At the New York Times, Vivian Wang covers one of our regular topics around here, the wave of ADA lawsuits over website accessibility. Among the latest targets of these suits: colleges and universities.
Since January 2015, at least 751 lawsuits have been filed over the issue. The vast majority have focused on retailers and restaurants, according to a legal blog that tracks such suits.
A single plaintiff, however, has now sued eight New York-area colleges and universities, including Fordham University and Long Island University.
Some disability rights advocates, acknowledging the charges that some lawyers are just looking to cash in, have distanced themselves from the suits.
“We do not condone just filing a blizzard of lawsuits in order to get settlements. That’s not solving the underlying problem,” said Chris Danielson, public relations director for the National Federation of the Blind. His organization has pushed instead for clearer federal guidelines on web accessibility.
Relatedly, John Stossel covers Berkeley’s liability-driven removal of free public online course materials (“A third threat to free speech at University of California, Berkeley has led to more censorship than political rioters or college administrators. It’s the Americans with Disabilities Act.”). And while the vending machine case of Magee v. Coca-Cola Refreshments had raised hopes or fears in some quarters that the U.S. Supreme Court might seize on it to bring some much-needed clarity to the state of online accessibility law, the high court decided against taking the case and let stand a ruling against the blind plaintiff. [Emily Jed, Vending Times; more, Minh Vu]
20 Comments
The law itself is overly broad and misguided. Accessibility was meant to cover things like wheelchairs. The idea that all disabilities should be able to be overcome at the business’ expense is daft. For example, should a paraplegic be able to sky dive? Or ride a mechanical bull? How would you enable these things to take place? A recent suit demanded that a movie theater provide a hand interpreter for a deaf and blind person to “see” a movie. Should every theater keep such an interpreter on staff at all times for the rare event of a deaf and blind person showing up? Such people usually have an assistant–they can watch the video at home and get the interpretation of it. They get no benefit from being in the theater except to be able to harass the theater. Should we insist that somehow skiing and mountain climbing and scuba diving be accessbile? How? Hundreds of millions have been spent on ramps, accessible toilet stalls, etc. But there are and will remain activities that cannot be made accessible to all. These suits are simple extortion.
Since section 508 has web accessibility requirements, it is obvious that congress knows how to require that if they wish. Since they didn’t, then they must not have intended to require web accessibility. Or maybe they were totally confused and the access-board and it’s technical expert group filled in the gaps that congress left. In either case there are existing guidelines for web accessibility. As to whether the various agencies and departments of the federal government actually follow those guidelines, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Communication with the sites provides results. Lawsuits only provide cash, if that. Me personally, I would rather have results.
” Since they didn’t, then they must not have intended to require web accessibility. Or maybe they were totally confused and the access-board and it’s technical expert group filled in the gaps that congress left.”
Or maybe the relevant sections of the ADA are older than the web, so congress didn’t even have the chance to consider web accessibility when they were passed.
On the other hand, that’s no reason to create such requirements administratively or through the courts.
I am still amazed at braille being required on drive up ATM’s.
No, if you think about it, it’s fairly easy to understand that one..
They have to have the braille on walk up ATM and it’s just easier to have one set of buttons on a given ATM model that can be installed anywhere, than to manufacture two different sets of controls for any one model, one for walk up installations and one for drive through installations.
Once you have to have braille on some ATMs, basic economics says that it will be more cost efficient to have it on all ATMs.
Good job there MattS, on both web and atm comments. As a college student in the mid 80’s, I used the walk up ATM nearly every weekend… Before ADA you say? 😀 Just saying that all good things like braille on ATM’s did not necessarily require ADA to be passed to be provided. After all, IBM was a big provider of ATM OS’s and they produced screen reader/dos and Screen Reader/2 without any federal requirement to do so. They just realized early that blind people compute too, and bank, and shop, cure ignorance, don’t punish it.
“I used the walk up ATM nearly every weekend… Before ADA you say”
No, I did not say before ADA, I suggested only for the web accessibility issue that the web may have been created AFTER the ADA (I wasn’t sure when the ADA was passed and didn’t feel like looking it up)
It seems to me any defendant could point out in their response that there is a wide range of utilities and apps available that enable the blind to use computers. Here’s one that is free. If any lawyer is serious about making the internet a better place, they should look for clients that suffer from photosensitive epilepsy. Then go after advertisers that use flashing ads that can trigger an epileptic seizure.
Sure, there are utilities and apps that enable people to use computers and the internet. But without the right structure and content on a website, people using screen readers can still hit roadblocks that prevent them from getting the information they need – hence these lawsuits.
MattS, I was sincere in stating that they were good comments. The ATM comment was just pointing out that some “problems” “fixed” by ADA weren’t either.
