Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-07/blind-person-dominos-ada-supreme-court-disabled <comment><USER3> Blind programmer here. Just a glimpse of my life. Blind people have to live in an environment where X% of web sites and programs are not accessible, where X varies somewhere from 20% (for web sites) to 50% (for desktop applications). That's just my approximation of the state of accessibility these days. Now imagine that you live in the world where you don't know which printer or wi-fi router to buy, since maybe half of them you won't be able to use. Imagine that you cannot order from some online stores. You cannot fly certain airlines. And apparently you cannot order some pizza online. Worst of all you don't magically know whether a web site is accessible or not. You just go to web site and try it, spend some time to learn the layout - it typically takes blind peple longer to familiarize with new web sites, spend thirty minutes to fill out the details of your order and then when you try to click the submit button, you figure out that it wouldn't click for some reason. Being a developer you open HTML code just to realize that this is some weird kind of button that can only be clicked with the mouse, but not a screenreader. But hey, your screenreader can route the mouse cursor to this button and simulate a click. So you try a real mouse click and it still doesn't work for some reason, and I have no idea why. Finally, you give up. I hope I managed to convey a typical sense of frustration with a web-site that is not that accessible. I do get arguments of other people that it might be hard for small businesses to make their web sites accessible. and I don't know where to draw a line, but I need to say that Domino's is a large enough company and even though I hate counting other companies' money, I must say they're big enough to be able to afford to make their web-site accessible.

<comment><USER4> Is there a lint-like tool that you would recommend to developers to scan their web application for accessibility issues (and ideally suggest alternative best-practices)?

EDIT: found this Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List with 132 items listed! Anyone have advice on which ones are best?

[https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/](https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/)

<comment><USER4> On a related note, our app has a lot of charts. What are the best practices for making time-series graphs accessible? I'd imagine just listing the values wouldn't be particularly helpful for graphs with hundreds or more points - <USER2> being able to programmatically summarize the interesting takeaways from an arbitrary chart would probably be useful for our sighted customers as well.

<comment><USER5> Just pondering whether there is a system that converts line graphs into series of rising and falling tones, while a voice reads out the x axis markers.

If you have multiple series, you could have different sounds running in parallel - sin wave, square wave or perhaps musical instruments each denoting a different series.

That might actually be usable if there was an automated system for creating them on the fly.

There's also this kind of approach [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Small personal story:

My father is an amazing salesman. He used to sell for Schwan's food in the 90's (those big yellow trucks that delivered frozen food to your door every 2 weeks).

He had a blind couple (husband and wife) that were on one of his routes, and they bought a little bit of food every time he came by. But they could never read the menu, because Schwan's only had printed brochures. One day, he had me and my siblings record on audio cassette the entire menu and their prices.

His sales from that couple shot through the roof! All of the sudden, there were all of these options for sale that they didn't even know about before, and now they wanted to try them. From that time forward, they were very faithful and consistent customers. And, of course, they were very appreciative of the gesture!

Every 6 months or so, when Schwan's updated their menu and/or pricing, we would re-record the menu, until Schwan's finally figured out an audio offering of their own.

A few years ago, my father ran into the couple when he happened to pass through their town (my father no longer sells for Schwan's, but now sells insurance and investments). The couple remembered and asked about each of us children by name, these decades later.

It's neat to see how just a little consideration (and a bit of extra work) can make a huge impact on someone else's life!

<comment><USER7> Is this argument for government regulation or against? I see ss an argument against, but I'm sure most people disagree.

<comment><USER6> I actually thought about this very question when I was writing the story.

Truthfully, I don't have an agenda.

I can see, though, how easy it would be for someone to use this story to back up their particular viewpoint, when, in fact, it was just a memory about an experience that I had as a child... A memory that I didn't realize had such a big impact until decades later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Despite the somewhat misleading headline, the Supreme Court didn't really say anything new here. They declined to hear Domino's appeal of the Ninth Circuit's (unanimous and clearly correctly decided) reversal of the District Court's absurd dismissal.

Domino's tried to claim that their due process rights were being violated since there is no federally-mandated standard for accessibility. But the ADA is clear: businesses have a legal requirement to ensure that disabled customers have "full and equal enjoyment" of their goods and services. Domino's made the tenuous argument that the lack of a specific standard meant that they didn't receive fair notice.

Robles, the plaintiff, argued that the appropriate standard to apply was WCAG 2.0. Instead of offering a different possible standard (which would have been a defensible legal rationale), Domino's position was basically, "fuck off".

It's really not hard to make your websites accessible at a basic level. Follow the standards. Make sure your content and markup are reasonably semantic. Use standard form components for data entry. Where more complex, visual-first designs are employed, make sure there are text-based fallbacks.

If you are a professional software developer, doing this is not just your legal responsibility, it's your moral responsibility.

<comment><USER9> > It's really not hard to make your websites accessible at a basic level. > Follow the standards.

Do _you_ follow the standards? If you show me a web site that you've developed I'll show you a site with multiple violations of WCAG 2.0. Hell, JAWS' own site is littered with WCAG violations! Yes, "accessibility at the basic level" is easy but WCAG 2.0 is not "accessibility at the basic level". It's a huge set of rules that are often unclear and ambiguous. And that's fine because WCAG 2.0 is just something that you should aspire to. But if you start defining accessibility by whether a site conforms to WCAG 2.0 or not, then I can guarantee you that every single popular site is non-accessible.

We got sued and believe me it has nothing to do with blind people. Our site is of zero interest to them. Companies are sued by scumbag lawyers, who have made a nice little racket out of this thing. It's really unfortunate that the HN crowd is siding with them, as if they are championing the rights of disabled people. It's all about money.

<comment><USER10> That is a natural consequence of the way in which the United States chooses to enforce rules like this. In some other countries, there are regulators who do this kind of thing and issue relatively small fines and compliance notices. Since the regulator itself is publically funded, it does not need to live off the fine income.

In the US, the choice was made instead to create a private right of action and to allow legal fees to be recovered. That means that lawyers who make this their business have to aim high to cover their costs (including from cases they lose) and are no incentivised to let a company off with a compliance notice and a deadline to improve.

As a result, there are a certain percentage of ADA cases which are not brought in good faith but that is the system the people have decided they want.

<comment><USER9> > but that is the system the people have decided they want

The people haven't decided anything. As usual, someone comes up with an absurd law, or an absurd interpretation of the law and there are not enough people affected to bother challenging it. But that doesn't mean "the people have decided".

<comment><USER11> "The people have decided not to bother to do anything about it" sounds like the same thing to me.

<comment><USER9> On the contrary, the power dynamics is completely different. It's one thing to come up with a ridiculous policy (which is easy for a politician to do) and put the onus on minority of affected people to fight it, while the majority is neutral. And it's another thing to ask everyone to vote on the policy before it's enacted.

Fighting the status quo is immensely more difficult than keeping it, even if the effect of that status quo is provably harmful.

<comment><USER11> The politician is not some random person removed from reality. He/she represents the people, is accountable to them and campaigned on how they want to represent them.

The majority is not neutral but assumed to be in favor of their representative's (!) proposals.

Of course, politicians can and do deviate from this, in particular where legal bribery (lobbying) is involved, but that is the base assumption of representative democracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So somehow along my career I fell into accessibility dev for a while. Funny enough it was one of the most lucrative dev jobs I did and there was always plenty of work. It is easily outsourced to a remote developer because all you really need is a browser and a screen reader. In my opinion there really is no reason for even mom and pop sites to not provide even a base level of accessibility, it really is just setting tab indexes in correct order, as well as making sure items have alt and title tags so that the readers can pick them up and actively describe the page. No I am not saying that this provides a great experience for the blind but it at least helps them to be able to get around the site.

