[HN Gopher] Justice Department Issues Web Accessibility Guidance...
___________________________________________________________________
Justice Department Issues Web Accessibility Guidance Under the ADA
Author : greenie_beans
Score : 95 points
Date : 2022-03-18 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.justice.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.justice.gov)
| lstamour wrote:
| Here's background on standard HTML controls, their history, and
| their future development:
| https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/11/standardizing-selec...
|
| The future of accessible web controls is likely Open UI -
| building standard, agreed upon controls that codify how "modern"
| widgets behave, though each browser might integrate the standard
| control with their underlying OS platform and/or screen reader
| conventions.
|
| If you're familiar with how JavaScript has stages of approvals
| for proposals, they have those as well: https://open-
| ui.org/working-mode
|
| Like adopting new JS functions that make our lives easier, there
| will come a day when we need a particular new control and it's up
| to us as web devs to help standardize and push the web forward.
|
| There are a number of proposals already, but it's arguable that
| some controls, especially existing ones, need much more
| flexibility in their specification to make them easier to style
| and override to match a theme. https://open-ui.org/ has what
| they're working on, a long list in the menu (hidden away on
| mobile). As I write this I recognize there is a lot more to web
| accessibility and usability than simply using custom controls,
| but browser makers ultimately want to innovate and solve these
| challenges within the HTML spec as it will help their own efforts
| in building for the web.
|
| Back in the day we thought it was meaningful to call semantic
| HTML when we picked using an emphasis tag over an italic tag, or
| strong over bold. Now, we should try to use dialog instead of
| divs and who knows, in the future, we might use an infscroll tag
| instead of an ordered or unordered list.
|
| Innovation always happens faster than standardization, but just
| because we're upset with the lack of functionality in a text area
| does not mean we should be satisfied with our progress
| reinventing the wheel. We should complete the loop and contribute
| back to HTML the standards and custom controls we value most as
| web developers and designers.
| runarberg wrote:
| Reading through the comments here I can't believe the amount of
| abelism here on HN. In the web development industry accessibility
| is taken seriously. If you read the literature (e.g. on A list
| apart or Smashing Magazine) there is no shortage on articles
| about the importance of accessibility. If you go to a conference
| there will at least be 3 talks about accessibility. The web docs
| on MDN usually have a paragraph or two about accessibility issues
| and how to patch them for different elements and APIs. If you
| take a course in Web Development accessibility will be one of the
| first thing you'll learn.
|
| The comments here act as if this is not already a part of the
| industry. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every
| professional web developer thinks about making their web site
| accessible. If they don't, they are not acting according to
| industry standards, and they should probably be liable for that.
| No different then a bad carpenter that doesn't build according to
| standards.
| adultSwim wrote:
| Link to the guidelines: https://beta.ada.gov/web-guidance/
| oceanghost wrote:
| This really sounds like you should have several layouts
| available.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Right, that is what I've always wondered - why do we try to
| shoehorn what usually amounts to accessibility for low
| visibility users into the visual format of a webpage? Wouldn't
| it be easier and better to offer a completely different,
| tailored experience for low-vis users? Even just an alternate
| layout that makes it more likely for screen readers to work
| naturally. e.g. www.cnn.com vs lite.cnn.com
| kalensh wrote:
| Because very few companies will maintain that alternate site
| to ensure it provides the same functionality and content. And
| accessibility is more than just screen reader compatibility.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Isn't that the state we're already in? Very few sites
| actually test for accessibility before pushing production
| changes. It is already a second class citizen.
| ILMostro7 wrote:
| Reminds me of pre-smartphone mobile web.
| SilasX wrote:
| Except, that's exactly how html originally started: "oh it's
| a nice, machine-readable way of structuring a document, where
| users can plug in their preferred reader and use it however
| they like!"
|
| lite.cnn.com just starts that process all over again:
|
| "Lifehack: you can access websites by lite.<domain> and
| you'll get a less hostile experience because it's intended to
| be accessible."
|
| "Lifehack: Use the extension LiteBrowse, which automatically
| goes to the light version of a site and then prettifies it
| for you."
|
| 'Oh my! Our analytics say most users are going to the light
| version! Let's spice that up and do a UX revamp on it, help
| improve engagement and get ad clicks.'
|
| 'Oh, wow, someone make a framework to churn out these really
| profession lite versions of a page, and wow, they're so eye-
| popping and let you incorporate JavaScript...'
|
| Earlier thread on this point:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20224961
| jaywalk wrote:
| I completely understand why accessible websites are important and
| fully support the cause. But I cannot stand doing the work!
|
| I do some work for a Very Large Corporation that was sued over
| accessibility issues with their website and settled for a large
| sum of money, so their legal department is on high alert for
| this. They have a dedicated accessibility testing team, and I
| will often get a suggestion on how to fix an issue, fix it, and
| then someone else will test my fix and give me a totally
| different suggestion on how to fix it. It's infuriating.
| rado wrote:
| Accessibility isn't something to patch, it is the foundation of
| the open web, shaken by the massive influence of div soup
| frameworks.
| jaywalk wrote:
| That's a ridiculous statement. Of course it's something to
| patch.
| jgod wrote:
| I also think you misread him.
|
| He said something like: accessibility cannot be simply
| duct-taped on. It's a fundamental part of the core web
| technologies, that all the JS frameworks have obsfucated.
| tomrod wrote:
| Having worked some in 508 compliance space -- if you treat
| it like a patch, you'll get a lot of different testers
| suggesting to try different things to fix it to bring it up
| to standards. I.e. the situation you are in.
| searchableguy wrote:
| You _cannot_ patch some of the accessibility issues.
|
| You will need to design your layout and order elements
| properly. You cannot patch it with aria- soup which many
| developers do.
