Court rules grocery store’s inaccessible website isn’t an ADA violation
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
It's important to remember making websites more accessible often benefits everyone in some way. e.g. providing an alt text description for images on your website obviously benefits visually impaired users, but it also benefits people who can't afford high bandwidth or people who are moving through a remote area. In the Microsoft framework these three scenarios are called:
1) Permanent (Visually Impaired)
2) Temporary (Can't afford high bandwidth)
3) Situational (In a remote area)
There's good online resources for understanding these concepts [1,2,3].
Anyway, for companies as big as WinnDixie, with $10B in annual revenue, they should be designing their websites to be accessible by everyone. For small businesses it would be nice if website building providers like SquareSpace and Wix made this as easy as possible for their users.
[1] https://www.iweb.co.uk/2016/10/inclusive-design-why-our-webs...
Doesn't the ADA already have some exemption for startup/small businesses where it doesn't apply if you have less than X employees?
Good to know
For example, one of the links provided elsewhere is to an EEOC website. The EEOC is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which only relates to employment, not to accommodating customers.
1: https://www.accessibility.com/blog/do-small-businesses-with-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Product_Accessibilit...
EDIT: By analogy, it's very like software portability. If you make your software support Windows and MacOS and assorted Linux distros and the major BSDs and Haiku, you'll get more users. But if you only target Windows you'll get 80% of the market, and Windows+MacOS will get you 90%, and after that you really need to think about whether it's a good investment to target more platforms. By all means, be accessible because it's the right thing to do or legally required, but it's not obvious that it's a sound business move.
In my view, it's about trying to provide more 'equal opportunity' in this world where it's financially feasible. This seems like a case where it is more often that not. Again, for medium+ businesses.
But I'd much rather work at a company that was 1% less profitable or live in a society that was 1% less wealthy and accommodated people with disabilities than one that left them in the gutter.
At least with webdev the problem is most people stumble into it and are not formally taught much about webdev specifically if at all. My undergrad never taught me a single thing about webdev practice. It’s not like, say, architecture, where you not complying with accessibility regulations will be taught formally, or later when you actually implement it some code compliance inspector is going to deny you a permit to build. It really is the wild west in webdev still.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to JavaScript frameworks, even when used to make SPAs. I think their downsides can be worth using them anyway and issues like accessibility can be overcome. They are a paradigm that are chosen too often without enough thought about the downsides and are a bad choice as default.
Having previously worked and taking a great interest in the schematic web last decade, progressive enhancement, accessibility, page size, etc etc the modern web is disappointing when what should be a simple HTML website instead be a blank white screen while it downloads 2mb+ of assets then a SPA bootstrap to show something loading json blobs embedded in the page and leaking information with the insistence of doing everything client side.
A startup building a new email client shouldn't be required to implement accessibility, certainly not from the start. There are enough accessible solutions in that space, and while accessibility would be nice, it would make the barriers of entry much higher.
On the other hand, Facebook, a company famous for prosecuting app developers for (mis)using their API, should absolutely be required to do so. If all your friends are on Facebook, you're not even allowed to build a more accessible Facebook client.
I also believe that we should legalize 3rd party apps if the original app is inaccessible, regardless of the TOS or presence of DRM.
Companies with large market share should also be actively required to facilitate interoperability, e.g. with APIs available on FRAND terms.
The contrast issues sometimes make design a bit harder, but it's totally worth it I believe.
There's a lot that automated checkers don't find. They can detect if an image lacks an alt attribute, they can't tell if an alt attribute's value is bad. Many are pretty good at at least flagging where there might be a color contrast problem for a human to double-check. They don't automatically find interactive components that aren't keyboard navigable or operable. They don't know when the DOM order of content doesn't make sense.
For me though, making sure keyboard navigation works properly early on speeds up the develop and test cycle. I also think that in many cases, perfect ends up the enemy of the good. It's a different conversation if a disabled person contacts someone about a site with a suggestion for improvement rather than it doesn't work at a all.
