[seanmcdirmid]

The trolls are very visible and could eventually erode support for the ADA in the general public. This is true for any vulnerable population, actually. Asking people to ignore them never works well, there needs to be legislation work that specifically targets them so that the ADA doesn’t lose popularity.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

I'm not asking people to ignore them, I'm asking for a hierarchy of concerns with regards to the ADA. The first concern being the acknowledgement of the good it does and its necessity.

It's arguable, but in my opinion you've got the chain of causality backwards. People here focus on the trolls because the ADAs popularity is low, they don't like the effort it entails, and they don't like government regulations in general, and they'd just as much not have to apply norms at all.

I can tell you the vast majority of businesses are not ADA compliant and do just fine.

[seanmcdirmid]

The trolls are what make the ADA less popular, I’ve seen it happen in LA (a place where compliance and awareness is high)…some grifter was actively trying to figure out how to lodge an ADA complaint against the bagel shop I was in. It was utterly obvious, and this place, being in LA, had done everything right in terms of accessibility (the doors don’t have to be mechanical, just easy to open and wide enough to get a wheelchair through). You get a few bad actors in an otherwise good thing and they give the entire program a bad reputation.

Now…I don’t quite remember much when the ADA has done good, but I do remember that one troll shopping for a settlement check. This is the popularity problem the ADA faces.