| tomcam wrote:
| I wonder if GP Meant something like this. Pure HTML pages
| without Javascript hijacking the UI elements actually
| appear to be highly accessible. Or am I wrong about this?
| searchableguy wrote:
| > Pure HTML pages without Javascript hijacking the UI
| elements actually appear to be highly accessible
|
| Nope. Dialog, progress, details, many input types, etc
| html tags are not very accessible by default and behave
| differently in browsers.
|
| From the top of my head, you cannot get a proper date
| picker in safari using html alone.
|
| You also need to change attributes to help navigate the
| user.
|
| Mind you, accessibility goes beyond screen readers. You
| will need javascript for building gesture controls,
| keyboard shortcuts, etc which is very needed for people
| with restricted movements.
|
| Many people will need UX feedback to understand what is
| going on. You cannot achieve that without Javascript.
| Animations, focus, etc are all part of usability and
| comes under accessibility.
| gedy wrote:
| HTML is not accessible by default, so this should not be
| confused with a simplistic "SPAs/JS are bad!" argument.
| In fact, many JS component libraries make it easier to
| comply with a11y since they can encapsulate and
| consistently share a11y needs like aria attributes, etc.
| nitrogen wrote:
| If pure semantic HTML isn't accessible then that is the
| fault of the browser/screenreader, and that's where the
| burden should lie.
|
| Do a whole fix in one place for the benefit of everyone,
| rather than making every tiny website make a bunch of
| half fixes.
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| jscholes wrote:
| > I will often get a suggestion on how to fix an issue, fix it,
| and then someone else will test my fix and give me a totally
| different suggestion on how to fix it. It's infuriating.
|
| Polite indication that this is a problem with your
| organisation, not accessibility or accessibility work. The same
| issues can occur with design and other areas where everybody
| and their grandmother has an opinion; it's up to a good org to
| manage all of those opinions and expertise in an appropriate
| fashion. If they aren't, and this is making it harder for you
| to create accessible experiences, you should raise it with
| someone.
| joebob42 wrote:
| I dunno. I agree this work is important, but I also find it
| boring and frustrating. Its like adding logging, plumbing
| configs, etc. Obviously it has to happen, but at least for me
| it's neither interesting nor exciting.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| Sounds like you should look for a new job that has more of
| what you like to do. However so much of reliable software
| product development is confligs, logging, documentation,
| unit tests...
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| This has the possibility to be a giant step backward, as the
| following example shows.
|
| Back in 2019, California tax agency FTB made the following
| announcement[0]:
|
| _State agencies' websites are often the primary way of
| communicating information to the public and it is important that
| these sites and the information they provide are available to
| everyone. AB 434 (2017) required state entities to improve the
| accessibility of websites and certify that their site meets Web
| Accessibility Initiative standards by July 1, 2019._
|
| So what happened? Many tax documents, which taxpayers rely on to
| understand the tax law as it applies to them, stopped being
| available as downloadable PDF files, or else to obtain the PDF
| file, you have to provide an email address to FTB and then wait
| until they get around to sending you a copy. Previously, you
| could immediately download all the PDFs using self-service.
|
| While some of the docs are also available in HTML format, that is
| not as handy as PDF in many cases. Also, many documents are only
| available as PDF.
|
| I don't understand how this helped visually impaired users, but
| it certainly harmed everyone else.
|
| [0]State of California - Franchise Tax Board - Tax News May 2019
| kevingadd wrote:
| The problem here is people choosing to give up instead of
| comply with policy. How do you propose addressing that? What
| kind of policy would prevent this outcome? They clearly didn't
| want to do the work to make their content accessible, and up
| until that point they were allowed to get away with not doing
| the work.
| bsder wrote:
| > They clearly didn't want to do the work to make their
| content accessible
|
| I would rewrite that to: "Nobody who wrote the law allocated
| any money to _DO_ the work. "
|
| I'm sympathetic to your cause for "official" documents.
| Government needs to be accessible to everybody. Consequently,
| those kinds of websites need to be held to strong standards.
|
| I'm somewhat sympathetic for holding big businesses to
| account. Your utility website needs to be accessible.
| Registering for your college classes needs to be accessible
| (mentioned because class registration web stuff is normally
| barely functional for anybody). As does your ISP billing
| website. etc.
|
| I'm less sympathetic when small businesses are involved. We
| have already seen the ADA being used to shake down small
| businesses in meatspace. Moving this to webspace is a bad
| idea. There need to be both size and grandfathering limits.
|
| I'm not sympathetic at all after that. We've have been down
| this road. UC Berkeley pulled a ton of teaching videos from
| the web after being forced to comply with web ADA. Those
| videos are offline and aren't coming back. Technology changed
| and now automated captioning could probably work for most of
| those videos--except that they are gone by legal order and
| nobody is going to put themselves out to reverse that.
|
| This was a _terrible_ result--for everybody including those
| needing accessibility.
|
| The people preaching web ADA need to remember that this isn't
| meatspace ADA--"Pull content off the web completely" is
| always an option.
| kevingadd wrote:
| ADA policy generally isn't being set by the people who
| allocate funds. Someone deciding what policies will enable
| accessibility for the blind almost certainly has no control
| over whether a conservative lawmaker will decide to
| actually fund the local agencies responsible for
| accessibility. So again, what policy do you suggest to
| address this? This is not a problem with the accessibility
| policy, it's a problem with the way the agencies
| responsible for compliance are run and funded. The ADA
| could close up shop and the underlying funding and
| compliance problems would not go away, they would just
| cause other problems.
|
| How would the lawmakers responsible for the ADA have
| magically conjured the money necessary for every agency to
| comply?
| bladegash wrote:
| Berkeley is a terrible example, if you have ever read DoJ's
| findings.