I somewhat question the need, as well—at some of the contrast levels we're talking about, if your vision is that bad, you should really consider enabling a magnifier, color filter, or even a screen reader.
What becomes really problematic, however, are PDFs, which are supposed to be a quick way to offer printed documents digitally, without too much extra work. Making those work with screen readers can take a long time, and there have been some cases where clients decided to just remove them from their websites. I'm not sure what to do about that, but I'm concerned we're creating barriers to sharing information, with anybody.
I suspect the Domino's ruling will be the winning one, but I don't know where that line gets drawn. Does my blog have to support accessibility? I don't sell anything, but it is public. Is the neighborhood softball league going to have to implement it? Commercial entities will probably have to comply, but I'm curious what the impact on the rest of the landscape will be.
Instead of putting the burden on web devs to create hacks around screen readers, how about the consumption software get better? There’s no reason it can’t detect a :hover and treat that as a JavaScript event flipping an aria tag.
Any type of menu should be able to display without scripting.
Edit: I regret how rude this comment is.
Please don't make a megamenu using CSS alone; for any keyboard-only user, sighted or blind, that's too many links to Tab through.
For a website, it could easily fall out of accessibility with an update to some library you rely on, and you wouldn't even know.
To me, the difference is that software is never finished and behaves differently depending on who's using it on what OS and what web browser, and is thus that much harder to keep compliant.
So the courts provide the incentives.
What are the rules on building the ramp on a public sidewalk?
The roadblock isn't always maintenance, it's doing the work up front to avoid that step being a problem later.
A bad contractor will have unskilled carpenters build unsound ADA compliance that requires expensive maintenance later. The same applies for web dev shops.
And, again, the only software that ever "finishes" is the software that falls into buggy disuse.
The same attributes that make the digital world much faster to create a solution than the analog world make it much more challenging to maintain over the long run, and more difficult to for most people to be able to tell the difference between good work and poor work.
I'm not saying we shouldn't expect the business world to be accessible online, just that I'm not convinced it's practical for smaller businesses. I think the end of that road is just forcing them all into Facebook's arms, which is the last place I want them to be.
It's an industry with some skilled workers but a lot that aren't. It's amazing to me, who watched the web develop as a non-professional, how many workers don't know basic things about HTML, CSS specificity, etc. That ignorance leads to the web being worse in many ways, not just less accessible.
I used to think that if you call yourself a "web professional" that part of that was understanding how to make things accessible, basically "it's your job, do your job;" if the so-called professionals did that then the problems of inaccessible sites would go away.
I do still think there are some fundamentals that every web professional should know and handling those takes care the large majority of barriers. I underestimated how vast the web profession is and the scope of possible accessibility problems and now think that even if web professionals become better educated, there will always be a need for specialists in accessibility (which is self-serving since I have become one).
ahaha what
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E...
I don't think it's as difficult as you make out to draw a line. An analogy: you can't have only a men's restroom in your Dominos store, but if can in your shed in your backyard for your friends if you want.
Edit: Now I've read TFA I learned the law already has a perfectly reasonable sounding standard that was ruled not to apply to the internet in this case
> Winn-Dixie had argued that the law defines "public accommodations" to only include physical locations like a store. A website isn't a physical location, and hence it's outside the scope of the law, the grocery chain argued.
I also wasn't suggesting the built-in should be mandated, just that if you replace it you either provide a way to downgrade to the built-in or make your replacement at least as accessibile. If you make your replacement usable with only a keyboard you'll be nearly there anyway.
If you absolutely must reinvent the wheel, then yes, you will need to put in a bit of extra effort to make it accessible.
I originally learned how to build accessible web sites and apps in 1996,when I interned at a startup. Most web standards make it easy to implement accessibility. It's generally only when building complex, custom stuff that it becomes harder, IMO. And (also IMO), that custom stuff tends to be fragile and break on other browsers or over time anyway, so I've avoided it ever since.
