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Comment by recursive | Hacker News Reader

> Making your site accessible isn't just a good practice, in the US, it is the law. Courts have rules that the ADA applies to web sites along with any other type of business.

This seems to imply that web sites are businesses. If my hobby sites are subject to this, I'm going to be in trouble.

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If you're not selling anything, then you're not engaged in commerce and you wouldn't qualify as a "public accommodation" and the law doesn't kick in for you.

(Complete list of public accommodation is 24 USC §12181(7)--https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/12181).

Non-profits don't necessarily sell anything but they've been sued by the ADA for violating the laws on accessibility.

ADA is the American disabilities act, it can’t sue anyone.

Sorry, I meant American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). We got sued under the ADA by the AAPD.

"Sell anything" is probably a bit too restrictive, but summarizing case law on what counts as "affecting commerce" is difficult. In general, you need something that looks like a service or good being provided (even if no money is actually paid for it). Something like Youtube would absolutely fall under the ADA--it's clearly analogous to a movie theater.

Let’s just be honest - anyone can sue anybody, but you’re probably not going to have problems under the ADA unless you become visible for some reason (success, expressing the wrong thoughts loudly, service necessity for a community, etc).

Today I learned Ikea is non-profit....

Right at the top of that page:

> The term “commerce” means travel, trade, traffic, commerce, transportation, or communication

It is pretty funny that their definition of commerce includes commerce, but seems like communication is on the list as well.

Seems to be a common thing. One of my favourites from The Canadian Customs Tariff Schedule, Ch. 71 § 4.B:

> The expression "platinum" means platinum, iridium, osmium, palladium, rhodium and ruthenium

...and you'd be OK in the EU too.

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/web-accessibil...

One of the big linked sites was Beyonce's web site.

How big an issue this is depends largely on how big your hobby site is.

Update: I think this might even be wrong, its likely personal sites are fine. It's still good practice though!

The size of any of my sites is well below 1 milli-Beyonce.

Unless there's a law I haven't heard of (definitely a possibility) it would be necessary to classify it as a commerce site for the law to apply.

Taking a quick look at the site, Beyoncé has a store page on it, which would be sufficient to classify it.

With regards to the ADA, commerce means more than just "Selling stuff" so I'd be careful making assumptions about that.

Selling stuff is probably sufficient but not necessary to qualify as commerce.

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