I personally an color blind, which is not a disability but it is a pain in the ass at times, especially give that color has the ability to convey data visualization in a rapid manner that is subconsciously parsed by the user. It's extremity effective if one can see color. It is kind of how I got into accessibility for a time. By simple adding a secondary reference of iconography for the color blind a site can convey the same info. (e.g if you show red put a small stop sign on it, yellow use a triangle etc.)

I see no reason why even the smallest sites should not be able to provide access to the blind, whereas larger sites should be striving to go the extra mile to make it accessible and easy to parse for everyone.

<comment><USER13> > it really is just setting tab indexes in correct order, as well as making > sure items have alt and title tags

Sounds like it could be part of SEO effort. If it can be checked programmatically then search engines should add accessibilty to their ranking algorithms. It worked for mobile.

<comment><USER14> This is a great comment.

Imagine the investment that would suddenly start in accessibility if Google publicly announced it was an important part of search engine rankings.

<comment><USER15> These scanners exist, and they can serve a dual purpose; scan the web for websites to sue. And yes this is happening.

It's important to note that not every site on the web falls under ADA. The crucial part of this issue is that the business must have a physical "brick and mortar" location to fall under the ADA. Presumably purely online retail businesses are not affected.

<comment><USER16> IF google would make it part of their rankings it doesn't matter if you could be sued or not - you will make sure you are accessible to avoid being not found.

I wonder if google can be sued for not making it part of the ranking thus misleading blind users... Interesting angle for a lawyer. I hope someone at google is reading this and mitigates that risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I see a lot of negativity in the comments. I imagine much of that is gut reactions of web developers hearing they need to do more work.

As a web developer that has had to pass an accessibility review from a person who is actually blind each release for the last two years, I can tell you it's not that hard. Make sure you have a sensible tab order and labels on forms and you are 80% there. The hard issues are creating hidden buttons for drag and drop interactions and announcing changes in the view.

Honestly it's more keyboard nav than label work anyways. For as many vim lovers as I meet, many developers seem to falsely believe you need a mouse to use the web.

<comment><USER18> But the Domino's site didn't have "labels on forms," it was a whole goofy animated game where you'd drag ingredients on a pizza to order. There's no way to make that accessible without building a whole separate web app. You can argue that goofy animated games are a dumb way to run a pizza website, and I can agree with you, but we all know the web is full of that kind of thing which is now waiting to be a lawsuit magnet.

<comment><USER19> I assume it's making REST calls behind the scenes. It's probably not too difficult to make a text based version of this system.

<comment><USER20> Indeed, they (sort of) already did; their mobile app includes a gimmicky "chatbot" feature.

Admittedly, I don't think the chatbot can actually do everything the website can. But it's a start!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> On the surface, this sounds like a fine thing. Who doesn't want accessible websites?

But it really opens a can of worms. What's a place of public accommodation? With brick-and-mortar, it's easy; if you have a physical location open to the general public, it probably qualifies. But on the web? Does my personal website count? What if I sell t-shirts on it? What if I don't sell anything, but have forums where the public can discuss things? What about a site which is primarily about communications, i.e. speech? Does a requirement that you put ARIA labels on things amount to compelled speech?

What if accessibility standards change? Am I compelled to upgrade my site?

This issue is a lot hairier than the court imagines. Does the court really want to get into the issue of which websites need to comply and which don't?

<comment><USER22> No, your personal website does not count. Yes, it does if you sell t-shirts. No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business. Yes, aria labels are compelled speech, but they're upheld[1]. There would be an exemption if the burden was "undue", but you're not going to meet that by claiming it's a few extra hours of work. If accessibility standards change, you are compelled to upgrade your site if you're under the ADA.

And yes, courts really do want to get into the issue of which businesses need to comply and which don't, regardless of whether they exist physically or as a website.

[1] [https://www.ada.gov/briefs/uc_berkley_lof.pdf](https://www.ada.gov/briefs/uc_berkley_lof.pdf)

<comment><USER23> > _No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business._

But this means that almost every forum does count.

<comment><USER24> Most community forums are not businesses.

And if you're a business, just use forum software that has accessibility in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Some clarity on the matter:

The Supreme Court didn't say anything. All they did was decline to hear the appeal.

From skimming the petition and responses, it looks like the situation is that the 9th Circuit is allowing the case to go ahead to determine whether or not Domino's website is violating accessibility requirements, which means that there's not a lot of facts and administrative record for SCOTUS to attempt to decide if the reasoning as to how to determine how the ADA applies here. In other words, this does feel like a case that SCOTUS rejected in large part because the petition is way too premature--the respondent's brief definitely feels far more persuasive to me than the petitioner's (Domino's) briefs.

<comment><USER26> This is actually a big deal because what was ruled on was the _legal matter of whether a business could be sued based on their website_.

The facts of what constitutes a sufficiently-accessible website necessarily have not been discussed, because Dominos was trying to boot the case before any factual determinations were made.

Their argument was that, as a matter of law, they could not be sued under the ADA based on their website. This argument prevailed at the District Court, lost at the Ninth Circuit, and was unanimously declined to be heard at SCOTUS.

That sends a loud and clear message, and this will essentially become the law of the land for at least the next few decades.

Note: I have not deeply read all the opinions, but I am a lawyer who is familiar with appellate procedure and the ADA.

<comment><USER27> It's a little more tightly scoped than that. From what I'm seeing, no parties are arguing that websites are themselves Title III "public accommodations". Rather, the 9th circuit held that the Domino's websites were part of the Domino's services at their brick & mortar restaurants.

In other words, this case only directly applies to physical businesses with an online component (buy-online-pick-up-in-store or similar).

I'll be curious to see – assuming that Robles eventually wins – if this case is ever used to argue that an online-only business is subject to Title III. It doesn't seem like a slam dunk connection.

(Not a lawyer, but I do enjoy reading court documents.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "a11y": Accessibility

[https://a11yproject.com/](https://a11yproject.com/) has patterns, a checklist for checking web accessibility, resources, and events.

awesome-a11y has a list of a number of great resources for developing accessible applications: [https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y](https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y)

In terms of W3C specifications [1], you've got: WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative: Accessibile Rich Internet Applications) [2], and WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [3]. The new W3C Payment Request API [4] makes it easy for browsers to offer a standard (and probably(?) already accessible) interface for the payment data entry screen, at least.

There are a number of automated accessibility testing platforms. "[W3C WAI] Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List" [5] lists quite a few. Can someone recommend a good accessibility testing tools? Is Google Lighthouse (now included with Chrome Devtools and as a standalone script) a good tool for accessibility reviews?

[1] [https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topic...](https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topics/specification.md)

[2] [https://www.w3.org/TR/using-aria/](https://www.w3.org/TR/using-aria/)

[3] [https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards- guidelines/wcag/](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/)

[4] [https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/](https://www.w3.org/TR/payment- request/)

[5] [https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/](https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/)

</comment><comment><USER29> There has been a long standing precedent around the ADA requiring web accessibility: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_B...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_Blind_v._Target_Corp.).

A number of companies have been (more or less) blatantly violating the law in this area. Framework authors in particular have often ignored the value of accessible, semantic markup. Many devs come to the web knowing only frameworks (and not the underlying web technologies), which is dangerous if those frameworks aren't accessibility-focused.

Hopefully this decision finally scares companies into action, and inspires a lot of valuable future litigation on behalf of the visually impaired.

<comment><USER30> I hope you know that's not a very strong legal precedent, which is why it keeps getting appealed to the Supreme Court from various jurisdictions. You speak (or seem to hope) as if the law is clearly on one side, which it isn't, at least not that strongly.

There is contradictory case law (like Southwest Airlines 2002) that says the ADA does not extend to virtual / online stores.