Letting the screen readers interpret things however they want seems likely to end up in a situation like browsers. Horrible shims everywhere to handle the idiosyncracies of how each reader interprets things.
What we need to identify is essential goods and services and any retailer offering such needs to provide reasonable accommodation if the method of the offering makes it feasible. The issue with some handicaps is that within each there are levels of impact. So that needs to be considered.
With regards to the statement earlier where I think not all should be required I am just having mental block in understanding how would I communicate to a blind person a site like ebay where users put up goods and the vast majority rely on visual cues. Now the ordering and payment functions surely can be adopted but when you have user driven content what is a vendor to do?
So, back again to legislation so that the courts don't much it up so much it becomes a paradise for predatory lawyers.
I'm not so sure. Keep in mind that ADA doesn't require that you provide everyone with the exact same way to do everything. For example, a taxi company doesn't have to equip every cab so that it can handle every disability that might be encountered. It is OK for them to only have part of their fleet equipped for various disabilities, and dispatch those when someone needs one.
With Domino's case, you have a lot of variations the customer has to choose from, and a lot of information that is on the website that would be slow and inconvenient to deal with by phone. Nutritional information, for example. It would be quite the hassle (for both the customer and the person at Domino's) to get nutritional information for all the options a customer might be interested in. I've spent 20 minutes at times fiddling with the build-your-own options checking out nutritional trade offs--that could have taken hours on the phone!
Domino's also usually has a ton of coupons available and a bunch of different specials. Dealing with all those over the phone would also take a lot of time.
Compare to a prescription refill at a pharmacy. There generally all you need to do is communicate your prescription number to the pharmacy. A phone refill consists of calling and when they answer saying "I need to refill prescription #NNNNNNNN".
I think it is quite possible that courts will ultimately agree that for ordering a prescription refill, at least at a pharmacy that hasn't gone overboard with coupons and deals, providing phone ordering is sufficient accommodation for blind people but for ordering pizza at a place with a large menu that has a lot of customization options phone ordering is insufficient accommodation.
If this is expected to be an ongoing prescription, typically the doctor will authorize N refills. The pharmacy can fill those refills with no further interaction with the doctor.
Many even automate this. The pharmacy I use for most prescriptions send me a text message when I should be near running out, and I just have to text back "yes" to refill it.
When you are out of refills, the doctor has to authorize continuing the prescription. Most pharmacies will handle that for you. You ask the pharmacy for a refill, they tell you that none are left, and that they will contact your doctor on the next business day.
In older times that was usually by fax or even by making a voice call to the doctor's office, but nowadays I think it is mostly via some sort of computerized system.
It's not actually your doctor that has to authorize additional refills or reissue a new prescription. It is often a "physician's assistant" at your doctor's office that handles this, especially when it is just renewing an ongoing prescription. There are also some kinds of nurses that can processes refills (there are something like 20 different kinds of specialized nurses--I forget which ones can processes prescription refills).
From the patient's point of view, then, it looks like this:
1. You get a prescription for some ongoing condition from your doctor,
2. When you need a refill, you ask your pharmacy.
3. Every so often there is a day or two delay in filling a refill because the pharmacy has to get your doctor's office to renew the prescription.
The plaintiff also mentioned privacy as one of the aspects he loses on when he goes in person. The phone solves that, but only if you're in a private place. I can order a refill from the app on my phone or their website basically anywhere, and no one around me knows.
It really wasn't hard back then.
However, for something as simple as a providing prescriptions, there is no argument that whatever was easy a decade ago won't work. They could either make a separate link/interface for accessibility purposes[0], or have done the right thing and designed it to be accessible from the get go, instead of trying to shoehorn an existing design into an accessible one. I'd bet money that the real problem here is that they built the site with little regard to accessibility, and are now dealing with the fallout. I'd wager that had they planned for an accessible site from the get-go, they would have built a site as good as it is now, and be accessible, with little extra cost.
