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Comment by lmilcin | Hacker News Reader

> Create Inequity for the Blind

I abhor this sentence.

Think about this, if you organize a 5k run with cash prizes, are you "creating inequity" for the people who can't run? Does this mean we should make it unlawful to organize events that promote sports, because some part of population can't take part in it?

If an application makes it easier for 99% of the people to vaccinate but does not make it easier for 1%, does it mean the application is bad?

Does existence of the application make it more difficult for the blind to vaccinate?

Also, think for a moment -- if everybody else vaccinates it also protects blind people, without having them to do anything.

Waiting for perfect solutions when a solution is needed is best way to paralyze any organization and have no solution at all.

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This isn't a cash prize for a fun run, it's a bunch of government run websites that are meant to facilitate a necessary and potentially life saving service to all residents. By making these sites inaccessible, they make it harder to access the vaccine.

Article> Many covid vaccination registration and information websites at the federal, state and local levels violate disability rights laws, hindering the ability of blind people to sign up for a potentially lifesaving vaccine, a KHN investigation has found.

> If an application makes it easier for 99% of the people to vaccinate but does not make it easier for 1%, does it mean the application is bad?

If that 1% is a protected class (disabled) then it's illegal.

What about phone lines? These should also be illegal because deaf people can't use them.

From here[1]:

> In the U.S., every phone company is required to connect persons who dial 711 to a [Telecommunications relay service] call center from a working number. In July 2007, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that the 711 requirement extended to VOIP telephony.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_relay_servi...

Deaf people access phone services through TTY/TDD. People who are deaf and blind can do the same with Braille.

The most unusual tech support call I received was from a deaf person. I worked at an ISP that supported UUCP (at the time, mid-90s). The deaf person was familiar with UUCP and wanted to set up an acccount. I really feel sorry for the translator, having to listen to weird jargon involving eunichs with modems.

Well, I see you are citing materials which you did not read / don't understand.

"Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed "equal protection" under the law to all people. Under the doctrine, as long as the facilities provided to each "race" were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by "race", which was already the case throughout the states of the former Confederacy. The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase "equal but separate".[1]"

Nothing to do with disabilities.

It is plain stupid to think you can require all services to be equally available, in the same way, shape and form to both normal, blind and deaf people and disallow services that can't be enjoyed by all, equally.

Existence of blind people should not be a reason to disallow rock concerts.

Plain stupid, eh? The DOJ has disagreed with you as recently as 2011, but the ad hominem really seems to work for you.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/disability-rights/separate-not-equ...

And, again, a rock concert isn't equivalent to a government service. You've invented a notion that everybody needs to have the same exact experience, which is weird. The government needs to provision services equally to everybody. If they aren't funding their call centers for adequate access, then it isn't equal access.

But anyway, I go to dance parties with Deaf people (or did, before Covid) and they love music with lots of bass.

I'm sorry, this is a very bad take and analogy. A run inherently excludes people who cannot run. But a website need not inherently exclude the blind; websites are accessible to the vision impaired by default and it takes extra work to render them inaccessible. We can and should do better.

Other people in this thread (and in our world) have taken a different interpretation, arguing that people should be forbidden from making new public services, including online publishing, that don't work for users with some disability. (For example, someone else in this thread said that web sites need to be annotated with accessibility information in order to facilitate interoperability with assistive software. In that account, that is extra work that someone might otherwise not do, rather than just refraining from breaking something.)

The popularity of versions this position suggests to me that there is a need for analogies and arguments that defend the idea that you should, in fact, be able to do stuff that some people will benefit from/be able to participate in and others can't/won't.

People seem to be confused here. What’s required is accommodation not equivalency. The important bit is things like color blindness can often but not always be accommodated.

Government websites need to accommodate the blind where possible, but that doesn’t prevent them from making a video game which they are unable to play. Similarly, companies can discriminate if someone is unable to preform core job functions after reasonable accommodation. Aka, no blind school bus drivers.

It’s because Covid information is just text and basic forms that they have the obligation. The requirements for 508 compliance are really quite basic, where projects trip up is treating it as some sort of tacked on requirement rather than basic functionality. Spending months on style choices etc then trying to tack on compliance when it’s “done.”

> websites are accessible to the vision impaired by default and it takes extra work to render them inaccessible

Is this really the case? If I build a website that entirely consists of a WebGL canvas, E.G. for a 3d graphics demo, I doubt screen readers would be able to make sense of it. But I didn't necessarily do any extra work to impair this usage, it was just a byproduct of the tools I used.

> for a 3d graphics demo

Presumably if you’re using WebGL for 3D graphics, it’s for something visual that can’t be seen by the blind, in which case you could have an alternative (or quite literally an “alt” tag) text version accompanying it.

I know you picked that example arbitrarily. But the GP’s point about “extra work to render them inaccessible” is, by and large, true. HTML by default is accessible.

"HTML, by default, is accessible" is at best a massive oversimplification. Arranging react elements in a certain way can break them. If you're writing out <div>s and tables like it's 1999 then sure, I'll take your word that this usually works with screen readers. But it's not 1999 anymore. It's a non-trivial task to make a modern website accessible to screen readers. My past workplaces had dedicated accessibility teams ensuring that the site and mobile apps were usable with a screen reader.