|
| Berkeley had university resources available for teachers to
| assist with making accessible content, as well as policies
| in place requiring accessibility. Professors chose not to
| follow those policies or make use of those resources.
|
| Never mind the fact that regardless of where Berkeley
| hosts/distributes the content, they are a publicly funded
| institution and still need to make the content accessible
| even if not distributed to the public.
|
| In other words, they pulled the content down out of spite,
| not necessity. That is not the fault of laws requiring
| disabilities, that's a toddler having a temper tantrum.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| It's usually marginally funded and/or essentially private
| ventures that back out or go bankrupt. There's cases of
| restaurants having to close down because they simply don't
| have renovation funds. If it's truly a public good it should
| be publicly funded. The public likely won't want to fund it,
| so you're gonna have to go with something more lax like
| exempting old construction entirely or publishing piecemeal
| best practices.
|
| Like in this case, readers are to the point where a plain
| HTML offering should suffice. This is thankfully something
| that is not a ton of extra work. But for physical ADA
| compliance it is unfortunately expensive.
| BadCookie wrote:
| I am a wheelchair user. Something that annoys me is that a
| typical small hotel or restaurant website will go to tremendous
| lengths to tell you how accessible its website is, including
| having a dedicated page with paragraphs of details about how
| dedicated they are to serving disabled users. Usually there is a
| prominent icon linking to this page on every other page. But, try
| as I might, I cannot find a single piece of information about the
| physical accessibility of the property. At best, they mention
| that you should call them for details. So it's pretty clear that
| these places do not actually care about disabled people except
| insofar as not caring could get them sued.
| tomrod wrote:
| This seems really timely, but also a bit tide shifting.
|
| [1] How much of the web adheres to these standards?
|
| [2] If businesses or US government sites are not compliant, is
| that a "default" win? (Apologies if I am using the legal term
| incorrectly here)
|
| [3] If hosting is outside the US for businesses within domestic
| storefronts, are they open to the same liability?
| no_wizard wrote:
| This is overall a good thing for the industry as a whole, even
| though I'm sure it will be met with plenty of resistance
| initially. This will force prioritize accessibility across the
| industry as the lawsuits mount with big companies that don't
| follow best practices here, which will lift the entirety of the
| industry up along with it.
| vernie wrote:
| Hell yea baby, now you don't need to find a take-out joint with
| sink that's mounted too high to file a lawsuit.
| tag2103 wrote:
| Just when the patent trolls were starting to be contained, yet
| another fine way our government makes sure to get more lawyers
| wealthy.
| RobertMiller wrote:
| I wonder if somewhere out there on the web there's an architect
| forum where architects are whining about wheelchair ramps like
| the webdevs in these discussions always seem to.
| istjohn wrote:
| Exactly this. I'd like to think architects take pride in
| building elegant structures that are inviting and accomodating
| to everyone. Where is our professional pride?
| Aerroon wrote:
| Yes: https://archinect.com/forum/thread/150034303/has-the-ada-
| gon...
| roughly wrote:
| I hear that many of you are uninterested in doing the work
| required here. Allow me to offer a couple arguments in favor of
| taking accessibility seriously:
|
| 1. Disability is a spectrum, not a condition, and a temporal, not
| a terminal state. Ever get your eyes dilated? Ever break your
| foot? Ever try using most common devices with a baby in your
| hands? Ever needed to watch a video in a loud room, or a place in
| which you cannot use headphones? Ever try using a laptop outside
| on a sunny day? Ever try getting old?
|
| 2. 26% of all adults in the US have some form of disability. 10%
| of these are sensory (hearing/sight). Are you really telling me
| you're just ignoring 26% of the population?
|
| 3. We are well-paid professionals being asked to make our tools
| usable by the entire public, not just a subset of it - we're
| making an average of 2-5x the median income, presumably based on
| our professionalism, knowledge of our craft, and ability to do
| hard things.
|
| 4. It's the right thing to do, both morally and practically. It
| allows every person to participate in society, allows us to
| leverage the full skills and abilities of every available human,
| and doesn't give us an "out" to start excluding people because
| we're too lazy to consider their needs.
|
| 5. If none of that sways you: some day you too will need this, if
| for no other reason than you've gotten old. It'll be nice to live
| in a world in which the people we are today are willing to take
| care of the people we'll be some day.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Worth noting that disability accommodations often benefit
| everyone, not just disabled people. A classic example is
| wheelchair accessibility. Those ramps and elevators are also
| useful to parents pushing a stroller, to someone walking a
| bicycle, or to someone towing a heavy load on wheels.
|
| In the Web context, accessible websites also work better for
| search indexing, and for semantic processing, and for
| manipulating with Javascript (ie: addons). Text annotations for
| images are a huge help to all sorts of people and software, not
| just folks who can't see the image.
|
| The main reason to support accessibility work is that it is the
| right thing to do for disabled people. But if that doesn't
| motivate you, there are selfish reasons for people without
| disabilities too.
| roughly wrote:
| The baby stroller's a classic - the number of people I know
| who've suddenly gained an appreciation for the ADA after
| having kids...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| The very first place I worked at (as a developer) was a
| university. We were, for obvious reasons, very concerned with
| accessibility. I know this doesn't sit well with most web
| developers, but the primary thing that made it easier (back then,
| and IANAL), was to use HTML instead of javascript. Another way of
| saying that is, the primary problem with making websites
| accessible, is that they have far more javascript than they need,
| for functionality like "allow the user to submit a form" or
| "allow the user to click on a link". 99% of accessibility
| problems with current websites would disappear if they were made
| with 20th century web technology.
|
| Also, I have to add, they would work better for the rest of us in
| 99% of the cases. There are a few websites whose functionality
| actually benefits from React (or Vue or whatever), but most
| websites are either doing "show this static content" or "allow
| this form to be submitted", and the primary reason the javascript
| is there is that the developer wants it there, not that it does
| the user any real good.
| rajin444 wrote:
| It's extreme developer specific tunnel vision to think removing
| JS would be good.
|
| Your comment is pretty ironic because that same sentiment
| ("this is how I see the world") is what makes the web so
| inaccessible for disabled people.
| benatkin wrote:
| Google is using canvas for Google Docs. They can also activate
| using HTML elements for screen readers. Nobody in open source
| component development should be discouraged from building the
| canvas side of things so web app/site developers can do the same
| thing. It's up to the web app/site developer to make sure there's
| always an alternative to canvas components. Where practical, the
| canvas component should provide the accessible alternative, but
| sometimes the is better done by external component(s).
| https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/05/Google-Docs-...
