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Comment by ikiris | Hacker News Reader

They still are if you talk to small business owners. Vast majority of people want to completely ignore accommodation and absolutely hate being told to do the bare minimum for other people, especially when it costs them money or time. Many of them rail against how the "government" or some other boogeyman lawyer is after them and how they're the victim when they ignore the needs, and are then cajoled into meeting legal minimum requirements.

This site especially has a vocal block of libertarian leaning self centered priviliged tech workers who see an affront in doing anything for anyone other than themselves, even if it is in their own best interest.

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I have progressive mobility loss. one time I went down the stairs to a bar, assuming there'd be an elevator back up - it was a big building. Bartender just told me to fuck off. I had to crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees with a friend behind me, holding my walker and ready to catch me if I fell.

if the bartender had been apologetic I wouldn't have felt so furious, but his utter disdain had my blood boiling.

Is there a reason he should be apologizing? He's a bartender, the only thing he's responsible for is serving you drinks, he has absolutely no say in the accessibility accommodations the building chooses to put in. I don't really blame him for telling you to fuck off if you kept pestering/berating him after he told you there's no an elevator. What exactly did you expect him to do?

I didn't pester or berate him. I asked him once. He didn't literally tell me to fuck off, he just said no and went back to cleaning up, clearly uninterested in helping me. It was a big, two-story building, like a complex, so I'm sure there was an elevator at least for employee use (nobody's dragging kegs down all those stairs.) He just made it very clear with his body language he wasn't interested in helping me, and that my question annoyed him.

But no, I didn't pester him, I just went to seethe in a corner and ask my friends for help.

Okay, so maybe don't lie on the internet and go around telling people a bartender told you to fuck off when all he said was "No" and we won't have to make assumptions about what you had to have done to get a service worker to tell you "Fuck off".

Also -- if the bar is on the first floor why would they be taking kegs upstairs in the first place?

If he let you into the employee-restricted part of the building to use the elevator he would probably get in trouble with management and lose his job. How is that a fair expectation?

I've been escorted through restricted areas before for accessibility reasons. it's pretty normal. assuming more than one person is working in the bar, all he needed to do is get someone to accompany me. he could also have checked with his boss to make sure it's okay. also, complying with the ADA isn't optional. I could have sued them, and I bet management would have liked that even less.

also, how is it a reasonable expectation for me to crawl on my hands and knees up a flight of grimy stairs in public? why don't you try it sometime? it'd give you a taste of what it's like for me to live.

> Is there a reason he should be apologizing?

Good manners? The business he represents is unable to accommodate a customer's needs. He should be nice about that. We have no indication that the bartender got berated.

An apology from someone who has absolutely no ability to influence those decisions or policies isn't a sincere one, and is basically coerced under threat of getting in trouble when someone complains to their boss that they weren't "understanding enough".

Are you American by chance? I find that lots of Americans seem to want and even feel they're owed that kind of false sincerity/kindness from "low skill" workers they interact with.

Also I doubt it got to the point of someone telling OP to fuck off just for asking if there's an elevator, there has to be more to that story.

Also also there's no indication that the same business that owns the bar is the same business that owns the building, maybe they just rent a space on the bottom floor. So again, not the bartenders responsibility to apologize for something they have no control over, and possibly they're not even a representative of the same business that owns the building that chose not to include the accommodations.

In regards to accessibility accommodations, the only responsibility I can see to the bartender is telling people that there's not an elevator when they ask and he seems to have fulfilled that.

'not the bartenders responsibility to apologize for something they have no control over, and possibly they're not even a representative of the same business that owns the building that chose not to include the accommodations.'

So if you have a serious situatuon, like a disabled person stuck in the basement, and the responce is just, leave them there? Like what has to happen for the barment to get off his ass and get the manager?

- 'Mate, you have a dead body at the bar!'

- 'Sorry pal, calling the police is not part of my job description'

To the customer, you represent the business. I see no reason why an able bodied man can't help, but if so, he should get someone who can. Whatever is the highest level manager or owner present has figure out the problem

Nobody can give a disabled person a helping hand anymore because there have been too many instances of disabled people suing good samaritans into oblivion when they fall and hurt themselves. At the very least an employee could be written up by their employer for touching a patron and at the worst they could be sued civilaly and have their lives ruined.

