Well, that's OP's point - that's your opinion that it's easy. Maybe it's someone writing their own small business website for the first time and it's not so easy for them. They'd be more than happy to take the order over the phone for anyone unable to use their website. But it would be real shitty for their first official lesson in web development to be in the form of a court summons.
Ok, well some points though:
1. maybe someone shouldn't write their own small business website in the same way they shouldn't build their own entrance to the store.
2. someone first starting out should probably just make a simple html form. If so they are probably more likely to be accessible than many solutions made by big companies.
3. someone first starting out will even more probably choose some WordPress solution and that will probably be accessible enough to also meet the needs of their small site.
4. It is unlikely anyone is getting sued if they have made an effort to make things accessible, in your imagined scenario the novice making their own website for their cupcake business or whatever (and who does this, it's not 2002 anymore, it's 2022) don't know enough to think hmm, I better run this bit here through a screen reader just to see it works as i think, which is why my point 1 stands, the internet is now such a busy place that they should no longer build the entrance to their store wild west style even if they have the ability, but at least hire someone to do it who should be able to think of I better run this bit through a screen reader for them.
Youch, there goes a lot of literally world-changing startups, had this rule been in place in the past.
I mean in the case of Zuckerberg I guess he should have written his first website, although I don't think he considered accessibility at the time.
In the case of me and a lot of other people on HN, yes we should probably just write our own website, and I know in my case I will run it through Voiceover and make things work well enough that I doubt I would be sued under any EU or US legislation.
finally though my example of the wild west and the modern day, at some point things become so settled that it no longer makes sense for people to build their own thing unless that is what they do professionally, the analogy does not hold perfectly of course because websites are not physical buildings and someone can make a perfectly good and serviceable website for people if they use no JS, and no CSS that moves things into the order they should be in naturally or that makes elements of one sort resemble elements of another - for example no CSS that makes divs work as headings.
But in a lot of cases nowadays things need to be done by a professional, the adoption of accessibility codes just increases the requirement for professionalism slightly more.
Every business should have a website. But with the ever-mounting requirements it's probably safer for them not to have a website at all. There's no guarantee Shopify will fulfill all the obligations after all.
You're also right about having to comply with taxes. Those are already burdens that will stop some people in their tracks regardless whether their business idea is viable or not.
It's a lot easier to fix the issues the Justice Department mentions, and it's really a pretty short list, than it is to live with a disability. If your business is open to the public then it has certain responsibilities under the law.
Anyway phone calls don't necessarily work well for deaf blind folks, people with disorders like ALS (Stephen Hawking etc), and some folks on the autism spectrum.
The reason you think about this from the perspective of the small business owner is because if it's too overwhelming/difficult for the business then they just won't have a website at all. Then accessibility of the website doesn't matter, but everyone is worse off in this outcome.
They might put up a page for the business on Facebook, but if you're not on Facebook then tough luck. Or maybe there's no page at all and you have to go there in person to find out basic information like when the business is actually open. In these cases nobody wins. Even a broken website that's only partly usable would've been better, but that would be a liability for the business.
Given they already have a site and pay for hosting and a domain name, that seems like they might see having the site might be seen as a sunk cost.
Versus web accessibility guidelines are a collection of opinions and "best practices." Harder to measure and evaluate.
You kind of make my point though - sure, it's obvious when it's wrong. But it's not obvious if it's right, which is the actual fear. It's not even clear if it's possible to conclusively determine that it's right.
> text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality.
What does "without loss of content or functionality" mean? If the resized text flys off the side of the screen (but there's a scrollbar now), is that a loss of functionality? I sure can't read it as quickly anymore, because I have to scroll to it. So that's less functional to me, but that's my opinion. And there isn't a layout solution to that, because by definition making text larger will mean less text on the page, assuming full-page content.
Does "without assistive technology" mean my website needs to manually implement a Size Up/Size Down control, or can I assume your browser has it built in?
You might consider that pedantic. But I can take almost any of these guidelines and ask the same questions. And the answer is always something like "what a reasonable person would think." But we're developers, and highly disturbed by ambiguity. So saying "the law is to follow these guidelines" doesn't fit right when the guidelines are not empirically defined.
> For the visual presentation of blocks of text, a mechanism is available to achieve the following: Foreground and background colors can be selected by the user.
Does "use an extension for your user-agent to swap out the CSS" count? I can't think of a single mainstream website that lets me choose the color of my text.
> Web pages do not contain anything that flashes more than three times in any one second period.
What is a flash? What is an anything? Can I embed a flashing YouTube video in my user-generated content that I post to make your website in violation of the WCAG? Do you have to implement technical countermeasures to prevent me from doing that? Does YouTube have to prevent users from uploading such content? These are the kind of questions that have to be answered before we could seriously consider this as practical law.
Regarding resizing text, the WCAG guidelines provide the following example of a website that meets the standards: "A user uses a zoom function in his user agent to change the scale of the content. All the content scales uniformly, and the user agent provides scroll bars, if necessary."
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/resize-text.html
(There is also a note under the guideline that due to widespread confusion on this specific rule, as long as you meet the basic criteria listed under "sufficient techniques" you are considered OK.)
> Does "use an extension for your user-agent to swap out the CSS" count?
Yes: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Techniques/general/G156
> What is a flash? What is an anything?
A flash is "a pair of opposing changes in relative luminance that can cause seizures in some people if it is large enough and in the right frequency range" according to the definitions listed here, along with links to more detailed explanations and examples:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/three-flashes-or...
> Can I embed a flashing YouTube video in my user-generated content that I post to make your website in violation of the WCAG? Do you have to implement technical countermeasures to prevent me from doing that? Does YouTube have to prevent users from uploading such content?
Clarification on user generated content is part of the WCAG 3.0 working draft, which you can read here:
If the regulation is written with specificity, e.g “Must use size 12pt Times New Roman font” then the argument is: “But this one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t make sense for my $business. It’s not that I don’t want to comply but as a business owner I need common-sense rules that give me leeway to implement them in a way that makes sense for my company and my customers. Otherwise I risk getting sued and that wouldn’t be fair.”
And if the regulation is written with flexibility, e.g. “Must use a legible font of reasonably appropriate size” then the argument is: “But I just run a $business, how am I supposed to know what font is legible and what size is reasonably appropriate? It’s not that I don’t want to comply but as a business owner I need guidance so I know what it is I’m supposed to do. Otherwise I risk getting sued and that wouldn’t be fair.”
And around and around we go making painstakingly incremental progress because of bad-faith arguments.
"People with limited vision or color blindness cannot read text if there is not enough contrast between the text and background (for example, light gray text on a light-colored background)."
And if you bother to read the guidelines, they are relatively simple. There are regulatory bodies that are legal minefields and whose certification process depends partially on the whims of individual auditors (e.g. HIPAA), but WCAG is not one of those.
ADA requires reasonable accomidations, so it's hard is a reasonable excuse. If the accomidation is too expensive or too time consuming, it might not be reasonable.
But if you're trying to argue in court that your submit button can't be activated without a mouse because doing so is too hard, that's likely not going to pass muster, since virtually every other website on earth can easily figure out how to do it.