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I think we can all understand and agree with wanting to help
| disabled people as well as possible, but there's no clear binding
| standard for what constitutes an accessible website. Two
| different experts can look at the same site and give 2 different
| opinions about what's accessible about the experience or not or
| how to best improve it.
|
| Additionally, technology changes all of the time: new screen
| readers and new web APIs come out and and more. Best practices
| don't necessarily get perfected on day 1. Do you expect every
| website to get continuously rewritten just to keep up with the
| latest opinions on what's best? This is complex enough for large
| tech companies who can write a blank check for a large team of
| full-time developers who can work full time on nothing but
| accessibility, let alone a little corner cupcake store who
| managed to save up enough to build a custom cupcake website or
| something. Do we seriously expect every small non-technical
| business eking out a living with a small store to be experts on
| every facet of accessibility?
|
| If we're going to cover websites under the ADA, I think there
| should a lot more leeway for "reasonable accommodations" that can
| be made. If a small business can't make an accessible order form
| for some reason, they should be able to take orders over email or
| the phone or something before getting sued for this.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > Do you expect every website to get continuously rewritten
| just to keep up with the latest opinions on what's best?
|
| My understanding of webdev is sites are getting continuously
| re-written anyway to keep up with the latest opinions on what
| framework is best.
| mltony wrote:
| Blind developer here. Even though web technology might move
| fast, things move slowly in the world of accessibility.
|
| You're saying it's too hard to catch up with the latest
| technology - I wouldn't agree with this in the context of
| accessibility. What happens in practice is that a frontend
| developer develops for example a fancy combobox that needs to
| be clicked on with a mouse without thinking twice. And that
| combo box stays on the website for years. Now suppose that's a
| website to book flights. I go there and I spend half an hour
| trying to click that damn combobox with a keyboard and still it
| wouldn't allow me to select anything. Well too bad, it turns
| out I cannot fly XXX airlines. Or I'd have to wait for my
| sighted assistant who comes once a week to deal with these
| websites.
|
| And what if I told you that half of websites on the internet
| are like this - that is not accessible or extremely ahrd to
| use? I have to avoid certain online stores, certain airlines,
| certain hotels because of that. Finally I work in faang company
| and so many internal web tools here are not accessible. I found
| my way around, but I have seen blind people being fired for not
| being able to perform while every other tool that is required
| for you to use doesn't work with your screenreader and nobody
| cares to fix that?
|
| And what's the price to fix it? Educate developers to use
| simple combobox instead of fancy one? Try to test it with
| keyboard? Are blind people really asking for too much?
|
| And also regarding getting sued - I have no idea what kind of
| lawyers can sue for this, I have never heard of actual blind
| people being able to sue someone because the website was not
| accessible. If that was the case I would be able to sue half of
| Internet including Google, Facebook, Amazon, and so many more.
| I suspect certain lawyers are taking advantage of the system -
| e.g. there was this american life episode years ago about a
| lawyer who is specializing on suing hotels that claim to
| provide acomodations for disabled people -wheel chair users -
| and they don't satisfy ADA requirements or something. I suspect
| this Domino pizza lawsuit was initiated by similar type of ADA
| troll lawyer. Don't compare blind people to troll lawyers!
| 542458 wrote:
| I mostly agree... but one thing:
|
| > And what's the price to fix it?
|
| I'm currently doing accessibility work with an in-house web
| framework of reasonable complexity. 90% of the accessibility
| issues are relatively straightforwards. Things like keyboard
| usability are easy to explain to devs and behave fairly
| consistently across browsers.
|
| But the last 10%... things like "what should happen to focus
| when you open a modal?" get messier fast (the ARIA docs give
| several different behaviours for several different scenarios,
| which means every dev who wants to open a modal needs to
| understand enough to correctly select the behaviour for their
| circumstance), especially since different screen readers can
| behave in different ways when encountering the same content.
| The cost to investigate and properly solve these can be
| nontrivial.
|
| That's not to excuse people who don't even try for that first
| 80-90% of the low hanging fruit... but please forgive the
| designers and devs who fall short of the last 10%!
| black_puppydog wrote:
| As a perfectly-sighted user: please don't use modals,
| they're basically always very frustrating.
| 542458 wrote:
| There are lots of scenarios where a modal is the expected
| way to accomplish a task. Preventing irreversible errors
| (Are you absolutely sure you want to delete this user's
| data irreversibly?), save/load dialogs, etc. Modal
| overuse is a real problem (and one we're addressing in
| our product), but there are some situations where they
| solve a real problem.
| Eduard wrote:
| The last 10 percent are hard. Welcome to software
| development.
| jscholes wrote:
| > new screen readers and new web APIs come out and and more.
|
| New web APIs, for sure. But the screen reader market is not
| fast moving, in terms of new software being adopted. The line-
| up of the most used three screen readers (NVDA, JAWS and
| VoiceOver) has not changed in over a decade, despite the
| individual software applications themselves undergoing changes,
| and of course the market share of each one increasing and
| decreasing over time.