Companies are policing themselves on this issue out of liability to be sued, which is a far cry from a declarative right to have accommodations online. It is not that certain.

<comment><USER31> I guess a lot of things going online and some going online-only in the intervening 17 years since 2002 has redefined "place of public accommodation" to include cyberspace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I know the owner of a small brick and mortar store in California. She decided to create a web site to sell her products on line. She got a domain name and a hosting account and installed a canned platform (OpenCart) which allowed her to create her own web site and started to try and sell. Total sales on the web site over three years: about $3,500.

Then she received a letter from a lawyer in Florida,telling her that a) her web site is not ADA compliant; b) If she doesn't fix it, they'll file a law suit; and c) She needs to pay the lawyers $4,000 to "cover their time in handling this unfortunate situation".

With her sales, she can't justify spending an additional few thousand to pay a programmer to fix or redo her web site to be ADA compliant. Her only option is to just shut down the web site.

The only winners here were the lawyers.

<comment><USER33> Sounds like whoever sold her the theme didn't bother with accessibility. I think laws like this are good, but at the same time they will end up pushing people to stick to larger sites like shopify or just listing on ebay/amzn to avoid all this.

<comment><USER34> This just sounds to me like "I like regulation, but hate over-regulation". Except that here, like potentially many other cases, there weren't any sane bounds on said regulation.

<comment><USER35> Sometimes I think it's "I like regulation, but I hate regulation that puts a burden on me."

<comment><USER34> To be fair, proposing regulation on people is really easy if you're not affected.

And individual rules can often sound nice at first glance, only to have disastrous consequences in practice. Add in the fact that repeal of regulation is an... onerous process, and things get even more tricky.

<comment><USER35> True.

And also to be fair, it is very easy to dismiss advocacy for regulations as naive ideals from inexperienced people who like things that sound nice but are ignorant of the realities of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does the ADA really apply and enforced at all publicly available businesses? Does every Chinese restaurant in Chinatown have a Braille menu? If we really start enforcing this, only larger businesses will survive.

<comment><USER37> It's a myth that reasonable accommodations are too much of a burden for a small business to handle. Having a menu made into Braille for example isn't going to cost a ton. On the upside, they would also now have business available that they didn't have in the past.

<comment><USER19> I wonder why Domino's having a phone number to call in orders isn't enough of an accommodation in this case?

<comment><USER38> My understanding, from a quick 5 minute skim, is that it may be. It's being sent back to the district court for reconsideration.

Basically what seems to have happened is this:

1\. Robles sued Dominoes alleging their website violated the ADA.

2\. The district court dismissed the suit, saying the DOJ needs to provide guidance on the standards that websites must meet, if the court is to hold them to the ADA. They don't examine the question of the phone.

3\. The appeals court steps in and says that no, the district court was wrong to dismiss it for that reasons, and sends it back to the district court.

4\. Dominoes appeals to SCOTUS, saying "help, the appeals court got it wrong, please step in!" SCOTUS declines to get involved, so the case will go back to the district court, which may still find that the phone access provided is an adequate accommodation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if there is a good rule of thumb for what software and features are acceptable to _not_ be accessible? What does it mean for a drawing program to be accessible by the legally blind? You can follow accessibility guidelines (for UI navigation and so on) but does that mean you made the program accessible if the bulk of the operations you can actually do in the software - draw - still requires seeing what you are doing? Are you expected to invent workarounds that allows people to use your software, or can you assume that "nah, no blind person is likely to be drawing anyway"? It seems there is a gray area where it's just not economically feasible to add some extreme bespooke types of accessibility, but at the same time not doing it will make it self fulfilling - of course no blind people will draw in drawing programs so long as they don't get the tools.

<comment><USER8> Well, the law provides for a number of balancing tests to ensure that a court will respect the rights of all parties. A rule of thumb is unlikely to be specific and precise enough for any practical use. For specific details, consult an attorney.

Since it only applies to "public accommodations", it's highly unlikely that a drawing program will be covered, unless it's tied to a good, such as if you can have the drawing printed up for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If you're blind, can't you just call up a Dominos to order your pizza? "Talk to a human and order your pizza" sounds like a friendlier approach than the automated screen reader or whatever they'll come up with to resolve this litigation.

<comment><USER41> Some deals were online only. Presumably to encourage people to use the website and not bother employees with having to answer the phone.

<comment><USER40> That's a fair point. Sounds like this can be resolved with a simple new rule: if you're blind, you can get online-only deals over the phone.

<comment><USER42> So now everyone can pretend to be blind to take advantage of online only deals on the phone?

<comment><USER43> I mean, they could already get the deals, by going online. I'm a little confused about what you see wrong with this scenario.

<comment><USER31> The discounts are given since orders on phone cost the company more than orders from their website, in terms of employee labor and cost of manning the phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Here's the ruling from the 9th circuit:

[http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/01/15/17...](http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/01/15/17-55504.pdf)

A denial of cert doesn't mean the supreme court necessarily has an opinion on the merits of the case. Courts in other circuits can still rule otherwise, and SCOTUS might eventually decide to hear such a case at a later time.

</comment><comment><USER44> I tested the Domino's home page with WAVE (I had to install the browser extension for some reason) and it found no errors and what looks like healthy use of landmarks and ARIA, though I didn't dig too deep. Would any blind HN readers care to comment on to the degree to which [https://www.dominos.com/en/](https://www.dominos.com/en/) is accessible to them, personally?

The stress around website accessibility comes from the lack of any authority who can tell you you've done enough and you can't be sued, perhaps by someone using an outdated screen reader/browser combination you'd never think to test with. It brings back bad memories of things like trying to support IE5/Mac at the same time as IE6/Windows. (Protip: embrace quirks mode.)

<comment><USER45> They've likely added accessibility since the lawsuit started. Maybe check archive.org?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I would consider this a good thing. It really doesn't require very much effort to be compliant and it ultimately results in UI that are more easily accessible by not only bling people, among other disabilities but also encourages better extensibility for creative purposes [https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards- guidelines/wcag/](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/)

</comment><comment><USER47> Accessibility seems to be thrown under the bus under MVP style thinking. You are trained not to focus on issues that only affect a small number of users. I know I do this all the time. The reason is money.

At what point do we just accept that security, accessibility, and similar properties are actually important, and that we shouldn't accept half baked products anymore?

I don't have a clear answer. But regulating the software industry is just going to make running a startup almost impossible. No more jobs for self taught hackers. All platforms will be a walled garden, including the web.

I'm leaning towards the viewpoint that companies (or anyone) should not be responsible for accessibility problems.

<comment><USER48> MVP is primarily a development strategy, not a lifecycle strategy. I see no conflict here. Your product owner should include legal requirements in the project scope, it's not something individual developers should have to prioritize themselves.

<comment><USER47> And what about individual developers who own their own projects? Open source projects? They typically have no warranty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Target.com is accessible because of a similar case from 2006. This appears to be a decent summary: [https://www.jimthatcher.com/law- target.htm](https://www.jimthatcher.com/law-target.htm)

<comment><USER50> Are screen readers still as terrible as that article makes them sound? Regretfully, I've never actually tried to use one, nor worked with anyone who needed one. I imagine they are basically horrific to use on almost any modern website.

My inexpert suspicion is that investment in better _screen reading_ technology could make millions of sites accessible which currently are not, and that there should be some way to meet in the middle -- perhaps companies funding a consortium to push screen reading tech forward while at the same time making it an order of magnitude easier for a site to be accessible.

<comment><USER51> Mac OS X has one built in, if you are looking to play around with one.

<comment><USER52> Specifically, you can turn on VoiceOver on Mac with Command+F5.

