Who is filing thousands of disability lawsuits against businesses? | Hacker News Reader

Who is filing thousands of disability lawsuits against businesses?

wsj.com

17 pointsBostonFern7 comments

It's simple abuse and monetization of the law. These firms issue lawsuits to businesses of all sizes to establish the threat then turn around and offer 'consulting' services of course with high fees as the purport to be the only ones that can help the business to fix the problem such that they won't be sued again.

It won't change because to go after them or change the law would be political suicide.

I get that blind people don’t ride electric bikes and a lawsuit is out of line for sure when a friendly “hey your site is inaccessible to people with disabilities” might suffice.

But maybe folks should just make their sites accessible.

Blind people aren’t the only people who use assistive technologies and the ADA exists for a good reason. Install an a11y grading browser extension and see just how many sites are virtually inaccessible to disabled people for all the evidence you need to see how people with disabilities will so often not be treated equitably.

Accessibility is an operating system and browser responsibility. It is effective at integration at this level. It is not effective to ask every webmaster to be responsible for the problem individually. This is nonsense. Modern operating systems and web browsers do a good job at owning this without bulky scripts on the front end ruining experiences for the remaining 99%.

Right and it’s the responsibility of a webmaster to use those tools OSs and browsers provide to make accessible apps.

Semantic HTML with good useful labels goes a huge way. It’s not that complicated… unless you’re using a bunch of bulky front end scripts that clobber the native accessibility features.

Also, screen readers in particular have not historically been the purview of OSs at that level, hence the several different proprietary programs that help people interface with their computer. Apple products from what I’ve heard are an exception though

I find these lawsuits despicable. Imagine being a hard working stressed out small business owner working long hours on low margins, only to have some busybody or predatory law firm try to end your lifeline. These plaintiffs need to PAY for the conveniences they think they’re entitled to. Sorry but life isn’t always fair and everyone has difficulties. And not everyone is a pawn at a big megacorp that can afford to comply with these laws. These frivolous lawsuits indicate the law needs to be changed and it should be done retroactively with fines for these predatory law firms.

As noted, it also paints the blind as the bad guys here when it's primarily the law firm.

Since the WSJ is a bastion of free enterprise and the rule of money, and the law firms bringing these suits are enterprises making money legally, I would not expect them to sound unhappy with the suits. The lawyers here seem like private equity in a way, seeing a way to profit off of someone else regardless of impact.

It’s not really that hard to make a website sufficiently accessible. It costs money and time, but so do ramps. A business owner in the US should be well aware of their obligations to the public.

> Sorry but life isn’t always fair and everyone has difficulties.

The difficulties “everyone has” kind of pale in comparison to things like not being able to see well or at all, having limited motor skills, not being able to walk… etc

It’s fundamentally dehumanizing to suggest that disabled people don’t deserve to be given the things they need to live as equitable a life as possible. They’re people, they deserve to be able to interact with our society in whatever way best meets their needs whether that be by requiring elevators in tall buildings, ramps along with every set of exterior stairs, or that you build your public business’ website so that everybody who uses the web can access it by way of screen reader.

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