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Comment by nulbyte | Hacker News Reader

> In the document, Domino’s lays out its argument, claiming the cost of accessibility requirements may run into the millions, and the rules around what is accessible and what is not have yet to be decided.

This is a dense argument. There are well-established web content accessibility guidelines, aptly named Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Android has accessibility features built-in, and I'd guess iOS does too, despite having never used it myself. Nothing about this is particularly costly. WCAG has been around for over a decade...so what is Domino's angle, really? For a company that seems to embrace tech, this makes no sense.

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I have no personal knowledge of this case but having helped companies with their Accessibility deficits in the past I have seen resistance from Marketing who believes that their color scheme is the sole reason anyone uses the site-- despite not having strong enough contrast in colors. And some executives just do not like being told they have to do something

>so what is Domino's angle, really?

Regulations require us to do something. We don't feel like doing something. Waaaaaa.

(i.e., the usual; cf. Boeing and FAA, etc)

> WCAG has been around for over a decade

Following the WCAG won’t stop you getting sued (or more likely, getting a letter threatening a lawsuit unless you pay a ‘settlement’).

You may get a drive by lawsuit from a lawyer looking for a quick buck, but you will likely defend it quite well.

Having struggled with it, here's the most charitable reason I can give:

First, remember that the blind have always been able to order pizza by just calling in with a phone. Domino's is serving the blind in that sense.

The case here is about them being unwilling to provide an online-only discount to the blind. So why are they paying so much to defend, specifically, a blind-inaccessible, online-only discount?

They offer an online discount, I think, because they get so much more valuable data from it. Like most websites, sadly, their site loads you down with a torrent of trackers.

What does that have to do with being accessible? Well, if the blind can easily navigate to the important parts of a site, so can their screen-reader ... and so can any program. Then, anyone, not just the blind, can bypass all the crap on their site when ordering, and even shut out the trackers.

Where's the flaw in my logic?

tl;dr: Anything that helps the blind navigate their site also helps you bypass tracking, and makes an online-only discount unprofitable.

> Where's the flaw in my logic?

They make a lot more money from selling pizza than from tracking you, and if someone who is blocking trackers can't reasonably order pizza, Dominos would be shooting themselves in the foot.

If their website doesn't work for <my browser configuration>, I'm not going to pick up a fucking phone. I'll just order from any other pizza place in my vicinity.

The likely reality is, they are lazy, and don't want to spend dev effort to be compliant.

The devs are lazy but the lawyers are hard working enough to bring a case to the supreme court? Surely the amount of effort to have a case there is less than the effort required to make the site meet some accessibility guidelines.

Most companies wouldn't be stupid, or penny-wise, pound-foolish enough to litigate this sort of thing, but it's not unreasonable to think that there's always the exception that proves the rule.

Domino‘s is a pizza company, not a tech company. I would be surprised if they have the resources or are willing to have developers go over the software with a fine toothed comb.

The devs may not be lazy but the company probably doesn‘t want to spend time and effort on this, or, gasp, hire more people.

Actually, Domino's has spent a massive amount on tech over the last 15 years. They pioneered online ordering at scale, real-time order tracking and the system that runs the store allows corporate to get metrics on everything from individual pizza production times to length of trip and travel time. They have a huge tech dept.

Source - former franchisee

I don't believe accessibility is really mutually exclusive with dynamic sites anymore. As long as your scripts result in an accessible DOM, you can change it. Identifying the tracking scripts from the main scripts is just what ad blockers do, no?

I develop mobile apps for a large corp, who have decided to deliver maximum accessibility. And I can tell you that accessibility is hard to get right. I estimate implementing good accessibility and fixing accessibility bugs in Android takes around 20-25 % of our total effort.

For perspective, in the previous quarter Domino's reported revenues of over $800 million and profit of over $90 million.

But I guess spending a couple of days' worth of profit on complying with the law is just too much to ask.

Hell I will do it for a million in the next 6 months.

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