Windows also has a built-in screen reader called Narrator. On Windows 10 version 1703 or later, you can turn it on with Control+Windows+Enter. As of version 1903, it works reasonably well with Chrome, Edge (both Chromium-based and legacy), and IE. Another popular option on Windows is the open-source NVDA ([https://www.nvaccess.org/](https://www.nvaccess.org/)).

Disclosure: I'm a developer at Microsoft, on the Narrator team, but as usual, I'm posting on my own behalf.

<comment><USER53> A lot of people in this thread and others have recommended devs to try out screen readers to get familiar with developing for them, and I added to my mental checklist "look up screen readers and try to find a good one to try out eventually", which really I'm not sure I'd ever get around to, and even if I did, I'd probably get distracted from choice paralysis because I wasn't sure which screen reader is worth trying.

Immediately after reading your post, I pressed a key combo and started playing with it. I would not have guessed that getting started was literally just a key combo away. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> FYI for those interested, there is a Google Group called _blind dev works_ :

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/blind-...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/blind- dev-works)

It's a small, low traffic group. I'm one of the admins.

</comment><comment><USER55> > The ADA mandates that places of public accommodation, like Domino's, provide > auxiliary aids and services to make visual materials available to > individuals who are blind

I haven't read the actual ruling, but Domino's provides a phone number that you can call, and a person will tell you any of the information on the website and can perform all of the services the website can perform. How is this not a sufficient "auxiliary service to make visual materials available to individuals who are blind"?

<comment><USER56> There where web only deals you couldn't get via making a call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> On another note, there are services that are already scraping thousands of websites and testing them for ADA compliance. If the website fails the test, the website or lead is sold off to an attorney. The attorney will then find or hire a straw client to sue the website and the company. Its very prevalent and lucrative because a lot of the law has yet to be written and the companies being sued are settling very quickly.

<comment><USER58> So? If lawbreakers can be identified at scale, should that change the situation at all?

Imagine if this were changed to tax fraud. Now we have computers that can automatically find discrepancies and we can notify violators at scale. The horror!

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Sounds like a great start-up opportunity. Turnkey and ongoing accessibility compliance.

<comment><USER60> I really hope not. I don't think "X compliance" is a good idea for a startup, because of trust and liability.

Whomever does the compliant would either need a ton of liability insurance, or would need contract language that actually gets them out of responsibility (similar to the language in many travel insurance and point-of-dale service plans). The former would be expensive, so you'd probably end up with the latter.

Web accessibility compliance does require a human to look at (and interact with) a site, and it requires people who either have training, or experience. That costs more. I really hope we don't end up with "Uber for accessibility compliance", with testers who aren't paid enough, and who don't get enough time to test a site.

<comment><USER37> There's a lot of businesses that focus on legal compliance. Maybe they aren't "uber for compliance", but there's plenty of compliance centric work out there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Blind person here. While I definitely appreciate any efforts towards accessibility, I believe this is not the way. What people don't realize is that, at a certain point, _most_ companies do accessibility anyway. Some of them, like Apple or Microsoft, even turn it into a marketing advantage. There are exceptions, sure, but this doesn't justify government regulation. I believe the days of John and Chuck, two dropouts from MIT making a tech startup and becoming billionaires are almost over. There's more and more regulation introduced around technology, first the absolutely ridiculous COPPA, then GDPR, then California's privacy initiative and now this. I believe that, in five to tech years, our tech landscape will consist of a few big companies who will have the resources to comply, and many walled gardens, as each country will have their own laws, wildly different from any others. The UK is already starting to go this way, i.e. with the proposal to ban Facebook likes for users under 18 and introduce mandatory age verification. I think that a small company making a website in 2030 is as likely as a small company making their own car or drug now. Some groups might benefit from this, but, ultimately, we, as a society, will be worse off. This one particular case seems beneficial when consideret in separation from anything else. The wider trend is not.

<comment><USER62> I think accessibility is very important, but I share your worry about the future for very small startup projects. I think it's already almost impossible.

I worry about it getting much worse, especially with the animosity the larger tech companies face from the public. What people don't understand is that those big companies will weather any of these regulations, and that they will stop smaller startups from ever happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> What happens to every game on Steam, every app in the two main app stores, websites and software for 3D mechanical CAD (Solidworks, Fusion 360), ECAD, etc?

Just trying to understand this. Where are the boundaries, limits and rules? What happens if you use web technologies to control equipment, say, 3D printers, robots, etc.

To clarify, this isn't to say I have a problem with this ruling. Not at all. Just trying to understand if this is a massive world-wide hammer anyone can wield against any website and tangentially related technologies or if the range, domain and impact have certain limits.

Put a different way: Should Mom and Pop lose sleep over the possibility of being sued out of business any given Monday or sleep well knowing the process is sensible enough to allow for a reasonable ramp to adoption?

There's even stuff like, for example, if you have 200 domains parked with a registrar who puts-up a non-compliant page on all of them. Are you exposed?

<comment><USER56> IANAL but games are not public accomodations/commercial facilities in terms of the ADA. There has been very strong law that restaurants are such a thing.

The act basically requires companies to make "readily achievable" changes. So if it would bankrupt the company then it is not required. However you can't just sleep on the issue and pocket the profits for not putting in the effort.

<comment><USER63> I need to do a bit more research on this. I live in a world where it is hard to imagine blind people being able to perform. I say this admitting I might be truly ignorant about this.

This is a world where we exist and do our work both in front of our screens and in the physical domain. In this world we use tools such as Fusion 360, Solidworks and online services such as Vention to design physical parts, products, machines, tooling. Altium Designer and other EDA tools to design electronics. We use both online and offline tools to manage manufacturing workflow, quality, schedules, client interaction and more. We use online and offline tools to program and manage our CNC machines, quote and manage aspects of the transition from digital to real object in your hand.

I look at this ecosystem and peripheral elements to this and I am not sure I truly understand both this decision and the context. Do you have to be a blind person to truly understand it? Can a blind person design mechanical parts using Fusion 360 or Solidworks? Or electronics using EDA tools?

Again, exposing my obvious ignorance on the subject here. Happy to do so too, as I am sure some of the contributions to this thread will serve to educate me as to some of the nuances, needs and issues in this domain.

What I fear with some of this stuff --and again, this could be truly ignorant in this case-- is that these rulings will serve ambulance-chaser type attorneys who, with a juicy new vector for revenue generation, will file a massive number of lawsuits, extract blood from small and large companies and individuals and, in the end, not necessarily serve the blind community all that well.

In other words, the lady who owns a little knitting blog will be extorted out of a few hundred bucks. After that she will either shut down the site --which means everyone loses-- or she will deploy the crappiest minimal compliant modification she can find, maintain it badly but still be in compliance...which means her blind visitors lose. The lawyers, however, will do very, very well, as they file thousands of these cases and rake-in the profits. If you can't tell, I've dealt with lawyers enough over the last three decades to have a very dim view of a certain subclass among their ranks. I firmly believe they make things worse for society rather than the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This law is ripe for exploitative lawsuits. Instead of damages going to the plaintiff, of which actual damages are very dubious, it should go to a fund that helps web site developers increase accessibility. Maybe an open source foundation that integrates this into regular HTML.

The money should NOT go to lawyers for their fees and plaintiffs. It just creates the wrong incentive system.

</comment><comment><USER65> Rather than crippling the rest of the world for the blind, why not improve the tools for them instead?

Screen readers that are limited to structured inputs can't be the end-all final solution right? It would be shortsighted to set this tech in stone with legal precedents. Do we seriously want to require every blind person to be fluent in reading html/React as the default way to consume sites?

We should be trying to improve the tech so they can consume the world just like sighted people. There are already apps that can use computer vision to caption and describe images. It can even connect you with real people if the AI sucks.

I think pouring investments into those technologies might be cheaper relative to the amount of work added to the industry as a whole.