|
| > Do we seriously expect every small non-technical business
| eking out a living with a small store to be experts on every
| facet of accessibility?
|
| No, but I also don't expect such a business to be up on the
| latest in security, PCI compliance, GDPR conformance and more.
| For that reason, they are probably either:
|
| 1. engaging a web design/development agency; and/or 2. using a
| pre-defined platform, like Shopify.
|
| In the former case, I do expect anyone making money from
| website building to at least give accessibility some thought.
| For the latter, Shopify is one of the businesses you describe,
| as a "large tech company who can write a blank check for a
| large team of full-time developers who can work full time on
| nothing but accessibility". As such, they absolutely should be
| setting up small business owners for success, by making their
| out-of-the-box themes, widgets, flows, etc. reasonably
| accessible to the widest possible audience.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Can we acknowledge that there's more than 1 important
| competing "socially good" value that's in conflict with your
| prescription?
|
| Your prescription is a large step towards the death of what
| portion of the free and open web still exists. Just saying
| "build your business website on some default storefront or
| walled-garden by Facebook, Amazon, Shopify, or some other
| mega corporation's platform and don't change 1 line of code
| or risk legal obliteration" is close to a death sentence for
| an independent web.
|
| Is it not valid to point out that doing our best to maintain
| an independent web is also an important value as well for the
| world, for disabled people, and future generations?
| etchalon wrote:
| It is not valid to say that the value of an open web trumps
| the value of people being able to use the open web.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Ah, so _that_ is why small businesses so commonly do not have
| a website and use Facebook instead.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Most small businesses want some solution that Just
| Works^TM. The less time and money spent, the better.
|
| Most small businesses will also not jerry-rig their own
| payment processors.
| cookingmyserver wrote:
| Hit the nail on the head. There is no guarantee that a website
| will be functional or work correctly for those without
| disabilities, much less be designed in a user friendly easy to
| use way. When does a bug or bad design choice impacting screen
| readers constitute discrimination or failure of reasonable
| accommodation?
|
| The answer is nuanced and will depend on the history of the
| website and not just the current state. Is the site always
| buggy for everyone? Is the site confusing for everyone? How do
| the developers respond to bugs/feedback for general bugs vs
| bugs impacting accessibility.
|
| Of course if you completely ignore accessibility that is much
| more straight forward.
| Eduard wrote:
| > There is no guarantee that a website will be functional or
| work correctly for those without disabilities, much less be
| designed in a user friendly easy to use way.
|
| Is this a strawman argument by someone who doesn't understand
| accessibility or do you have actual examples?
| filoleg wrote:
| > _There is no guarantee that a website will be functional or
| work correctly for those without disabilities, much less be
| designed in a user friendly easy to use way._
|
| Your comment made me wonder if this will lead to the
| situation where some businesses will just opt to have 2
| different versions of their website, one designed primarily
| to hit the accessibility requirements, and the other one made
| for users who do not require accessibility accommodations.
| Kinda similar to certain businesses which, in the past, used
| to have separate mobile versions of their websites (before
| reactive website layouts became easier to implement and more
| commonplace).
|
| As long as those accessible versions of websites comply with
| legal accessibility requirements and provide the exact same
| services as the non accessibility-targeted website versions
| (i.e., features and functions are not exclusively present in
| one version but not another, so you can perform the exact
| same functions in both), that shouldn't cause any legal
| issues, right?
|
| Note: I am not trying to come up with some "workaround" to
| "beat" the requirement. I think that, overall, accessibility
| is a great cause, and I am not taking a stance on this issued
| guidance from the Justice Department. I am just trying to see
| where this could lead us, based on my current understanding
| of this guidance.
| bladegash wrote:
| WCAG does allow for "conforming alternate versions"[1].
| However, it's one of those areas companies think they've
| found a loophole and then quickly realize how impractical
| it is to maintain two entirely different applications.
|
| If you're going to go through all that effort, why not just
| build and maintain one application that is more
| accommodating?
|
| Alternate versions are typically best reserved for minor
| feature flags (e.g., user given option to change colors to
| a high contrast non-brand palette), for instance, than
| wholly separate versions.
|
| [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-
| WCAG20/conformance.html#...
| elliekelly wrote:
| > There is no guarantee that a website will be functional or
| work correctly for those without disabilities, much less be
| designed in a user friendly easy to use way.
|
| I wonder if any ADA defense attorneys have tried this angle.
| "We aren't discriminatory, your honor, our website is a
| terrible experience for _all_ of our users."
| [deleted]
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| There are some things, such as putting text inside a bitmap
| image with no alt tags, that are fairly objectively going to
| make any sort of accessibility software much less reliable and
| more complicated.
|
| But what about things like "most screen readers don't support
| the new WebX API that came out six months ago?" Where's the
| line between what website developers need to do to be
| compatible with screen readers, and what screen reader
| developers need to do to work with the websites their users
| want to use?
| runarberg wrote:
| If you are providing a service it should be accessible. If
| you are using a fancy API that is not accessible (yet) you
| should provide a fallback, or--better yet--use the fancy API
| to progressively enhance the service.
|
| If, however, you are making a fun little game which relies on
| Web Audio API, and there is no point in playing the game
| without headphones, then your good. The line is pretty
| obvious in most cases. Or at least you--as a web developer--
| should know it when you see it.
| thorum wrote:
| The standard typically referenced in legal cases is the Web
| Content Accessibility Guidelines, Level AA. WCAG guidelines are
| generally clear and straightforward. Showing a good faith
| effort to comply with those requirements, _is_ the bar for
| reasonable accommodations.
|
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/
|
| The few areas where subjective judgment applies and two experts
| might reasonably disagree are unlikely to get you sued.
