I'm betting they will be able to find violations everywhere.
[Edit] To take another example, 10% of men are colorblind. If you're using color to convey information, you may be making your website very difficult to use for 5% of your customers. If you're operating at any kind of scale, the gains in making your website easier to use for 5% of your customers are going to outweigh the costs of making a change by a wide margin.
Accessible web sites are not difficult. Odds are if you do web stuff, you have accidentally produced WCAG-compliant websites in the past without knowing you were doing it.
So please stop pushing the narrative about how "they" are out to "find something" and sue you and implying that WCAG is too complex to comply with. It's not, and frankly it's offensive -- disabled people have, morally and legally, exactly the same right to be able to use the internet you do, and WCAG is a guide to how you can make that happen.
I have no right to demand people bend the web to my whim, but I have ever right to use software to render it on my own computer just how I want it. It really seems like better screen reader software and removing of this archaic law is a better solution here.
Also the incredibly nitpicky stuff is happening, even in the physical world - http://m.startribune.com/flurry-of-disability-lawsuits-leave...
The ADA is the law of the land: if you're a business open to the public, you have to be open to all of the public, not just the members of the public who you think are most convenient to serve.
And history has shown that the horrible, terrible, awful no-good frivolous demands of the ADA have positive effects for everybody. Read up on things like how people with children in strollers have a much easier time getting around cities now because street-corner curbs have to have areas accessible to people in wheelchairs.
http://m.startribune.com/flurry-of-disability-lawsuits-leave...
Also, notice how in the Winn-Dixie website suit the plaintiff didn't ask for damages: he just wanted the site to be accessible. The amount of viciousness being deployed in the thread toward someone whose only goal was for something to work is unbelievable, and I think if you look into it you'll find that on the whole, ADA complaints are someone's last resort after trying to amicably resolve a problem through other channels.
No, its pointing out the law still has problems and has been used as a money making scheme. It, like code, has bugs that need to be remedied. Arguing the code does it job expect for some bad actors is just as problematic when talking about laws. I am also troubled by the picking of something not voted on being given the force of law (WCAG 2.0 Level AA).
I'm actually really sick of people using phrases like "completely invalidate" when that is not what I wrote. Hyperbole and beating people over the head who disagree with you is not a constructive way to proceed.
I cannot understand how people who code cannot get that the law needs tweaks and fixes just like code. I would prefer a formal notice to a law suit. We are about to unleash a whole new category of violation and even a suit that asks for no damages is going to be expensive.
Oh yes, in this case they didn't ask for damages, but that won't be the case next time when more bad actors appear.
This is how the infamous McDonald's coffee lawsuit got started, for example; the plaintiff (who, for those unfamiliar with the story, had suffered second and third degree burns from the spilled coffee -- not exactly a case of "duh, it's hot" and more a case of "demonstrably not fit for human consumption") originally just wrote to them to complain. And they were, predictably, assholes to her, which led to research into how many people had suffered severe burns, which in turn led to the lawsuit.
So either you want to make a change that won't change anything (require some number of "notices" or non-lawsuit "complaints" before going to court), or you want to make a change that will literally undo the ADA (disallow going to court, period). Since neither of those is viable, the right of everyone to have equal access to businesses which are open to the public -- and to have that enforced by courts -- is going to outweigh your fevered nightmares of a lawsuit apocalypse.
Once again with the hyperbole.
> .. McDonald's ..
I don't see any equivalence to what I am talking about to that case. Writing them is not mentioned in any current law as a procedural way to remedy the situation. Its a nice courtesy that was ignored.
> It's always going to end up in a lawsuit. To a company that's running an actively user-hostile web presence, no amount of non-lawsuit complaints will get them to change, which means it's going to end up in court no matter what.
No, its not always going to end up in a lawsuit. A regulatory notice is a fair first start with a defined period for response and fix. Love it or hate it, the DMCA notice is not a bad starting point that saves quite a bit of court time. Dealing with a notice from a government agency (e.g. health inspector) is not something that can be ignored.
http://m.startribune.com/flurry-of-disability-lawsuits-leave...