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Comment by wyager | Hacker News Reader

As much as I hate the current script-heavy web, is it really so hard to see why using the law to enforce aesthetic choices is a terrible idea?

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Except it's not just an aesthetic choice - it's an accessibility problem. The point the OP is making is that it's not like this somehow disadvantages any abled person - it's probably an advantage.

You can label it however you want; using the law as a bludgeon to force people into obeying arbitrary design policies like "you can't use JavaScript for this" is stupid for a huge number of reasons. An obvious problem is that there's no way to codify specific technology practices into law without severely damaging the ability of businesses to adapt to rapidly changing fields like the internet. "You must use these tags in your HTML pages"; OK, cool, what happens when we stop using HTML?

The inevitable effect of this kind of legislation is that technology gets worse for everyone, rather than better for a small group.

Where did you get the idea that JS web apps can’t be accessible?

But that's not what it is! We build a react single page app which was certified AAA WCAG compliant (which, that is another complete bag of works) just by making sure we don't go out of our way to screw the markup at. In instances where we used non-default controls we just need to sprinkle some aria tags and it's fixed.

That's generally not true.

There is not really any specific encoding of technical requirements in accessibility laws – rather more along the lines of 'reasonable effort must be made' etc.

I don't live in the US, but my understanding is that WCAG2.0 compliance is accepted as 'accessible'. WCAG doesn't say "you can't use Javascript" – it says "Here are the standards a site must meet to be accessible, and here are the methods you can use to satisfy them".

Frankly it's a ridiculous objection. The burden of complying with WCAG is basically 'have good contrast and mark your forms and element up correctly'.

> using the law as a bludgeon to force people into obeying arbitrary design policies

They're not arbitrary design policies at all. They're standards that exist for a reason. For instance, if you have some text, display it as text, not as an image of text, because a screen reader won't be able to read it.

> The inevitable effect of this kind of legislation is that technology gets worse for everyone, rather than better for a small group.

Actually, complying with accessibility standards makes the web better for everyone. Here's an example. The giant green table on this website used to just be an image[1]. That made the page useless for screen readers, but it also meant that you couldn't copy the data in the table, couldn't resize the text, etc. A common sense change to display this table as text made the page more useful for everyone.

https://www.boston.gov/cityscore

Yes, but I believe the previous point is that standards are typically adhered to by consent. Not by government force.

Allowing government to fine or shutdown sites not complying with some set of standards is a very chilling path to go down.

I think his point is that standards are inherently arbitrary and inflexible and that these specific standards are only beneficial to a "small group". My point is that these standards aren't arbitrary, but well-reasoned, and that they are broadly beneficial (see my post elsewhere for some more examples).

Some standards are enforced by law - fire codes for instance, or food handling standards. Do accessibility standards merit similar treatment? I'd argue that most people now need to use the Internet for basic functions in their lives. For instance, you can't even get a job at a chain grocery store around here without filling out an online application. Given that, there's a strong social interest in making sure that everyone has access. That interest has to be balanced against other interests - costs to businesses for instance. I'm not necessarily suggesting that we should treat WCAG the same way we would treat a fire code (which a government agency enforces) or as we treat ADA building compliance (where customers can sue to force compliance), but I do think that a debate on this issue should look at what these standards actually do, and try to balance the interests. I don't think the parent is doing that.

> standards are typically adhered to by consent. Not by government force.

I'm not sure how you can say this when HN is full of articles about regulatory actions on some industry or other, or some bad actor in that industry.

The distinction intended was in standards which are done by consent for example browser standards vs. regulation imposed by government.

Letting people use the internet isn't an 'aesthetic choice'.

It worked once in medievalish Italy (not sure how you classify the period going from ~0-1800 A.D.). All houses had to be a certain color, for instance. I think it looked kinda cool, but obviously choice is often considered the greatest of all goods.

Good point. Of course, again, we run into the practical difference between physical zoning restrictions and internet "zoning" restrictions.

The real world, being equipped with a distance metric, has this messy problem where you are sometimes forced to be close to other people. I feel like this gives us (collectively) a bit of license to make demands of how nearby people use their physical property. On the other hand, there's no distance metric on the internet, and I'm not (in any sense) forced to live next to the winn-Dixie website.

Specifically the decision in this case was that Winn-Dixie's website is heavily-integrated enough into their physical store locations enough that it's covered by the ADA.

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