|
| > If a small business can't make an accessible order form for
| some reason,
|
| There's no reason for any web developer to make an inaccessible
| order form in 2022. It's a form. Put labels on your inputs. Use
| semantically appropriate HTML tags. Do validation before the
| user submits.
| akersten wrote:
| > There's no reason for any web developer to make an
| inaccessible order form in 2022. It's a form.
|
| Well, that's OP's point - that's _your opinion_ that it 's
| easy. Maybe it's someone writing their own small business
| website for the first time and it's not so easy for them.
| They'd be more than happy to take the order over the phone
| for anyone unable to use their website. But it would be real
| shitty for their first official lesson in web development to
| be in the form of a court summons.
| noobermin wrote:
| Is it easy for someone running their own small business
| website to have a working feedback/contact page? Working
| encryption? Freaking readable type for seeing people? And
| yet if a business website didn't have these and they lost
| sales over it, would people blame users or say that the
| owner should find fixing certain things about their website
| as being their responsibility?
| WesternWind wrote:
| It's interesting that you are mainly considering the
| experience of a hypothetical small business owner and what
| they would be happy to do, and not the experiences of
| disabled people, and what's easy for them.
|
| It's a lot easier to fix the issues the Justice Department
| mentions, and it's really a pretty short list, than it is
| to live with a disability. If your business is open to the
| public then it has certain responsibilities under the law.
|
| Anyway phone calls don't necessarily work well for deaf
| blind folks, people with disorders like ALS (Stephen
| Hawking etc), and some folks on the autism spectrum.
| thorum wrote:
| Agreed, but keep in mind that person is already technically
| required to follow standards for things like PII, sales
| tax, security etc. in addition to accessibility. Small
| businesses can outsource these requirements to a service
| like Shopify that knows how to handle them. If you build
| your own site, then not taking the time to learn and
| address these issues will always expose you to some legal
| risk.
| lhorie wrote:
| "It's hard" doesn't generally fly as an excuse; it
| certainly won't in court. If you're a web developer,
| accessibility is part of the job. If you're not, you can
| buy that expertise either by using a SaaS or hiring a
| professional.
|
| And if you bother to read the guidelines, they are
| relatively simple. There are regulatory bodies that are
| legal minefields and whose certification process depends
| partially on the whims of individual auditors (e.g. HIPAA),
| but WCAG is not one of those.
| Aerroon wrote:
| But perhaps that's on purpose? Even on HN you will
| occasionally see people who think software engineering
| should require a license. Perhaps this is a way to set up
| barriers to scare people away from making their own
| websites?
| TurningCanadian wrote:
| It's pretty similar to opening a physical store and not
| making the entrance accessible.
| akersten wrote:
| Not really, because we can all agree that the entrance
| must be at least 36 inches wide and at an angle of no
| more than 10 degrees (or whatever). Those are physical
| properties that can be measured.
|
| Versus web accessibility guidelines are a collection of
| opinions and "best practices." Harder to measure and
| evaluate.
| ezfe wrote:
| Not really - it's painfully obvious when a web developer
| takes no regard for accessibility or usability and
| instead wanted to create something that looked fancy.
| Look no further than people who replace `alert()` with a
| half-assed replacement that accomplishes 10% of what
| `alert()` does in 7 characters.
| akersten wrote:
| All I can say is that I'm glad physical accessibility
| isn't codified by "I'll know it when I see it" standards.
|
| You kind of make my point though - sure, it's obvious
| when it's wrong. But it's _not_ obvious if it 's _right_
| , which is the actual fear. It's not even clear if it's
| possible to _conclusively determine_ that it 's right.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This is always the trade-off with regulation and
| whichever approach a regulation takes there are always
| people, sometimes (usually?) the _same_ people, who will
| claim the other approach is the only viable option.
|
| If the regulation is written with specificity, _e.g_
| "Must use size 12pt Times New Roman font" then the
| argument is: "But this one-size-fits-all approach doesn't
| make sense for my $business. It's not that I don't want
| to comply but as a business owner I need common-sense
| rules that give me leeway to implement them in a way that
| makes sense for my company and my customers. Otherwise I
| risk getting sued and that wouldn't be fair."
|
| And if the regulation is written with flexibility, _e.g._
| "Must use a legible font of reasonably appropriate size"
| then the argument is: "But I just run a $business, how am
| I supposed to know what font is legible and what size is
| reasonably appropriate? It's not that I don't want to
| comply but as a business owner I need guidance so I know
| what it is I'm supposed to do. Otherwise I risk getting
| sued and that wouldn't be fair."
|
| And around and around we go making painstakingly
| incremental progress because of bad-faith arguments.
| thorum wrote:
| Can you give an example of what you mean - a scenario
| where WCAG guidelines are too ambiguous?
|
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/
| akersten wrote:
| Sure, any time:
|
| > text can be resized without assistive technology up to
| 200 percent without loss of content or functionality.
|
| What does "without loss of content or functionality"
| mean? If the resized text flys off the side of the screen
| (but there's a scrollbar now), is that a loss of
| functionality? I sure can't read it as quickly anymore,
| because I have to scroll to it. So that's less functional
| to me, but that's my _opinion_. And there isn 't a layout
| solution to that, because by definition making text
| larger will mean less text on the page, assuming full-
| page content.
|
| Does "without assistive technology" mean my website needs
| to manually implement a Size Up/Size Down control, or can
| I assume your browser has it built in?
|
| You might consider that pedantic. But I can take almost
| any of these guidelines and ask the same questions. And
| the answer is always something like "what a reasonable
| person would think." But we're developers, and highly
| disturbed by ambiguity. So saying "the law is to follow
| these guidelines" doesn't fit right when the guidelines
| are not empirically defined.
