[dgacmu]

You're thinking short term. And you're probably right, short term. But we had the same set of concerns raised about many other ADA issues in the past, such as wheelchair-accessible ramps and doors. Over time, the standard practices (and what we'd think of as tooling and common design patterns) for new construction evolved. ADA lawsuits about websites create a similar incentive for long-term change.

and, hopefully, just as we've realized that ADA compliance benefits all of us, whether it's in the form of getting old or pushing strollers or nursing a sprained ankle, we'll get to the point where the improved information availability from ADA compliance becomes an intrinsic part of the power of the web.

[threezero]

Yet there are still scammy lawyers who file ADA lawsuits against small businesses. Here’s a great example of what I consider a typical ADA lawyer: http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/prenda_law_attorney_w...

[dgacmu]

There are bad actors in every domain, but cherrypicking one doesn't tell us much about the overall balance. (Heck, for every scummy lawyer who uses the ADA as their club of choice, there are probably 100 who specialize in extracting money using questionable torts claims. Prenda Law was infamous for being a pile of snakes, enough so that they justify their own wikipedia article [0]).

Countering anecdote with anecdote, here's an example of the importance of ADA lawsuits:

https://www.peds.org/campaigns/sidewalk-maintenance/curb-ram...

Atlanta has been awful about keeping their pedestrian infrastructure working. And this wasn't a profit-seeking lawsuit -- it was the DoJ.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law

[challenger22]

I think that even long-term the approach as described in TFA will always require many hours of work for an hour of time saved. The saner way to do it is probably have direct personal assistance for the blind. Phone call systems for the deaf and hard of hearing have been in place for decades, and many of these systems rely on direct personal assistance.

[paulryanrogers]

It's only saner if you value the money of website companies over the dignity of their users

[seanmcdirmid]

These laws definitely increase expense though, wheel chair ramps aren’t free in material and space. We do have to pay for it in the form of increased real estate costs.

For websites, either they will have to spend more money making them or make fewer of them using existing budgets.

[ineedasername]

No, design tools & frameworks can also evolve to make them more easily. It doesn't always have to be as cumbersome as it is now.

[seanmcdirmid]

Accessibility is much more of a design (to design accessible experiences) and legal challenge (to defend your experiences as compliant in the face of malicious litigation and vague laws) than it is an engineering one. Yes, we can solve the technical problem fairly easy, but that won’t reduce compliance costs very much, if at all.

[ineedasername]

Why would compliance costs differ greatly once the technical problem of tools that build for accessibility by default are commonplace? Maybe some minimal oversight to verify accessibility, but no much else. Or am I missing something?

[seanmcdirmid]

You are missing where most of the work/cost is occurring, it isn't in the code, but in the design and verification process.

[im3w1l]

How much of my mortgage[0] is due to compliance? How much of my student loan[1] is due to compliant websites?

[0]hypothetically

[1]hypothetically

[dgacmu]

Probably very little, and a fraction that goes down over time. The cost of making new construction ADA-compliant is very small [0]. Retrofits are more expensive, but there are thresholds to try to reduce the pain. As we move to more and more post-ADA construction, the overall share of construction costs becomes fairly trivial.

[0] https://adata.org/publication/ADA-faq-booklet ("under 1%")

As to your student loan, again, probably very little. Let's say it cost a few hundred k spread over a few years -- at CMU, at least, adding 100k spread over 10k students is a molecule in the bucket.

[im3w1l]

Is 100k a realistic estimate for the cost?