> Americans seem to want and even feel they're owed that kind of false sincerity/kindness from "low skill" workers they interact with

This is true to a sometimes weird degree, but...

> there's no indication that the same business that owns the bar is the same business that owns the building

A business is going to get judged on its physical space regardless of ownership or fairness.

There's a bar in Amsterdam with a rather unique tap collection and a remarkably annoying location, but every time I mentioned it to one of my friends there neither of those things would come up - it was always some variation of "oh isn't that the one where you have to walk up a sketchy spiral staircase to use the toilet?"

> A business is going to get judged on its physical space regardless of ownership or fairness

The portion you quoted from my post doesn't necessarily represent my actual opinion, I was just pointing out his statement doesn't always hold true.

But I don't disagree with you, you can definitely judge a business for it's physical aspects, however I don't think your friends go up to the bartender demanding they fix the sketchy stairs, and then get upset to the point your "blood boils" when they don't personally apologize to you for them. There's a difference between judging and complaining with your friends privately, and hassling someone that happens to work there over stuff they have no control over.

If American, you're leaving out the factor that the bartender is likely paid below minimum wage by the establishment thanks to our tipped wages laws.

That doesn't opt anyone out of common decency.

Parent post that I replied to was replying to grandparent which stated: "Good manners? The business he represents is unable to accommodate a customer's needs. He should be nice about that."

I think the disconnect may be if we're talking about an American bartender, they're likely getting paid below minimum wage (welcome to USA tipped wages) by the establishment. They have no power over the setup of the establishment and likely dislike both their boss and the customers. Source: I know a bunch of bartenders here in NYC.

You can call EMS in such a situation if you can afford to wait. Fire and rescue usually will not bill you, and may find the proprietor at fault.

> it costs them money

The value calculus of something always seems to be heavily dependent on who gets the bill.

> even if it is in their own best interest.

I'm one of those people blessed with knowing what's best for other people, but I restrict my efforts to giving them unwanted advice. I don't care to force it on them.

Your comments are usually much more substantive. Using the sliding slope argument for wheelchair access makes you look like a right dick.

When people tell you who they are, believe them the first time.

A guy my Dad knew had a business, and the parking lot could hold about 4 cars (his, and 3 customers), all right in front of the door. He couldn't blacktop the lot, because if he did he'd have to paint a designated accessible-only parking spot, which actually would take up two spots. So he had to leave it as a gravel lot, which made it harder for wheelchair access.

It isn't that he was against accommodations, it just didn't make sense for that location where each spot was right by the door.

Accessibility and building regs ironically combined to prevent a bookstore where I used to work from replacing a set of skinny, awkward, inward-opening doors which made the entire store a fire trap.

Why? Because state law required that any part of the building being modified be brought into compliance with modern building code. In this case:

- Replacing the doors with outward-opening doors would mean bringing the doorframe into compliance by widening it

- Widening the doorframe would mean widening the alcove into which it opens, and in a 19th-century masonry mid-rise every wall is structural

- Widening the door also means widening the short (3-4 steps) staircase leading up to it and bringing them into code by making them less steep

- Making the stairs less steep means they are now longer than the alcove and protrude beyond the property line onto the sidewalk

I read years ago that there was a minor industry of lawyers looking at satellite photos to find motels with a swimming pool, and then suing them for the pool not being ADA compliant.

The usual result was the pool got filled in, as it was too expensive to upgrade it.

Who came out ahead? Nobody but the lawyers.

"Actually helping people is bad" is an extremely attractive narrative that sticks very effectively. It is regularly used to resist all manner of useful systems from welfare to charitable giving to accessibility.

"I read years ago that _nonspecific_thing_" should be a red flag for making broad judgements about the merits of accessibility. One story about "welfare queens" poisoned millions of people against anti-poverty measures for generations.