<comment><USER66> React/Vue/etc are all accessible. Almost all web technology that exists is accessible. The trouble is you can't just do what you want, and you have to test it to ensure it's accessible. Most companies put it to the bottom of the list or forget about it. It really isn't that hard, no new tools are required, everything is already there: you just have to do it.

<comment><USER65> You are thinking of the most trivial of apps. For example I have worked on a web-based image editor that is practically impossible to make accessible to the blind. Not with current screen reader technology.

Another example is Reddit, where a good chunk of their content is just text memes overlaid on images. For compliance, would you force people to describe their images with an alt text before submission?

The better solution would be to do what Facebook does and have builtin tools that will annotate a OCR/description with ML or crowdsourcing. In an ideal world these tools would be available to everyone with no extra work.

Don't settle for making the blind wade through a pile of HTML and call that accessible. It would be a travesty if it became law to use alt tags, because that is so far from the best we can do. Don't lock the world into dead technologies.

<comment><USER56> The law requires only "readily achievable"changes. So something that is practically impossible isn't required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is there really any requirement to make a website accessible if you could provide "full and equal enjoyment" via old fashioned phone support? I see this being vastly cheaper and less risky to provide for most non-"web app" websites (e.g. retail websites) for the smaller number of users who need it.

Edit: Found a source that seems to discuss it but it seems it hasn't been tested in court: [https://www.adatitleiii.com/2017/10/telephone-access- might-b...](https://www.adatitleiii.com/2017/10/telephone-access-might-be- valid-alternative-to-accessible-website-but-court-needs-more/)

</comment><comment><USER68> I live to use keyboard shortcuts, mostly TAB. It's amazing how many websites don't even have that working correctly.

Or a page has exactly one text entry box and it doesn't have focus when page first renders.

That's just sloppy.

And for those with vision problem a major problem.

</comment><comment> Seb-C As someone now living in Japan, I think I can understand how frustrating the user experience is for disabled people. While not disabled, I often need to use Google translate or lookup for Kanjis/Words in a dictionary. There are a crazy amount of websites (and mobile applications) where text selection is disabled or where text is written inside images, which often completely prevents me from using the website...

I'm not even counting the number of websites breaking the system scroll speed of forcing a custom mouse cursor. I may be too sensitive here, but it is very annoying so I now just close the tab whenever it happens.

</comment><comment><USER19> According to the article, the Supreme Court did not rule on the case, the 9th Circuit did. Sometimes the Supreme Court will turn down a case on a technicality while still leaving open the possibility for future ruling on a matter.

</comment><comment><USER69> I really don't see anything wrong with this. I blame the modern web a lot for this As javascript hijacks functionality of the browser, and the browser is typically better accessible

</comment><comment><USER70> Honest question from a web developer, and I'm ashamed I don't know more, is there a clear concise guide to building accessible websites? I've had to support ARIA for U.S. Government websites, and certain color schemes for color accessibility, but I really don't feel like I know how to build a web product with accessibility in mind. I am genuinely sorry that I haven't developed the skill more, and would like to take this opportunity to learn more.

</comment><comment><USER71> In fear of sounding insensitive, what if a business has decided that their website is just one way that customers can engage with them (much like their physical storefront is another), and that there are other ways as well that customers can purchase from them -- such as via phone (, etc). They can handle anyone's needs over the phone (, etc) if they can't use the website... much like the website enables them to engage with customers who can't visit their physical location, which could be in a different state or country. Can't visit our location? We still want your business, buy from our website. Having trouble using our website? We still want your business. Here, give us a call (, etc) and we can take your order. Once we have your order ready, we'll give you a secure PCI-compliant interface to enter your payment info for the order, that's totally accessible in whatever form it is, but is certainly separate from the rest of the not-so-accessible site, since your primary means of interaction with our business for this purchase is via [phone call or some other accessible interface separate from the website].

I say this after watching my mother struggle using the IRS' website this Sunday. Even though she is not blind or otherwise physically disabled (she doesn't use a screen reader, for example), she isn't the most tech savvy person. While searching for a form she clicked on a link then scrolled down straight to the footer, thinking the footer was the page's unique content, and already starting to click on links in the footer, which wouldn't have gotten her where she needed to go since what she needed was above the footer but she missed it. If she had someone she could call she would have gotten done what she needed to do faster than using the website. I helped her out, of course, but it was still helpful to watch how she used the site on her own before offering assistance.

So what if a company acknowledges that not everyone will be able to use their website and provides alternate ways for customers to engage with them that can still accomplish the same thing? When you define a business as more than just a website, is having multiple different interfaces (physical location for those nearby, website, voice call, etc) for a customer to purchase from a business not one way to provide accessibility?

If Domino's will take my order over the phone and deliver it and I can pay at the door, is that not accessible for me, even if their website isn't?

</comment><comment><USER72> The sum of all kinds of regulations like this one is great news for mega- corporations. Economies of scale mean that the costs are small for them, and proportonaly much bigger for smaller companies.

While I think it is a great goal that services should be accessible by people with special needs or restrictions, would it not be better if this could be achieved by incentives instead of hard regulation?

Perhaps as follows. 1) Create a registry for companies to self-declare that they are accessible for a given user segment by some given standard. (For essential utilities and government agencies, compliance can still be made mandatory) For registered entities, make this statement binding, and follow up breaches with fines that are sufficiently stiff that only companies that comply will register. This registry could contain information would contain information about standards that are already regulated, but could also be extended to include other needs (dietary standards, child friendliness, accessible to people with certain mental limitations, etc) 2) Make this information open to the public, and attach a rating service such as TripAdvisor where users can rate the degree of availability. This would make it easy for the beneficiaries to find services suitable for them. The data should also be made accessible through an API, so that special interest groups can mirror it on their own infrastructure. 3) Step 2 will provide an incentive in itself, but where it is not enough, introduce a tax incentive on top. Companies with the necessary accesiblity could be given a tax benefit in the order of 1-5%. This benefit should be on the profit, not the turnover, to avoid putting companies with limited profitablity out of business over this.

</comment><comment><USER73> Because there are a myriad of perceptual issues and the idea of reporting specific perceptual needs is likely an unnecessarily severe data disclosure, wouldn't it be best for non-app websites to have their content mapped out according to some standardized API for consumption by their client?

</comment><comment><USER74> Would a chat bot interface to order pizza's count as blind accessible? Or even a live person on a phone?

</comment><comment><USER75> This is already EU law. You can get fined if you don't follow accessibility guidelines on your home page.

Usually that also makes for better home pages for other people as you don't get the type of crap "creative" web developers tend to put there to make it flashy but unusable.

</comment><comment><USER76> Suppose I can't use a product because of a disability. Do I sue a company for making the product available to others who can use it? The ADA says I have the legal right to do so, but the mentality that "if I can't enjoy something, nobody should" is immoral.

</comment><comment><USER77> As a fully sighted person (well, I wear glasses to drive), I'm thrilled about this. Websites that are easier to use for the blind are easier to use for everyone. If your website is a giant picture of text, this is just karma.

</comment><comment><USER78> Misleading title. SCOTUS refused to hear the case, not ruled in favour of the cause.

</comment><comment><USER79> This sounds like it's great for web developers like myself. We'll have jobs for years to come!

And it will force companies to really think about their functionality and ensure that it's easy for common use.

</comment><comment><USER80> Is there a EU/Australian/British equivalent? I'm an Indian employee developing for EU and want to scare people into cutting back the design madness that makes sites unreadable and slow.

<comment><USER81> The UK has the Equality Act 2010 ([http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents)) particularly parts 2 and 3. There is a private right of enforcement through the county court.

