You seem to have a very malicious idea of how this works. WCAG is not a 10,000-page document of arcane impossible-to-understand requirements. And there's not a horde of bloodthirsty disabled people just itching for you to mess up on the fourth footnote of 90731(a)(1)(c)(3).12 so they can sue for a trillion dollars.
Accessible web sites are not difficult. Odds are if you do web stuff, you have accidentally produced WCAG-compliant websites in the past without knowing you were doing it.
So please stop pushing the narrative about how "they" are out to "find something" and sue you and implying that WCAG is too complex to comply with. It's not, and frankly it's offensive -- disabled people have, morally and legally, exactly the same right to be able to use the internet you do, and WCAG is a guide to how you can make that happen.
> It's not, and frankly it's offensive -- disabled people have, morally and legally, exactly the same right to be able to use the internet you do, and WCAG is a guide to how you can make that happen.
I have no right to demand people bend the web to my whim, but I have ever right to use software to render it on my own computer just how I want it. It really seems like better screen reader software and removing of this archaic law is a better solution here.
The "archaic" Americans with Disabilities Act is 27 years old. And your concern (if we can use that term to describe a grudge masquerading as a concern, going by your language about "demands" to "bend" things to a "whim") was explicitly addressed in amendments to the act in 2008.
The ADA is the law of the land: if you're a business open to the public, you have to be open to all of the public, not just the members of the public who you think are most convenient to serve.
And history has shown that the horrible, terrible, awful no-good frivolous demands of the ADA have positive effects for everybody. Read up on things like how people with children in strollers have a much easier time getting around cities now because street-corner curbs have to have areas accessible to people in wheelchairs.
The ADA is overall a good law, and this isn't about access because that is important. It is about the hit and run lawsuits that are a current problem. Stop trying to deamonize people who have legitimate concerns because of recent events.
And Hansmeier's career is over now. Pointing to a known bad actor as an attempt to completely invalidate something even you admit is "overall good" is dishonest and disingenuous -- what remedy, other than civil suit, would you want to propose for these cases?
Also, notice how in the Winn-Dixie website suit the plaintiff didn't ask for damages: he just wanted the site to be accessible. The amount of viciousness being deployed in the thread toward someone whose only goal was for something to work is unbelievable, and I think if you look into it you'll find that on the whole, ADA complaints are someone's last resort after trying to amicably resolve a problem through other channels.
> Pointing to a known bad actor as an attempt to completely invalidate something even you admit is "overall good" is dishonest and disingenuous
No, its pointing out the law still has problems and has been used as a money making scheme. It, like code, has bugs that need to be remedied. Arguing the code does it job expect for some bad actors is just as problematic when talking about laws. I am also troubled by the picking of something not voted on being given the force of law (WCAG 2.0 Level AA).
I'm actually really sick of people using phrases like "completely invalidate" when that is not what I wrote. Hyperbole and beating people over the head who disagree with you is not a constructive way to proceed.
I cannot understand how people who code cannot get that the law needs tweaks and fixes just like code. I would prefer a formal notice to a law suit. We are about to unleash a whole new category of violation and even a suit that asks for no damages is going to be expensive.
Oh yes, in this case they didn't ask for damages, but that won't be the case next time when more bad actors appear.
It's always going to end up in a lawsuit. To a company that's running an actively user-hostile web presence, no amount of non-lawsuit complaints will get them to change, which means it's going to end up in court no matter what.
This is how the infamous McDonald's coffee lawsuit got started, for example; the plaintiff (who, for those unfamiliar with the story, had suffered second and third degree burns from the spilled coffee -- not exactly a case of "duh, it's hot" and more a case of "demonstrably not fit for human consumption") originally just wrote to them to complain. And they were, predictably, assholes to her, which led to research into how many people had suffered severe burns, which in turn led to the lawsuit.
So either you want to make a change that won't change anything (require some number of "notices" or non-lawsuit "complaints" before going to court), or you want to make a change that will literally undo the ADA (disallow going to court, period). Since neither of those is viable, the right of everyone to have equal access to businesses which are open to the public -- and to have that enforced by courts -- is going to outweigh your fevered nightmares of a lawsuit apocalypse.
> is going to outweigh your fevered nightmares of a lawsuit apocalypse.
Once again with the hyperbole.
> .. McDonald's ..
I don't see any equivalence to what I am talking about to that case. Writing them is not mentioned in any current law as a procedural way to remedy the situation. Its a nice courtesy that was ignored.
> It's always going to end up in a lawsuit. To a company that's running an actively user-hostile web presence, no amount of non-lawsuit complaints will get them to change, which means it's going to end up in court no matter what.
No, its not always going to end up in a lawsuit. A regulatory notice is a fair first start with a defined period for response and fix. Love it or hate it, the DMCA notice is not a bad starting point that saves quite a bit of court time. Dealing with a notice from a government agency (e.g. health inspector) is not something that can be ignored.
Not all users who need to be considered are going to have screen readers. Red-green colorblindness is very common. Epilepsy has its own issues with animations.
When I refer to "they", I mean the current crop of lawyers that are doing the rounds in places like MN. WCAG was not voted on by Congress or any elected representative, and if you look at the people involved with these lawsuits you will see that there are some people that are not out for access but money. Try to stop deamonizing people who care about the disabled but have found those that use the ADA as a moneymaking tool.
That 5% is never going to be grounds for a successful lawsuit. To successfully sue someone you have to prove that you were damaged. A 5% deviation from WCAG is not going to prevent someone from using your site, so they will not be able to prove that they were damaged. If it does prevent them from using some piece of functionality, you can just fix that one piece of functionality.