> should be a red flag

I'm sorry I don't have a photographic memory. But hey, a simple google search comes up with:

"In California, serial plaintiffs and their lawyers have found these cookie-cutter lawsuits to be lucrative as plaintiffs can claim statutory damages, compensatory damages, treble damages and attorneys’ fees."

https://hotellaw.jmbm.com/ada_defense_lawyer_pool_lift_l.htm...

Think of how much easier this process will be with websites. Just crawl and email legal threats. Lawyers will get paid again. Some tech people might even go along for the ride.

Who did pay those lawyers?

The lawyers settled with the motels for $$$.

I do not live in the USA so I'm woefully ignorant of US legal matters but how does a lawyer, having identified a breach of a federal law, then get a payment from the miscreant ? I mean the only way that comes to mind is to write to the offender saying "You're breaking the law but if you send me a cheque I won't tell anyone". For a lawyer in particular that doesn't strike me as a sustainable business activity !

So there's obviously something I'm missing here ... would you care to explain ?

The lawyer needs to find a person that has suffered as a result in order for the suit to be valid. So they team up with someone who is unable to use the facility as a result of it not being compliant. They sue, and split the money. Often, all that is needed is for the lawyer to demand compensation since it is far easier and cheaper to just offer them a few thousand dollars to settle than it is to hire a lawyer and figure it out in court.

The ADA is interesting because, to my understanding, the law asks for ‘reasonable’ accommodation without defining what that is. So it leaves it to the courts to decide. It is reasonable that new building should be completely wheelchair accessible. But is it reasonable for architecturally or historically significant sites to be modified for wheelchair accessibility? That’s where the lawyers come in.

Punitive damages, I'd think. "you weren't compliant now you have to pay x. Because lawyer y brought the suit, that lawyer gets the money"

The space being wider and the spaces being close to the door are two separate accommodations. Leaving it gravel leaves one solved (distance) and simply avoids the other (width) completely while ignoring that caused a 3rd (gravel if you do manage to get out). The guaranteed width is so there is a standard amount of space to exit the vehicle, see the drawing at https://www.ada.gov/restriping_parking/restriping2015.html

But yes it gets increasingly hard to have a good solution for everyone when there are so few spaces.

Generally, if you're asking person X to spend money they don't want to spend, claiming that it's in their own best interest, it probably isn't.

What is best interest is debatable, but we know for a fact that some people show no interested in survival of people around them - like drunk drivers.

Or like management of Grenfell tower in UK was asked to address fire safety problems, they didn't want to spend the money and about 100 people burned alive. Also the building is gone.

Or like that apartment block in US that collapsed recently.

Or like management of Bhopals fertiliser plant, that failed due to lack of maintenance and produced positions gasses that killed thousands of people, ofcourse starting woth employees of the plant. The CEO ofcourse escaped to US and US is refusing to extradite him.

In fact I don't know how to apply your advise to anything safety related, there are literally millions of examples of people saving a bit of money on safety and dying as a result and killing people around them.

Hackernews: "Externalities happen to other people, now why are my gas prices so high?!"

You could say that about all of taxes.

>> some other boogeyman lawyer is after them

or you know there really could be... There is entire sub-group of lawyers that are ADA Trolls, just like there are Patent Trolls, and Copyright Trolls. They exist not to make business more accessible, but to line their pockets and make business hard for everyone, these lawyers give the ADA regulations a bad name and it a real and actual problem.

>>Vast majority of people want to completely ignore accommodation and absolutely hate being told to do the bare minimum for other people

Ummm no. That is not actually true. the problem is often times the regulations are inflexible, and unaccommodating themselves businesses are often put in position where they simply can not comply for some reason or another to every letter of very regulation (of which are vast, vague, and complex)

Business owners also do not like to be continually threatened with heavy fines, and government violence in order to operate their business.

>This site especially has a vocal block of libertarian leaning self centered privileged tech workers

it is very sad that we have come to the point where only authoritarian control via threat of violence are to be seen as the "acceptable" solution to a social problem. At one point the liberal solution was anti-violence now it seems the only acceptable solution for vocal block of ill-liberal self centered privileged tech workers is to use the power of government violence to force their will upon others believing in their own moral certitude that their world view is the "correct" one, and anyone that disagrees has to be selfish immoral bigot or uncaring capitalist scum, or other such thing......