The point is that "websites are accessible to the vision impaired by default and it takes extra work to render them inaccessible" drastically trivializes the work it takes to make a moderately complex web accessible. And it falsely accuses those who don't have the resources to do this of deliberately making the site inaccessible.

> If I build a website that entirely consists of a WebGL canvas, E.G. for a 3d graphics demo

If all you're trying to do is make a website that lets people schedule appointments, then all of that shit is ludicrous "extra work."

Title II of the ADA applies to public entities, federal, state and local. I'd argue that the government funded and mandated vaccine campaign falls under Title II.

Title III of the ADA applies to public accommodations. Vaccination websites run by private entities have a legal obligation to make their sites accessible to disabled users. Luckily for businesses, accessibility is commodified on many software stacks, and there are plenty of companies and professionals they can hire to make their sites accessible. Also, if they give it even a second of forethought, they can build their sites with accessibility in mind and save themselves time and money in the future.

Or they can save even more money by not making the site in the first place!

Seems like a great opportunity for a competitor to get easy market share, then.

If your solution is to assume everyone else will get the vaccine accept for blind people because the websites are inaccessible when are you going to pass laws mandating the vaccine? With out these laws we may never reach true heard immunity and blind people will never be as safe as people who were able to get the vaccine. I realize this is a strawman argument since were at the point where blind people should be able to get help from other sources besides websites now that the initial rush for vaccination has died down. I feel comfortable arguing this point though because assuming that society in general will always do the right thing so it's ok to exclude certain segments from being able to be proactive in helping them selves is crap. As someone who's totally blind I had no way of knowing if people were socially distancing, wearing masks, etc. I am incredibly fortunate that I had strong family support through the pandemic, I don't want to think about how difficult this would have been for me if I didn't.

My 2 cents has always been it’s really up to the business. The business should do what it needs to maximize profit. If catering to the 0.3% of people who are vision impaired helps to that end, go for it. In this case, the 99.7% of people who can use the site are the target audience — and that’s good enough.

I’m not at all unsympathetic to the blind. I just think it’s a client problem and needs a client side solution.

I have severe allergies, ones where I could die if I ingest very little of multiple common foods. I NEVER expect a restaurant to cater to me as adjusting to my diet would put them at a competitive disadvantage. It’s expensive, time consuming and it’s a minuscule percentage of their customers.

Instead I carry an epipen and use my judgement or am responsible for myself. Sometimes that means I call ahead, don’t eat, w.e.

In this case, I’m sure the blind individuals can figure out how to get a vaccine. I’m sure their doctors will help and provide guidance. I doubt most of my friends and family got their vaccines without even knowing this site exists.

> The business should do what it needs to maximize profit

It’s a good thing this has never had unintended negative consequences.

Laws matter more than your 2 cents. And governments aren't businesses.

Accessible web sites exist. It isn't a client problem.

You are at least a bit unsympathetic.

> Think about this, if you organize a 5k run with cash prizes, are you "creating inequity" for the people who can't run?

By definition yes.

That's a useless definition then.

You are creating inequity by engaging here, because a mentally disabled person somewhere cannot follow.

I have a mental disability which tends to make me excessively verbose and to expect me to never communicate naturally would also create an inequity.

You forgot inequity for children and for ESL people as well who also have trouble following complex texts. I sometimes go out of my way to rephrase or edit what I say to be more accessible.

Inequity can only be eliminated by killing literally everybody on the planet, after which we're all equal because we're all dead. Equity as an ultimate moral good is utterly and totally moronic. This doesn't mean the concept of "equity" doesn't have merits as a sort of heuristic for what we should strive for. In this case, increasing the number of people able to be vaccinated for the collective good of the community and reducing the sense of exclusion that disabled people feel as well as helping them avoid death. Sort of a win/win really.

>if you organize a 5k run with cash prizes, are you "creating inequity" for the people who can't run?

Yes.

>Does this mean we should make it unlawful to organize events that promote sports, because some part of population can't take part in it?

No.

>If an application makes it easier for 99% of the people to vaccinate but does not make it easier for 1%, does it mean the application is bad?

>Does existence of the application make it more difficult for the blind to vaccinate?

Creating a solution that satisfies the majority will reduce the demand to create any solution including one that the blind can use on their own. 99% being satisfied does not mean the 1% will not complain since it is one of the most effective means of pressuring for a solution that makes it easier for that 1% to vaccinate. 1% of the US is MILLIONS of people. Also since vision issues correlate to age, and age correlates to susceptibility to COVID, it's a particularly BAD for these particular millions to have hurdles to overcome regarding access.

>Waiting for perfect solutions when a solution is needed is best way to paralyze any organization and have no solution at all.

It's downright trivial for a government to require a baseline of accessibility for a website and there was more than a year and a half of lead time in this scenario with an insanely large budhet. We're not talking about a website shoved out the door 2 weeks after the pandemic was announced to help the public made by a guy in his basement. This is a website where accessibility was always a paramount concern, it honestly wouldn't matter a whit if the site was clunky, ugly, made with the latest frameworks, etc, but it was REALLY important that it was accessible given lack of accessibility has a body count attached to it.

Those disability advocates need to watch their tongue though and respect how great of a job these web developers did! Frankly they owe them their lives. They should be kneeling in gratitude and recognize that an ADA non-complaint website they can't use should be recognized as a success. All those laws they protested to get so this wouldn't happen can and should be ignored, and as this thread says, we can just add accessibility down the road.

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