfect example in NY
smoking indoors is banned.... NOW I believe the store should have a right to dictate whether or not they want to allow smoking in their PRIVATELY OWNED establishment
the customer will either complain, and ask that smoking be not allowed and not go back until it is, or if enough people are bothered, he will see it on his balance sheet and ban smoking himself.
The problem, again, is that a store is going to go with whatever is going to make them the most money - with no real concern for customer health or preferences.
You know what? Smoking sections don't work. They might, I suppose, if you installed an airlock or something... But they don't. So you still get smoke even in your non-smoking section. And for my wife, who has a serious problem with cigarette smoke, that meant we could basically not dine out anywhere. And bars? Bars didn't even make an effort at containing smoke. It was flat-out impossible to go out for drinks anywhere. Hell, just walking by a bar was usually enough to give her coughing fits.
Now that indoor smoking is banned in NY we can actually go out to eat. And we can go to bars. It's terrific.
the government getting involved is always the answer to a question NO one asked.
No it isn't. It's the answer to a question someone, somewhere asked. Maybe not a question you were asking... And maybe not the answer you wanted to see...
Re:Let the Market Decide (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think requiring businesses to foot unprofitable costs, when there is no negative impact to the public at large is reasonable.
But it's not about the negative impact to the public at large. It's about the impact on individuals. Society isn't just about the sum of happiness, it's also about how the weakest and least able in society are treated. We could just say "well, tough, you're in a wheelchair", but I'm pretty much in favour of society actually trying to improve the lives of people who can't do anything about their situation, to give them a more comfortable life.
And yes, businesses aren't charities, but they are part of society. That means that they, for instance, get various legal protections (regardless of how much tax they pay). A fire breaks out and a fire engine will be there quickly to put it out. There isn't a sensible alternative to private enterprise providing access to private businesses. You can't do it through more benefits, so it's straightforward and fair on all businesses to just implement accessibility.
Personally, I'm thankful that I'm not the guy in the wheelchair. And I'm happy for my coffee shop to stick a couple of extra pennies on the price of my mocha so that the guy in the wheelchair to come in.
Re:Fine with me (Score:3, Insightful)
Go rent the standard version of the most recent Star Trek movie (it's one I know has it off the top of my head, and I know many others have it). Try looking at the language options on DVDs from the last few years.
It seems impossible to appreciate the work without actually seeing it.
Asserting your incorrect opinion as fact doesn't make it true. Add to that the fact that it isn't addressing the issue, and it's even more useless. Yes, it would be impossible to describe something in great enough detail that they'd be able to recreate it flawlessly. But that doesn't mean that understanding of it can't be conveyed. I've seen the Mona Lisa in person. Have you? If you haven't, how can you know anything about it? After all, you, at best, had a representation presented by someone else. So you can't appreciate it without actually viewing it in person?
"A realistic portrait of a woman with an expression on her face that seems plain, yet has spawned thousands of theories about it" is vastly better than "insert picture here, don't worry, you'll never appreciate it because you are inferior, so we won't even bother to tell you what it is, neener neener neener." You are apparently favoring the second, since the first is wasted on sightless people.
Re:you know.. im all for.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair enough, I was looking at health effects based on activities inside the bar (smoking, drinking, etc), not their wider ramifications. When you start saying "x affects y affects z, z is bad, so let's BAN x" then you are basically living in a nanny state.
The problem is that nobody intends to drive drunk. By the time they make that decision, they are already impaired. You may call it a nanny state. I say that a nanny is quite the appropriate thing for people who aren't able to handle themselves. I'm all for treating adults like adults, but someone heavily intoxicated is much closer to a young kid in mental capacity. The problem is that he still has the body and the car keys of an adult. How do you propose to solve that dilemma?
And here's the thing. Indirect regulation is just as harmful as direct regulation. It's like if you don't make possession of alcohol illegal, but the transportation, production, consumption, and distribution of alcohol are illegal, then say "but we didn't actually ban alcohol!!" It's the same thing. If it turns out that smoking is an activity that is so prevalent in the business of running a pub that banning smoking results in most pubs losing money and shutting down, then banning smoking in pubs is the same thing as outright banning pubs.
The two examples seem similiar, but aren't. In the first, the ban of alcohol is the goal, and indirect means are chosen. In the second, the ban of pubs is an unintended consequence. And that is where my argument comes in. A closer example would be that I say I don't feel sorry for your undertaker business going bancrupt because recent policy changes have reduced the murder rate and now there's not enough death anymore. And I'm saying you complaining that the government drove you out of business is a misrepresentation of facts and intents.
For the pubs, I don't follow the argument at all. If you were talking about smoking clubs, that would be a different matter. If smoking is so vital to pubs that they can't survive without it - well, maybe they need to do what we here on /. ask of the music and movie industry all the time - adapt their business model to changing circumstances.
but if I did support them and I was under the impression that a huge part of society is avoiding going out because of second hand smoke, then suddenly these restaurants and bars start going out of business, I would reconsider.
We all know that's not true. I used to go out once or twice every week despite the air being full of smoke. For one, it has only been recently that all this has been brought into focus. But the more important reason is that you used to have no choice. It was putting up with the smoke or not going out. So the part of society that opted for not going out was pretty small, because especially at the age targeted by clubs and pubs, not going out is not a socially acceptable option.