Liberal solutions instead would be using other incentives to persuade people to voluntary solutions

I just want to point out the juxapostion of this comment and the sibling comment where the commenter described their mobility issue and crawling up the stairs, in the context of the parent comment.

We do not know the full story of that comment. Remember all stories have 2 sides we only have one. Even taking the story at face value all we really know is the one employee of the bar was an asshole. Asshole exist in the world and no amount of regulations is going to change that, in fact the inverse is generally true in that more regulations simply create more assholes (i.e malicious compliance)

You don't have to restrict yourself to that comment, ask any physically disabled person they'll have a story of having to crawl or being trapped in an inaccessible space. The bartender is not the issue, the issue is the systemic lack of basic human dignity and access afforded to the disabled.

Yep, if you look at their comment history, you can see it case in point. Rants about how fiat currency are the biggest fraud in history, etc. Every talk of government is using the phrase threats of violence.

Another one talking about the virtues of Trump government. Its kind of surreal in its divergence from reality.

And what is your point? The practical effect of these ADA trolls is the complete shuttering of useful things that could not be made accessible in a reasonable fashion. E.g. universities have removed websites because they don't have the funding available to make the resources accessible. It's not trivial amounts of money, the case I was remembering was a court ordering the subtitling of years of video courses, ... or their removal.

I really feel for people with disabilities, but there's a heavy profit motive to abuse the ADA, and that's what causes people to hate it. There's other issues as well like rising costs of construction and doing anything productive due to red tape that are no doubt related, but what people see are the ADA trolls.

If all that people see are the ADA trolls they need to spend more time looking at their disabled brothers and sisters.

At the end of the day the question is, are we content to let them crawl? Are we content for the public space to be segregated? Would we allow this for our family or ourselves?

If we consider these things unacceptable then we need regulations. Regulations come with drawbacks and avenues for abuse, all of them, but it shouldn't be the primary and prevalent focus when they're put into place to protect marginalized sections of society. In a healthy society, I would expect of a tech forum to mainly be discussing tech tips and methods to comply with these norms. The truth is people don't want to do the minimum work to help these people, western societies are incredibly individualist and every effort or capital spent on helping others is seen as personal injury. It's this mindset that makes it so even in new products and constructions, the simplest norms aren't applied. I think there needs to be a change of mindset, because the first thing that should come to people's minds when reading this article is the social good that will come of it, not the reactionary examples of abuse.

The trolls are very visible and could eventually erode support for the ADA in the general public. This is true for any vulnerable population, actually. Asking people to ignore them never works well, there needs to be legislation work that specifically targets them so that the ADA doesn’t lose popularity.

I'm not asking people to ignore them, I'm asking for a hierarchy of concerns with regards to the ADA. The first concern being the acknowledgement of the good it does and its necessity.

It's arguable, but in my opinion you've got the chain of causality backwards. People here focus on the trolls because the ADAs popularity is low, they don't like the effort it entails, and they don't like government regulations in general, and they'd just as much not have to apply norms at all.

I can tell you the vast majority of businesses are not ADA compliant and do just fine.

The trolls are what make the ADA less popular, I’ve seen it happen in LA (a place where compliance and awareness is high)…some grifter was actively trying to figure out how to lodge an ADA complaint against the bagel shop I was in. It was utterly obvious, and this place, being in LA, had done everything right in terms of accessibility (the doors don’t have to be mechanical, just easy to open and wide enough to get a wheelchair through). You get a few bad actors in an otherwise good thing and they give the entire program a bad reputation.

Now…I don’t quite remember much when the ADA has done good, but I do remember that one troll shopping for a settlement check. This is the popularity problem the ADA faces.

>>because the first thing that should come to people's minds when reading this article is the social good that will come of it

Wishing does not make it so, and human psychology does not work that way and never will. if you continue to base your responses of this flawed view of reality you will continue to be disappointed.

