[mywittyname]

I think the issue is less about the changes they need to make, and more of the spectre of a potential lawsuit.

Lawyers have a distinct upper-hand here because they are doing this in bulk and are probably using this as more of a "side-gig" to fill in extra work hours that they can't otherwise bill to clients. So the opportunity costs for them are pretty low, basically court fees, but the potential earnings are pretty high, since it's probably cheaper to pay out the lawsuit than it would be to hire a lawyer to fight it.

Plus, these are a potentially huge lottery ticket. If the company fails to respond to the lawsuit, a default judgement is issued and who knows how much they could earn from that. So like 4 hours of work for tens of thousands in payouts.

And it's only mom-and-pop companies that suffer. Companies that can afford staff counsel are just going to spend the few hours to become compliant and get the lawsuit dismissed.

Getting sued sucks. You have to quickly come up with a retainer to give your counsel. Probably a few hundred or so to respond to the suit, but after that, five figures isn't unusual. Yeah, you'll get some of that back if you win, but you still have to be able to come up with it at short notice.

[iepathos]

Most importantly, plaintiffs do not need to prove damages in these accessibility lawsuits in israel, which is an awful desig,. So, these lawyers are likely not even impacted by the websites they are suing.

[ryandrake]

I have sympathy if your site is fully compliant with the law and you get sued in error, because of some bad automation or something. Now you have to hire a lawyer and eat that cost having done nothing wrong. It would be best if this didn’t happen. But if the law specifically says web videos need captions, and you put web videos up without captions and subsequently get sued… I dunno what to say—Surprised Pikachu Face?

If a web site would rather take their ball and go home rather than comply with the law, we’ll that’s totally their valid option, but nobody is forcing them to do it.

[endominus]

I have multiple issues with your argument, but the most pertinent in this case is that the law in question was passed only 5 years ago and apparently applies retroactively to all video content hosted on Israeli sites. This is the government deciding that the video you put up ten years ago can get you sued for failing to have a requirement they just passed. It imposes a financial and temporal burden on everyone and the actual, practical effect of it, in this case, is not to increase accessibility but reduce it - by reducing everyone's ability to access these learning materials.

[xbar]

Well-reasoned.

I think it's about time we flattened the Great Pyramid at Giza for lack of wheelchair access.

[mywittyname]

> But if the law specifically says web videos need captions, and you put web videos up without captions and subsequently get sued…

Except that's not really what happened. The site has a bunch of videos that were legal when created, but are no longer legal. And rather than going back and bringing them up to code, the author has decided to shut down shop.

Plus, being compliant doesn't save them from having to deal with the lawsuits. As has been discussed throughout this thread, these laws are abused a lot to bully and shutdown smaller companies that don't have the resources to defend themselves.