|
| > For the visual presentation of blocks of text, a
| mechanism is available to achieve the following:
| Foreground and background colors can be selected by the
| user.
|
| Does "use an extension for your user-agent to swap out
| the CSS" count? I can't think of a single mainstream
| website that lets me choose the color of my text.
|
| > Web pages do not contain anything that flashes more
| than three times in any one second period.
|
| What is a flash? What is an anything? Can I embed a
| flashing YouTube video in my user-generated content that
| I post to make your website in violation of the WCAG? Do
| you have to implement technical countermeasures to
| prevent me from doing that? Does YouTube have to prevent
| users from uploading such content? These are the kind of
| questions that _have to be_ answered before we could
| seriously consider this as practical law.
| thorum wrote:
| The WCAG guidelines do a good job of answering questions
| like these, in my experience.
|
| Regarding resizing text, the WCAG guidelines provide the
| following example of a website that meets the standards:
| "A user uses a zoom function in his user agent to change
| the scale of the content. All the content scales
| uniformly, and the user agent provides scroll bars, if
| necessary."
|
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/resize-
| text.html
|
| (There is also a note under the guideline that due to
| widespread confusion on this specific rule, as long as
| you meet the basic criteria listed under "sufficient
| techniques" you are considered OK.)
|
| > Does "use an extension for your user-agent to swap out
| the CSS" count?
|
| Yes:
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Techniques/general/G156
|
| > What is a flash? What is an anything?
|
| A flash is "a pair of opposing changes in relative
| luminance that can cause seizures in some people if it is
| large enough and in the right frequency range" according
| to the definitions listed here, along with links to more
| detailed explanations and examples:
|
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/three-
| flashes-or...
|
| > Can I embed a flashing YouTube video in my user-
| generated content that I post to make your website in
| violation of the WCAG? Do you have to implement technical
| countermeasures to prevent me from doing that? Does
| YouTube have to prevent users from uploading such
| content?
|
| Clarification on user generated content is part of the
| WCAG 3.0 working draft, which you can read here:
|
| https://www.w3.org/TR/wcag-3.0/#user-generated-content
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| HN would fail the accessibility guidelines with the low-
| contrast downvoted comments.
|
| "People with limited vision or color blindness cannot
| read text if there is not enough contrast between the
| text and background (for example, light gray text on a
| light-colored background)."
| glitcher wrote:
| I just skimmed over the WCAG quick reference with a focus
| on just the level A and level AA items. I have to agree
| with thorum on this one - the guidelines are specific and
| straightforward. For a basic order form with no audio or
| video on the screen, seems pretty easy to me. Yes that is
| an opinion, but an opinion based upon this very specific
| set of testable guidelines.
|
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/
| noobermin wrote:
| You make it sound like it's completely arbitrary whereas it
| isn't. I feel like the only conflict might be what helps
| neuroatypical people might be different than what helps deaf
| people or what helps blind people, etc. Unfortunately,
| "disability" is a very broad term an encompasses hosts of
| people. That said, the "churn" of "opinions" on what helps
| disabled folks is nowhere near as arbitrary as whatever new hot
| stuff js framework is out there and yet you people keep up with
| all that somehow.
| istjohn wrote:
| As a rule, accessibility is an afterthought in our industry. I
| would be more sympathetic to complaints if companies were
| making an effort. Even large tech companies fail miserably.
| This just reads like FUD.
|
| The cupcake store can afford to install grab bars in its
| bathrooms; it can afford to hire a competent web designer.
| Wordpress, Squarespace, Shopify, etc. should all be accessible
| by default.
|
| There is plenty of leeway for reasonable accomodations.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| > there's no clear binding standard for what constitutes an
| accessible website
|
| >Do you expect every website to get continuously rewritten just
| to keep up with the latest opinions on what's best?
|
| The DOJ cutes under "How to Make Web Content Accessible to
| People with Disabilities" the W3C Web Content Accessibility
| Guidelines (WCAG). These recommendations aren't new, but if you
| find them lacking, then what improvements would you suggest?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Regarding your last point, I think that is already the case?
| Dominos was sued because their site/app was not accessible, and
| lost, partly because the court ruled that calling in an order
| was not an adequate alternative because the plaintiff was
| placed on hold for 45 minutes multiple times.
|
| https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/court-finds-domino-s-pizza...
| mltony wrote:
| Blind developer here.
|
| So surprised to see so many negative comments here. Wondering if
| wheelchair users were hated back in the days when the law about
| wheelchair ramps was passed. Accessibility of websites is a real
| problem for blind people. And the thing is it is relatively easy
| to make your website accessible:
|
| * Use simple HTML controls: all of them work great in all
| screenreaders. Only when custom behavior is implemented in
| javascript this might cause problems. * Test accessibility with
| keyboard. That fancy combobox that you wrote that expands with
| beautiful navigation cannot be opened from keyboard.
|
| This ADA guidance actually doesn't even mention this. Sure,
| providing alt descriptions can be useful but it's almost never
| preventing me from using a website. But a combobox or a button
| that won't click is a real problem. But I hope this is just the
| first step in making Internet more blind-friendly.
| noobermin wrote:
| About four months ago, I used to cycle every week to the store,
| but an auto-immune disorder has me now disabled and I use a
| wheelchair. A lot of this annoying attitude honestly is people
| really feel like accessibility is for "other people" and many
| just lack empathy in general. But really, no one lives forever,
| no one is 25 forever hitting the bars every night, even abled
| bodied people grow old and their bodies change or like me, an
| illness or injury can strike without warning. At the very least
| if you cannot be empathetic to other people who are disabled
| just know that one day it could be you and you'll be thankful
| someone somewhere thought of accessibility. Today, the ramps I
| used to walk my bike up to the walkway under my apartment are
| now a godsend for the wheelchair and the stairs that I used to
| haul my bike up begrudgingly are now a curse.