[0] Frankly, some ordinary people like me might actually prefer the non-fancy accessible UI. I bet most of their non-accessible stuff has little benefit to me.
1. Build a simple HTML/Forms implementation that works (but obviously is not feature-rich).
2. Enhance (1) with JavaScript/CSS to add all your fancy UI cosmetics. If there's no JavaScript or CSS, then you get the unenhanced version by default.
Clearly for some things (e.g. Maps) that are inherently visual this isn't possible, but for the typical customer/business transactions we are talking about here, seems to me it should work.
> Clearly for some things (e.g. Maps) that are inherently visual this isn't possible
The first interactive online maps were static images with North, South, East, West arrows (links) to load the next image; having to load the whole web page again for the next part of the map is not nearly as nice as loading image tiles dynamically but it does work. Dyanamic tile loading also doesn't have to be done only by cursor or touch, you can still have on-screen arrows that can be tapped or keyboard operated to load more tiles (plus loading tiles based on keyboard arrow keys, WASD, etc. while the map is focused).
No, it doesn't. Your home also doesn't need to be wheelchair accessible, even if you throw a party and welcome anyone in.
> Is the neighborhood softball league going to have to implement it?
Sounds like a private club so no, it doesn't.
The outcome of this case would not change the answers to these questions.
> Commercial entities will probably have to comply
Yes.
The law in question applies to "places of public accommodation" which is a legal phrase. This case, and similar cases, hinges on one of two questions: 1) do the ADA obligations of physical places (like grocery stores) extend to their non-physical goods and services or 2) do websites, apps, etc. constitute "places" in their own right (e.g. does this particular law apply to Hulu, Tinder, etc.)?
In my opinion, the majority in this case was too focused on the laws lengthy, but clearly not comprehensive, list of example places, all of which were normally thought of as physical (but are not inherently so, even when the law was written), they didn't concern themselves enough that the clear intent of the law is to provide equal access to goods, services, etc.
A blog is not a public accommodation, so it does not have any accessibility requirement.
I like to think I did alright, and I was eventually told by the various disability groups that I did ... but I really, really think not having various screen-readers to test against was something of a handicap of its own.
* linux: orca, free and open source
* windows: nvda (free and open source), narrator (builtin, free)
* mac: voice over (builtin, free)
That this approach doesn't work is a sign that various vendors (including those who write screen readers) don't value those standards.
I once worked for a nonprofit group that advocated for blind people - they were involved with the standards. This was a frequent complaint: Google/Mozilla were sometimes the problem as they felt some of the pretty good proposals would hamper the evolution of the web, etc.
Being able to verify certainly makes it easier, but a standard like "Ensure all images have alt-text" does not require a screen reader to verify.
And the thing with standards is that often no existing product (screen readers in this case) will fully comply with the standard - so if a given screen reader fails on your site, it may well not be your site's problem. This was (and perhaps still is) the case with Web standards in general. In the old days, there was usually not a single web browser that was fully compliant.
If screen readers aren't compliant to the standard, then you need to test against as many screen readers as possible to ensure that your site is accessible. Users want a site that works, not a site that complies to an unimplemented standard.
1. There's hardly any support by screen readers of the `headers` attribute on table cells, to associate the correct row and column headers.
2. Dragon NaturallySpeaking has provided voice control of computers, including web browsing, for quite a while but it still can't identify an implicit form input label (that is, <label>Name <input name="name"></label> rather than explicit <label for="name">Name</label> <input name="name" id="name">).
A very common problem is assuming mouse-only input for buttons or menus, making them not work from the keyboard use.
Of course, this decision shouldn't be over-politicized; I only mention this because it is a relevant consideration in predicting the likelihood of an en banc rehearing, and the possible outcome.
My sense (as a former lawyer) is that en banc rehearings are somewhat more likely when the majority of the judges would vote to reverse. Given the composition of the Eleventh Circuit, this theory would predict that there wouldn't be a rehearing, which would leave this to SCOTUS to resolve.
https://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/
https://medium.com/@koalamango/web-accessibility-its-easier-...