One must plan for how humans actually are, you know reality, not how we wish things were. This is often the problem with regulations, economic policies, etc. People crafting them are crafting them for a population of people that does not actual exist, so they always fail

Humans are tribal, that tribe is generally viewed to max out at about 100 people or so, any group that is larger than that is going to be an abstract concept not something that can be held deeply personal. For a pure altruist motive that is the target, that is why local community groups are far more effective at charity than national programs, the people are more personally connected.

>>western societies are incredibly individualist

Through out history collectivist societies always fail because they are incompatible with human psychology. A collectivist society must stay small, it could never be the size of a city let alone a nation state. Individualist pursuits are the best way to organized large groups.

Collectivism works at a small, family or tribe level, not for a mass population

I don't know if you intend it that way, but it comes off very patronizing. You cannot ascribe the status quo to human nature, and paint people who seek to change it as naive idealists.

Society is changed by writing laws and changing minds. Cultures evolve, people acquire new perspectives on issues based on their peers and the discussions they partake in. Regulations are being written and discussions are being held as to their moral importance. No one is content with wishing on a star for a better world.

As for collectivism, you only need to look across the Atlantic for examples of functional western societies which strike a different balance than America between individualism and collectivism.

You can also look at the past, back when black people weren't allowed in white businesses and black schoolgirls had to be escorted by the state to be allowed to attend school. People didn't ascribe to a fatalist view back then, they believed things could change and they fought for it.

>You can also look at the past, back when black people weren't allowed in white businesses and black schoolgirls had to be escorted by the state to be allowed to attend school.

I always find this argument ironic given the Jim Crow laws you are referring to were government regulations that required said discrimination, they were collectivist policies being imposed upon individuals. Would discrimination still have occurred absolutely, but it would not have been as wide spread nor as abusive. Only government action can cause the kind of oppression seen, only government has that monopoly of violence to allow such perversion of morality, that is the hazard of putting your faith in government.

Just like the EU nations you admire so much you only seem to want to ever talk about the positives of this "balance" of regulation and never talk about the enumerable negatives that come from those policies

Do you believe the EU is rainbows and unicorns and none of the their policies have any downsides, that the American model is 100% evil, and the EU model is 100% good? are you that much of a "naive idealist".

I do not claim the American model is perfect, though I am pretty sure we will differ on where the root cause of most of the problems are (hint I blame federal overreach for most of America's problems)

>>Society is changed by writing laws and changing minds. Cultures evolve, people acquire new perspectives on issues based on their peers and the discussions they partake in

Culture evolves yes, and laws always follow culture, not the other way around. you can not regulate ethics or morality, and attempts and trying always fail.

That is my point. The regulations that work, that do not have massive corruption, or massive amounts of unintended consequences or regulations that only need to control a small portion of outliers in society. to prevent actions that are viewed by the vast vast majority (not just a plurality, or even a simply majority) as abuse.

When "democracy" passes laws and regulations based on plurality, or simple majority you run into all kinds of problems, these are compounded even further if the regulation are acted via fiat authority by an unelected administrative state.

The fact that discriminatory laws exist does not invalidate the usefulness of the rule of law. Jim Crow was very much in line with the cultural beliefs of the population. Culture does not absolutely precede law, law and culture feed each other. A recent example are the rates of acceptance of gay marriage before and after the laws passed.

>> Do you believe the EU is rainbows and unicorns and none of the their policies have any downsides, that the American model is 100% evil, and the EU model is 100% good? are you that much of a "naive idealist".

I see now you were not being patronizing by accident, but are willfully insulting. Painting a caricature of my argument does not strengthen yours.

I'm just telling you what a fair number of people think. Separate what I am telling you from what I may believe.

'It's not trivial amounts of money, the case I was remembering was a court ordering the subtitling of years of video courses'

Why can't a university afford subtitles, this is not a tall order, its a job a part-time first year student could do.

Then go after ADA trolls, instead of advocating effectively that disabled people (26% of the population) should just accept dehumanization and utter humiliation through no fault of their own and that they cannot change simply because society considers it too expensive for them to have basic dignity.

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