|
| This is a cringe analogy but may be, just may be this will help
| since this is hacker news: think of the "Master Foo and the
| Programming Prodigy" and how writing comments is for your
| "future self." Well, making things accessible is for your
| future elderly or injured self if you're able bodied _today_.
| If you can 't do it for others out of mere empathy, at the very
| least do it for a potential version of yourself in the future!
|
| [0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/prodigy.html
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Wondering if wheelchair users were hated back in the days
| when the law about wheelchair ramps was passed_
|
| They were. AM talk radio hosts would whine about that one for
| years.
| ikiris wrote:
| They still are if you talk to small business owners. Vast
| majority of people want to completely ignore accommodation and
| absolutely hate being told to do the bare minimum for other
| people, especially when it costs them money or time. Many of
| them rail against how the "government" or some other boogeyman
| lawyer is after them and how they're the victim when they
| ignore the needs, and are then cajoled into meeting legal
| minimum requirements.
|
| This site especially has a vocal block of libertarian leaning
| self centered priviliged tech workers who see an affront in
| doing anything for anyone other than themselves, even if it is
| in their own best interest.
| lhorie wrote:
| > Test accessibility with keyboard
|
| One very simple step a dev can take is to just `tab` over their
| pages and check that important elements (links, buttons, etc)
| receive focus. Especially if they toggle something on the page
| via JS. If something doesn't, replace the div soup w/ a
| focusable element like `<a href="javascript:;"></a>`
|
| For those saying accessibility is hard, doing just this one
| thing can make a big difference.
| mchusma wrote:
| The problem is not the law, but rather the class action lawsuits
| around these cases. I have no problem working with blind users to
| improve the accessibility of the website, but I have been sued by
| plaintiffs counsel in a state where we had no customers, no
| business of any kind, the claim was bogus, and we had to spend
| money on legal counsel to get that thrown out.
|
| Class action lawsuits are a plague on businesses and I'm
| confident that it would be a large "net positive" for society if
| they were eliminated.
|
| The answer to "punishing" people should not be allowing lawyers
| to blackmail companies to settle class-action suits. Rather, it
| should be to make it easier to actually resolve smaller issues. I
| explicitly require the use of fairclaims.com for smaller disputes
| on my site. I recommend them as they are genuinely a fast, easy
| form of binding arbitration.
|
| Maybe I could be on board with class-action lawsuits if the
| defendant has lost 5 or more individual suits for the same
| reason, or something like that if someone was truly a repeat
| offender.
| satokema wrote:
| the problem isn't the accessibility standards, that is
| reasonable.
|
| the problem are the insane hacks and shoddy coding that devs were
| forced to do because the money wanted pretty interfaces instead
| of reasonable ones that could handle screen readers and the like.
| brightball wrote:
| IMO the contrast is the hardest thing to get right. I'm not sure
| if that's built into the minimum standards or not but it's going
| to seriously mess with peoples designs.
| bladegash wrote:
| This kind of gets me. Isn't a design meant to be "human
| centered" and usable for I dunno...users?
|
| How many people do you know that have some form of color
| blindness or other vision impairment? Now think about how many
| of your users might be subject to those differences.
|
| What is the point of an appealing design if a pretty huge
| market is ignore because "our brand colors are white text on a
| light colored cyan background!"?
| jshier wrote:
| Cool, website doesn't work in Safari.
| sigzero wrote:
| Works fine for me.
| vgel wrote:
| > Teachers Test Prep, Inc.: The Department reached an agreement
| with Teachers Test Prep, Inc., regarding complaints that the test
| prep company's online video courses did not provide captions and
| were inaccessible to people who are deaf
|
| Does this imply that if you offer video content, you must have
| "synchronized captions that are accurate and identify any
| speakers in the video"? Does this apply to Youtube or Vimeo?
| thorum wrote:
| Yes. WCAG (the W3C guidelines referenced as the gold standard
| for web accessibility) require both captions for people who are
| deaf and audio descriptions (an audio track with a person
| describing anything important that is happening in the video)
| for people who are blind.
|
| It's a challenging requirement because both can be
| difficult/expensive to implement, especially for smaller
| organizations.
|
| Technology is catching up to make this easier, with automatic
| captioning AIs and better software for creating transcriptions.
| On the audio description side of things we're seeing improved
| browser support for TTS description tracks on HTML video, so
| you don't have to hire a narrator.
| elil17 wrote:
| It applies to certain videos regardless of platform (clips from
| TV which aired on cable or broadcast and certain other videos
| being the most common example). So if NBC uploads a clip to
| Youtube, they must caption it. Netflix Originals don't have to.
| Auto-captioning doesn't count because the quality is not
| consistent enough (although that is starting to change).
|
| In the cast of Teachers Test Prep, it was training videos that
| someone had to watch as a condition of employment. So it was an
| employment law issue - they could have complied by offering
| one-on-one accessible tutoring instead of captions.
|
| Mom-and-pop Youtube influencers do not legally have to caption
| anything.
| akersten wrote:
| Those distinctions aren't clear from the linked article. Do
| you have a source that Netflix doesn't have to caption their
| video productions but NBC does?
|
| Teacher's Prep sounds like an online-only course program. Why
| couldn't they pull this alleged online-only Netflix loophole?
| dlp211 wrote:
| Youtube already supplies at a minimum auto-generated subtitles,
| which are imperfect, but usually serviceable.
| duskwuff wrote:
| YouTube's autogenerated captions are highly variable in
| quality. They are _sometimes_ serviceable for carefully
| produced videos of English speakers with a neutral accent,
| and degrade rapidly as videos move away from this ideal.
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