For a lot of these websites it would necessitate a lot of manual work, the unfortunate reality is that although producing accessibility features is not 'hard' it can be time consuming and most corporates won't go for it.
Yes, but ... That's work they brought on themselves by not doing the right things in the easy way. Sure, once they're there, there is a lot of work to come back but that should be used as a reason to not use those frameworks in the first place.
Some accessibility is like adding alt-text. It adds work. But almost everything else is just not abusing the browser and is generally done simply by following the recommendations. And not trying to live on the bleeding edge.
Some of my past clients that have a marketing website for their physical store. But now they are getting emails from scummy lawyers trying to extort money from them for failing to be ADA compliant.
The changes are trivial for me but many people are forced to pay these lawyers to have someone "fix" the problem for them.
If the website provides an actual service or business transaction capability to the public, I think that is where the ADA starts to apply.
The law doesn't require fundamentally altering a product and it doesn't require unreasonable accommodations. The difference between an accessible and inaccessible website in terms of cost and effort, especially when set as an up-front expectation, is much smaller.
A marketing website exists to serve some purpose, what purpose could there be that would only be relevant to people who don't have disabilities? That doesn't mean everything on a site has to be accessible to everyone, there can be inaccessible "fluff" meant to make customers feel good about a brand while still allowing all users perform the important tasks like reading information about upcoming sales, details about products, contact information, etc. No one's going to sue over a glamour shot having bad or not alt text.
It's also bizarre that they refer to this mode as a high-contrast mode, since overall it doesn't really offer higher contrast ratios; it's really much more of a night mode (as the icon seems to indicate).
Also, their Accessibility Statement only lists phone numbers for how to give feedback. When you call one of those numbers, they ask if you want to leave a message for the President. When you tell them why you're calling, they tell you to use the general feedback form on the White House website (which is not mentioned/linked on the Accessibility Statement page. The last thing you want to do when collecting accessibility feedback is put a convoluted path like this in front of the user. Nearly everyone will just give up.
TLDR: the government can't even get this right on its own websites.
You might remember that way back in *2002* this very same question came up regarding Southwest Airlines's website, and it was ruled that it was not a physical place covered by the ADA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Now,_Inc._v._Southwest_....
I think what it speaks to most is that Congress needs to address the question once and for all to not have this issue decided over and over by the courts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Now,_Inc._v._Southwest_...
The last character of links ending in "." often gets eaten by HN. Writing it as %2e makes it work.
Commoditized API stories such as "order groceries" or "refill prescription" or "book a flight" would have a semantic level interaction instead of pixel one. Your user agent could act on your behalf through that API.
With that in place, flashy UI sites can be built on top of the same API and kill several avians with one rock.
If this was primarily a delivery service (think Instacart), I would probably be on the other side of this. But it's clear that these are physical stores, and the online refilling is clearly a minor enhancement that only saves a little time.
A pragmatic solution might be to offer people like Gill to phone in their prescriptions.
> A few years ago, Gil learned that the store offered customers the ability to fill prescriptions online. Ordering online saves customers time because prescriptions are ready when the customer arrives.
That implies that a person read the order and prepared it for pickup.
Unfortunately, in recent years, there's been a spate of lawsuit trolls primarily interested in a cash settlement and don't care if the problem is corrected or not. There are examples of this over both online and physical violations.
> And while filling a prescription in person might not be as private or convenient as placing an order online, the judges argued that it was good enough to satisfy the ADA.
> The Supreme Court reviews only a fraction of the rulings made by lower courts. However, the high court uses circuit splits as an important signal of which cases are worth taking. So the fact that the Ninth and Eleventh Circuit disagree makes it somewhat more likely that the high court will intervene.
I've never once told a pharmacist my order. I walk up to the drop-off, hand them my prescriptions, and walk away. You don't even have to say "hello" if you don't want to. When it's ready they tell you the total and hand you a bag with your medicine in it.