Bernie, programs such as nvda and jaws aren’t magic. Poor web design and even worse, poor implementation can drastically impact performance. That is why there is a large section on web accessibility in section 508 (1194.22 a – o) I believe.
Now switching to programmer vice blind guy, computers aren’t magic. Just because your brain can do something doesn’t mean a computer can. I still say you get more results with a list of what problems you are having and suggestions for fixing them…
Hi Cecil, I know enough programming to understand these type of enhancements are far more easily achieved at the client level. That is, the web browser selected by the user, blind or not, can have features and settings set as they desire. The server that provides the information typically using a protocol like HTML or XML transfers data to the user’s browser that displays, or utilizes audio, as the user desires. Few if any small or medium size businesses have the resources to design and implement server software that can accommodate the blind, what is the point of suing them, demanding a service they are incapable of providing? But now I’m curious, what server software are you aware of that provides information in an ADA compliant manner? You seem knowledgeable in this area, here is an exercise for you, I’d like to see, or should I say hear, one or more websites that conduct e-commerce in an ADA compliant manner. Please provide links.
On the client end a screen reader or magnifier is needed, consider it a monitor replacement in the most extreme cases. NVDA, JAWS, Orcha and the like all “understand” html to some degree and reformat things for understandability. Prime example: a newspaper site that prints in columns just like the “paper” version. My screen reader will read down the columns rather than across the page. As for the server side, it isn’t the web server, it’s the content… Text is always your friend when trying to be accessible. WCAG 2.0 does a pretty good job of identifying problems and I believe they give suggestions for resolving specific issues?
I don’t do web development… I have stood up a lot of IIS servers and patched them as well. But i’m an admin nowadays, I don’t do content generation. But I look at sites and if I have a problem, I try to explain it as best I can and how it could be presented in a way that would work for someone using a screen reader. I also check with a couple versions of jaws and nvda just because sometimes it’s the tool not the site.
I guess the best statement I can make is that I am here, I enjoy the articles, and when I feel the urge/need to comment I can.
” As for the server side, it isn’t the web server, it’s the content… Text is always your friend when trying to be accessible.”
Perhaps, but those without visual impairments (or less severe impairments) prefer having a good bit of graphics. Visual content is a large part of the appeal of the web for the vast majority of users.
@Matts, they aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, from a purely economic perspective, text takes less bandwidth, that’s why _all_ the html tags are text rather than little pictures. 😀 Understand, I am not advocating that everything on the web be properly labeled. Just make sure that the controls are useable and if you are using some fancy script to convert text into a picture of text to amaze the masses, maybe provide a separate and unequal page that is just the text? 😀 Seriously, if it’s a stupid cat video, just label it stupid cat video and move on, I don’t need any more than that to know there’s no interest for me here. But if that t-shirt at target says “i’m with stupid”, then I probably need to know that because I am really sure that my wife would inform me once it arrived. 😀 In short, put the reasonable back into reasonable accomodations.
“In short, put the reasonable back into reasonable accomodations.”
The web is an inherently visual medium. Your definition of reasonable in this context is drastically different than mine.
BS. Sorry, maybe you were doing lawyer things for navigator 0.x, but I assure you I was doing computer things. And pictures came later. gopher, ftp, telnet, smtp, snmp, blah, blah, blah, all the building blocks of what we now call the internet were at their heart… drum roll please… text. Pure, unadulterated text. And that includes hyper text markup language / html, see, right there in the name.:D
“gopher, ftp, telnet, smtp, snmp, blah, blah, blah, all the building blocks of what we now call the internet”
And none of those things including the “internet” is the web or World Wide Web, which itself came slightly after and sits on top of the internet..
Braille on a drive-through ATM will make sense someday, when the blind show up in self-driving cars to use the ATM.
Let me tell you a better one. A friend at Moffett Field/NASA Ames reports that the elevator to their air traffic control tower — which serves only controllers — has braille buttons.
I suppose someday we may have self-flying aircraft, but if so I doubt they’ll need or want human-staffed ATC. Much less ATCs who can’t see. At the rate we’re going, though, the first blind person who files an ADA lawsuit to be hired as an ATC will win, and then we’re all in trouble.
“Braille on a drive-through ATM will make sense someday”
It makes sense today. There are far more walk up ATMs than drive through ATMs it simply isn’t economical to manufacture separate non-braille control panels for drive-through ATM installations.
” A friend at Moffett Field/NASA Ames reports that the elevator to their air traffic control tower — which serves only controllers — has braille buttons.”
How many air traffic control towers are there vs office buildings and apartment buildings. Since the same models of elevators are used in all three cases, It is simply uneconomical to manufacture separate non-braille control panels for air traffic control tower elevators.
N.B.: I did a separate post highlighting the discussion here of Braille drive-through ATMs.
https://www.overlawyered.com/2017/11/comments-braille-drive-atms/