I have a friend who is a wheelchair user who has been trying to get ramp access to the shops where she lives. First avenue is a friendly chat, second is a letter before action, third is court. She would much rather it was enforced by the government like most other regulations - in addition to being draining to go to court to argue for her rights, it leaves those who ignored their obvious legal responsibilities, and the friendly chat, and the letter, _personally furious_ that she took them to court. So even victory is fairly Pyrrhic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Followup question for those in the know: If domino's hadn't had online-only deals/rewards/etc, would the availability of the phone line have counted as accessible?

</comment><comment><USER83> This is a just outcome. The disabled have a right to access society.

</comment><comment><USER84> I don't get it. Why can't he just order from someone else that has an accessible website? I choose not to use lousy webapps for all sorts of reasons.

<comment><USER85> Imagine the website is only partially accessible.

You jump though the hoops to make your order, make an account, choose your pizza, and enter your credit card info.

You click submit. Nothing happens. Did the order go through? Do you call to find out? Wait and hope? Order from someone else? In the future you'll have an answer (or 4 different deliveries because you went somewhere else 3 separate times until you found an accessible website).

What if you didn't have another option? Should we prevent the blind from eating pizza?

<comment><USER84> > You jump though the hoops to make your order, make an account, choose your > pizza, and enter your credit card info. You click submit. Nothing happens. > Did the order go through? Do you call to find out? Wait and hope? Order from > someone else? In the future you'll have an answer

I've had this happen to me multiple times, and I'm not even disabled.

> What if you didn't have another option? Should we prevent the blind from > eating pizza?

We are talking about America - the place where people eat themselves to death from over consumption of terrible foods - there is _always_ another option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The issue here appears to be whether or not it's Domino's legal (and moral) obligation to make their website compatible with some specific piece of screen-reader software. To me, it seems like they probably should; the APIs are relatively clear, standardized, and easy to use, and there are quite a few people who can't use the website otherwise.

I do wonder how far this argument goes, though. Say someone creates a new device that allows people with some incredibly rare motor impairment to access the Internet. Is it now the responsibility of everyone in the world to add support for that device?

<comment><USER22> "Undue burden" is the test used. Essentially, how much work is it to create an accessible website?

Websites are navigable by screen readers and tons of other accessibility software by default. Hacker News is completely usable in JAWS. It's the things Domino's layered on top that broke it, so it's Domino's's job to fix it.

Having domino's create a new web browser for physical accessibility devices would be an undue burden. Having domino's fix their aria tags and tab order is not.

<comment><USER20> That makes sense, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> This opens a huge can of worms, given that there is no clear standard for this. W3C has varying degrees of compliance, some of them near impossible to abide by.

</comment><comment><USER87> This seems like overreach. Clearly the law doesn't cover websites.

Why can't congress just pass a law to make the ADA apply to websites? It's not SCOTUS's job to create law.

<comment><USER88> The law has covered websites for decades. It used to be not that much of a problem because screen readers worked well enough with plain html.

<comment><USER50> Pretty sure the law doesn't say _anything_ in particular about websites.

I don't usually find myself scratching my head at SCOTUS. Full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services is the pizza, not the website. The website is just one means of obtaining said pizza.

<comment><USER89> Robles claims Domino's wouldn't sell the same goods for the same price over the phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> I'm not seeing much mention of Net Neutrality or what this means in the grand scheme of open & free web vs Gov't control of it.

Any thoughts?

<comment><USER91> There are already lots of regulations that target e-commerce [0]. Net neutrality isn't about the freedom to serve any content you want, it's about the discrimination and prioritization of certain types of network traffic [1].

[0]: [https://www.justia.com/business-operations/managing-your- bus...](https://www.justia.com/business-operations/managing-your- business/e-commerce/)

[1]: [https://www.eff.org/issues/net- neutrality](https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality)

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Is there a checker to see if a website is accessible, and how to make it accessible (like the ones for SEO and site-speed optimizations)?

<comment><USER8> Lighthouse is pretty good: [https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I've read a bunch of comments; surprised not to see mention of DevTools / Lighthouse Audits / Accessibility.

</comment><comment><USER94> I'm a bit shocked that the Dominos CLI wasn't brought up as a defense.

[https://github.com/freecode/dominos-cli](https://github.com/freecode/dominos- cli) Or [https://github.com/jkereako/dominos-pizza- cli/blob/master/do...](https://github.com/jkereako/dominos-pizza- cli/blob/master/dominospizza/urls.py)

<comment><USER95> That does not in any way appear to be associated with, or endorsed by, the Dominoes business, which is likely why it was never mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Good.

Part of my work is to make the service I work on accessible so I follow this topic.

I find it absolutely disgusting that Domino would rather drag their case to the supreme court than make their site accessible.

Anecdotally, while making an app or website accessible is not particularly easy, I have found that there are some good benefits.

At least on mobile, it pushes you to avoid relying on hacky solutions and to make clear layouts instead. This also makes your code more maintainable.

</comment><comment><USER97> [http://archive.is/RGxKw](http://archive.is/RGxKw)

</comment><comment><USER98> What's wrong with using a phone to order pizza? Seems like a reasonable alternative.

</comment><comment><USER99> Great, now make it possible to sue owners of sites unusable without JS.

</comment><comment><USER100> How could this lawsuit cost less then just fixing the website?

<comment><USER9> Because currently there is no accepted definition of "fixed" (accessible) site and if they caved, people could come after them for various technicalities forever.

<comment><USER100> This is not true. There are lots of agreed upon standards (in this case the plaintiff wants WCAG 2.0) and dominos needs to meet one of

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> what is a retailer? does this mean that if i make a website to sell my small indie game, i have to follow all the ephemeral accessibility rules or else be sued?

</comment><comment><USER102> I wonder why having having a voice ordering system by phone wouldn't be a valid defense for Dominos. Should the ADA apply to every channel of sales if there are supported alternatives by the same company.

<comment><USER103> While on the surface that seems like a good argument, wouldn't that mean that as long as they had Braille and a wheelchair ramp at their stores they'd be compliant? Etc etc

<comment><USER104> I don't think that's a fair conclusion to reach. One channel can reasonably be done from home while the other requires going to the store.

I believe web accessibility is net good, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> This is the most PC shit ive read about this year.

</comment><comment><USER106> web dev should start using vanilla html + css, following w3c guidelines for accessibility and stop all the fancy js shit.

</comment><comment><USER107> This is such a good plan. So many developers don't care about a11y. This just adds a cost to actually start caring and planning your code around it.

<comment><USER108> Most only care to make it look like the mockup. And the people making the mockups only care that the site looks like their design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> I just became an a11y programmer :)

</comment><comment><USER110> hiQ vs Linkedin was a Heller vs DC. This feels congruent.

</comment><comment><USER111> This would be wonderful news. I am blind, and can report that accessibility on websites is getting worse and worse with every new web framework invented. Accessibility is usually bolted on as an afterthought, with all the quality issues implied. However, I only believe this headline when I see the first lawsuits being won. Lets hope this is no clickbait.

<comment><USER112> Can you provide any examples of sites that might be using particular frameworks that are inaccessible? If open source, I reckon I could raise an issue or two on your behalf if that's OK.

<comment><USER111> I am sorry, but I dont believe that casually raising an issue here or there will actually change anything. My experience is that it either gets ignored, or you outright receive an aswer that explains to you that your needs are not important.

Example 1: Reddit is on GitHub. At the time when I was still using Reddit, I was pretty pissed with its lack of helpful accessibility. So I went on GitHub, and wrote a PR which would wrap individual articles on a page in a so-called "region" so that the screen reader could easily jump to the next article. The PR was ignored for several months. After a while, I simply closed it out of frustration.

