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Comment by ccleve | Hacker News Reader

On the surface, this sounds like a fine thing. Who doesn't want accessible websites?

But it really opens a can of worms. What's a place of public accommodation? With brick-and-mortar, it's easy; if you have a physical location open to the general public, it probably qualifies. But on the web? Does my personal website count? What if I sell t-shirts on it? What if I don't sell anything, but have forums where the public can discuss things? What about a site which is primarily about communications, i.e. speech? Does a requirement that you put ARIA labels on things amount to compelled speech?

What if accessibility standards change? Am I compelled to upgrade my site?

This issue is a lot hairier than the court imagines. Does the court really want to get into the issue of which websites need to comply and which don't?

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No, your personal website does not count. Yes, it does if you sell t-shirts. No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business. Yes, aria labels are compelled speech, but they're upheld[1]. There would be an exemption if the burden was "undue", but you're not going to meet that by claiming it's a few extra hours of work. If accessibility standards change, you are compelled to upgrade your site if you're under the ADA.

And yes, courts really do want to get into the issue of which businesses need to comply and which don't, regardless of whether they exist physically or as a website.

[1] https://www.ada.gov/briefs/uc_berkley_lof.pdf

>No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business.

But this means that almost every forum does count.

Most community forums are not businesses.

And if you're a business, just use forum software that has accessibility in mind.

Thanks for the link. It says: "The ADA’s nondiscrimination mandate states that no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by a public entity." So, it's based on "services", not a place of public accommodation, and it (the letter) applies to public entities only.

There's another question that this situation raises: is a website a "place", a "service", or a "product"?

If it's a place, then place-of-public-accommodation rules might apply.

If it's a service, then it's likely to be treated like other services. For example, the ADA says that a barbershop must be accessible, but it doesn't say that the barber must cut the hair of a disabled person. (That would come under anti-discrimination statutes, not the ADA. I think. Not sure about this).

If it's a product, then there are probably no rules at all. There's no law that say that your faucet must be accessible to a person who can't turn small knobs, or that your book must have large-enough type to be read by the elderly.

Again, as I say, sorting all this out is going to be harder than you think.

> But it really opens a can of worms. What's a place of public accommodation? With brick-and-mortar, it's easy; if you have a physical location open to the general public, it probably qualifies. But on the web?

If this is the question you want to answer, then you should agree with SCOTUS that this case should not be heard. A pizza delivery company falls very clearly on one side of the question. Instead, you should wait until a case comes up that actually squarely deals with the question of if an online-only site might qualify as a place of public accommodation.

The best you can get with this case as it stands is whether or not the website of a brick-and-mortar store must be accessible. And since trial hasn't even started, you don't even have any sense yet of what the interpretation of "the website must be accessible" even means.

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