Example 2: When I read about Bitwarden on HN, I tried it. As I am an iPhone user, the iOS app was interesting, so I installed and tested it. No surprise, almonst no button was labeled correctly, or labeled at all. So I opened an issue on GitHub. The answer I got was: "Yes, we know we are not accessible, but we are planning a rewrite anyway, so we will not change anything in the existing code". Thanks for nothing. We are not talking about rocket science here, just adding a text label to a handful of buttons. But yes, thanks, I got the message. Nobody really cares about people with disabilities.

<comment><USER112> Yep. I get it. I'm in a wheelchair. But I can't not try, at least in some small way. It's really frustrating that these projects don't take this stuff seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> The ADA law actually doesn't make sense to me. I get they are trying to stop discrimination, but the means they take is misguided and an encroachment on peoples rights.

If you have a business and are offering a service, you are doing so at-will. Your not obligated to provide anyone with any product or service, if you were, how is that not slavery? The law forces you to provide a product or service without allowing you use your own judgement.

The law itself is unconstitutional. How did it even pass?

<comment><USER114> That is literally the opposite of the truth. If you have a business in the US, you have a duty not to discriminate against protected classes that trumps free speech rights.

Under the ADA, only new businesses (post ADA) are/were required to build accessibility into their business. Older businesses were grandfathered in and didn't have to make changes to existing facilities until they renovated them. In terms of websites, this means only the oldest websites would have been grandfathered in.

<comment><USER113> I don't see how its acceptable to use coercion to enforce an opinion of "duties that trump free speech rights" that don't involve force, fraud, or defamation.

<comment><USER114> In the US, more than two centuries of jurisprudence holds that commercial activity is not speech, and is thus is not generally subject to the protection of the Constitution. Moreover, the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to regulate Commerce.

Doing business thus is validly subject to government regulations mandating that businesses do (or not do) certain things. And some of those things include not discriminating against the disabled, and designing your business facilities to accommodate the disabled.

<comment><USER113> Given that commercial activity affects my unalienable rights to life, liberty and property I would disagree that its not subject to the protection of the Constitution.

I also find fault with the commerce clause of the constitution and think its broad interpretation as an economic defense mechanism is archaic and filled with undesirable effects (such as the drug war, limitations to trade and international tariff wars), not to mention contradictory to the constitutional principle of liberty.

<comment><USER114> Your personal interpretation disagrees with the Constitution that actually exists and with the two centuries of legal cases on constitutional rights.

The Constitution was intended to give the government broad powers. It was written in reaction to the Articles of Confederation, which created a government with limited powers that failed with 5 years. The provisions of the Constitution and the bill of Rights need to be understood within that context.

<comment><USER113> Its not my personal interpretation, and just because legal cases interpreted a certain way for two centuries does not make them right. The constitution was not intended to give the government broad powers, but rather to assign limits to its scope. The context in which it "needs to be understood" is not for you to define, but up for interpretation.

"The United States Constitution presents an example of the federal government not possessing any power except what is delegated to it by the Constitution — with the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution making explicit that powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are reserved for the people and the states."

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_government)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> I'm in favor of requiring that all deals and coupons be available via all methods of ordering, with things such as app-required deals only being legal if the app is accessible to the blind. Other than that, I fail to see how having phone ordering doesn't completely cover the accessibility requirement. It's very easy to get silly with these requirements. Should comedians be required to provide transcripts for deaf people? Should paintings come with exhaustive descriptions attached to their frames?

<comment><USER116> They already are on TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> Then the Supreme Court is wrong (which isn't impossible, by the way). If I draw on my street with chalk, should I also be compelled to play a cassette on repeat outside my driveway describing what the picture is? This is absurd.

<comment><USER118> This would not apply to your street art.

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990:

"No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation."

"a failure to take such steps as may be necessary to ensure that no individual with a disability is excluded, denied services, segregated or otherwise treated differently than other individuals because of the absence of auxiliary aids and services, unless the entity can demonstrate that taking such steps would fundamentally alter the nature of the good, service, facility, privilege, advantage, or accommodation being offered or would result in an undue burden;"

Are you arguing that the Americans with Disabilities Act is wrong, or that making a website accessible is an undue burden? (while say, ramps for wheelchairs is not)

<comment><USER117> Thank you for this snippet. The ADA is somewhat reasonable for having included the "undue burden" clause, however, it is probably an undue burden for a small online website to prove that supporting disabled users would be an undue burden.

At the end of the day, this is just more red tape that will probably hurt small sites or deter them from being made.

<comment><USER22> It's not an undue burden. Either don't break screen readers with javascript bullshit, or un-break them by having a sane tab order and present aria tags and image descriptions. Try it with keyboard navigation, listen to what it sounds like, and if it's _functional_ , you pass. It's not that hard.

<comment><USER117> > Either don't break screen readers with javascript bullshit

It's _your_ site. You have the freedom to break your own property. This is apparently a contradiction. This addition seems to say that I can't break my own property if it means some people can't see it. How is this constitutional?

<comment><USER119> It's you're site that you can do with as you please right up until you're running a business and selling goods. Everything changes then, even without the ADA.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Google's Go ready for serious projects? - <AUTHOR>

I've spent the last few weeks re-learning C to write a simple server for my startup. The last time I wrote any C, I was in college and had only just finished "Learning to Program with Pascal". Re-approaching it as a more experienced programmer—and one used to newer, more dynamic languages, at that—I've found it pretty frustrating.
C has frustrated me not because more lines are required to get things done, or because malloc'd memory must be freed. (I understand what kind of language C is and what it is designed to do). I'm frustrated by the inherent problems of macros and the constraining nature of static typing. I think my frustrations are best summed up by this thought experiment: Imagine the only pre-processor directive was #include; with no #define or #if etc. What would C be like?
My take has been that a lot of what makes C so simple, and effective at achieving it's noble but relatively humble goals, also causes it to be greatly constraining. I think this is why the C pre-processor was introduced. The pre-processor attempts to tackle problems of excessive constraint. It sort of solves them (kinda), but also introduces a whole load of new ones.
In my most recent attempt, I'm using a couple of macros to generate readers and writers (of files) of a bunch of number types that my server uses. I'm pretty pleased with the results, but feel like I just pulled a big hack. (I can already picture the hardass purists on ##c telling me off for doing it). And I noticed what I was doing reminded me of Haskell typeclasses.
Another problem for me—a controversial problem, seeing as you have these in C++ and Objective-C as well—is header files. I really hate having to write those. I hate having to wrap them in #ifndefs and the decisions of where other header #includes should go. I can't help thinking "Why can't these be generated? Or inferred? And why do I have to write /almost/ the same thing again?".
In response to all this, I decided to watch that hour-long talk on Go again. I had good intentions; I was looking for ideas to better my C programming. But instead, perhaps unsurprisingly, it showed me more places where C was less-than-great; the shortcomings of the C const keyword were mentioned, as was the silliness of typed constants. That talk increased my frustration with C, and now I'm considering using Go to write my server.
What does using Go mean for me? I'll be able to use channels (whatever they are) and concurrency will be a lot easier (a problem I had chosen to—cough—defer, whilst I was working with C). It also looks like that typeclass-thing I was using macros for is formally emboddied by Go's "interfaces". This all sounds great but there's a concern: Go is a very new language. In a brief session on #go-nuts, I exchanged with someone trying out Go's regular expressions. We concluded that there was quite a glaring bug in the regular expression parser, which is slightly alarming although perhaps not surprising.
So, you're about up to date now, and I ask: Has anyone on HN tried Go? What do you think? Is it too new or buggy for a serious project? I am a lone developer and I'm prepared to be experimental, but it's important that this server be reliable.
(I have already considered Erlang for this project but decided it wouldn't give me the low-level control I wanted, and dismissed Haskell for the same reason; I'm steering clear of C++ for all the reasons previously discussed on HN; Objective-C seems to compete more directly with Go but it's still a superset of C, so I imagine it suffers from similar problems).
Thanks for reading. <comment><USER2> A better option might be to use Twisted Matrix for Python, iolib for Lisp, or whatever high-performance networking library you can find for your dynamic HLL.

Learning Go means learning a whole new language, learning the (still primitive) tool chain, and scrambling for examples, documentation and support.

High performance network programming is a solved problem. You can do it in any high level language that interfaces with C efficiently. Half a page of Unix system call, some discipline, and you're on your way.

<comment><USER3> Nevermind a lack of libraries.

How about erlang, haskell or clojure? If you must stick with a C-like language, I second Twisted and Python, or maybe just use C.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's almost like you didn't read a single word beyond the title of the initial post.

<comment><USER3> Its completely like I read everything but the last paragraph.

If mahmuds suggestion of Python is Ok, then I don't see why mine isn't either. The languages I listed are great for parallel/concurrent programming, much more so than Go and if you need low level access, you can write C extensions for just those parts that require low level access.

Go's concurrency support is weak, at best. Sure, its better than C (without libraries), but compared to other concurrency oriented languages, it doesn't really provide much. Other disadvantages are that Go is new and still under heavy development. If they decide to change something, then you're code gets obsoleted. You also have to use an immature toolchain, learn the intricacies of a totally new language and compiler and live without existing Go libraries. You could use C libraries, of course, but IMHO I don't see the value of using Go. Maybe in the future it can take on its role as "better C", but I don't believe its ready yet. If you want a "better C", try the D programming language.

By the sounds of things, you don't like the archaic C-ness of the C/C++ languages. Honestly, I don't see Go as much of a step up (yet! I'm optimistic that it could fill in its role as a better, safer C in the future), hence suggesting languages with some top-notch concurrency support which have been proven (well, not Clojure afaik) to work well in highly concurrent networked environments. If you were to use erlang, you would get all its fault tolerance and code hot swapping facilities almost for free too.

So.. no, I personally do not believe Go is ready for a serious project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is difficult to comment without knowing more as to why you need to _write_ a server, perhaps you care to give a few of the reasons. However, the way you explained it, you need low level control. How about Lua, it has a beautiful syntax, small footprint is ultrafast and interfaces very well with C (in many ways you can think of it as a Library for C). (See <http://code.google.com/p/lua-web-server/>). I know a lot of people consider Lua only for games but ...

<comment><USER5> There are more full-featured web servers written in Lua, too: <http://github.com/keplerproject/xavante> and <http://dev.alt.textdrive.com/browser/HTTP/HTTP.lua>

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I quoted this one as it is very simple (about 10-12 lines of code) and hence crying to be extended :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's no way to answer this question unless you say what the server is supposed to do. Why do you need "low-level control"? How do you plan to deploy the server when you're done? Who will maintain it?</comment>


Intel Delays Mass Production of 10nm CPUs to 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12693/intel-delays-mass-production-of-10-nm-cpus-to-2019 <comment><USER2> 90+ comments earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16938423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16938423)

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone who understands the manufacturing and engineering difficulties here explain things for a layman? Are we starting to bump up against physical limitations of what's even possible, or is this something different?

<comment><USER5> Not sure if Intel has other problems, but there are limits to how small things can get with a particular wavelength of light. DUV (deep ultraviolet) is at 193nm. They've been able to etch significantly smaller than the wavelength by using immersion (water has a higher index of refraction) and some fancy tricks with multiple exposures under different masks (multi-patterning). But all that had to be done because there were no suitable light sources with shorter wavelength. EUV (extreme ultraviolet) has a wavelength of only 13.5nm so a lot of complexity will go away when it comes on line. However EUV still has some challenges ahead and will probably be deployed slowly. Then, shortly after the introduction of EUV, there are other physical limits around 5nm. The lithography end-game is very near.

It's been really amazing to watch this progression for several decades. The end was declared near a number of times but people always found ways to keep going, but I truly believe it's almost over this time.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the elaboration. Is there also a layman's explanation for the what makes 13.5nm lasers harder to etch with than 193nm lasers?

<comment><USER7> There are no lenses which are transparent at 13.5. This means you have to use mirrors instead, and even that's a challenge. 13.5nm was selected because it can be reflected by special Molybdenum/Silicon mirrors, but even these mirrors only reflect about 70% of the light. This means that for every two mirrors you add to the system, you have to double the brightness of your energy source.

As I understand it, the EUV light is produced by dropping little drops of tin in front of a laser, which turns it into a plasma that emits 13.5nm light. However, tin particles scatter everywhere and eventually damage the collector mirror, so it's hard to make these machines robust.

I also imagine with these high energies and 30% absorption, you have to cool all the mirrors to keep them from deforming, but I'm no expert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16938423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16938423)

</comment><comment><USER9> Given that TSMC just started high volume production of 7nm chips ([https://www.anandtech.com/show/12677/tsmc-kicks-off- volume-p...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12677/tsmc-kicks-off-volume- production-of-7nm-chips)), this sounds bad for Intel.

<comment><USER10> Not really. Intel 14nm is better than TSMC 10nm. The processes are way way way more complicated than can be distilled down into a single number. And the number has become a marketing number. So yeah, Intel 10nm is perhaps somewhat comparable to TSMC 7nm.

But what is "High volume production" really? This is another marketing term! Intel has produced and sold a couple 10nm chips, though they are hard to find. TSMC 7nm chips are not in any consumer's hands yet. We'll have to wait and see ...

<comment><USER11> High volume in this case indicates that the product has reach a high level of quality in terms of defects per million and yield. 10nm is probably in the customer sampling phase, HVM means you can go to Best buy and get a 10nm laptop.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where are all the awesome jobs? - <AUTHOR>

I want an awesome job.  Don't we all?  I've been programming now for 11 years and have plenty of experience in many fields, languages and technologies.
Right now, I can also afford to be very picky when it comes to choosing my next job.
So I'm looking for work based anywhere in the US but obviously some places would be more preferable, such as those near to centres of entertainment, international airports, ski resorts etc.
I'd love a job which doesn't have the traditional American mentality of "more hours makes a better employee" or that taking vacation is some sort of weakness.
Where are these jobs?  Do they even exist?  Are you currently working at a job like this? <comment><USER2> Why limit yourself to US jobs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I've just moved to the US :)</comment></comment>


Logical fallacies - <AUTHOR> https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/home <comment><USER2> As long as you're not doing pure mathematics, you can't always speak on purely logical ground. Aristotle himself, who invented logic and whose picture is on this poster, wrote a different book called The Art of Rhetoric in which he fully approves of deploying e.g. appeals to emotion or authority. Most of these "fallacies" are actually good heuristics within normal discourse: even if they don't produce full logical confidence, they are still very useful in ambiguous or time-sensitive contexts (a.k.a. everyday life).

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is very true. It is pretty close to impossible to have an argument at bar or internet forum level without committing something that resembles a logical fallacy.

Refer to something written by an expert rather than demonstrating it directly yourself? Appeal to authority.

Suggest that a particular source of information may be unreliaible? Ad hominem

Voice a concern over the direction some policy appears to be taking? Slippery Slope.

Many arguments are also based on statistics rather than directly on logic.

Logical fallacies can be used to expose highly axiomatic thinking though.

<comment><USER4> Your examples are too broad and/or poorly defined.

An appeal to authority fallacy has to be without reason backing up the appeal other than the fact that they are an authority.

You can suggest that a source of information might be unreliable because of a poor track record in the the domain, or a conflict of interest - that's not ad hominem.

One can speak against the direction of a policy without committing a slippery slope fallacy by not making unsubstantiated claims about what will happen. If you can cite examples of similar policies that have led to effect Y happening with rational explanations for the causes along the way, then that would avoid the fallacy.

<comment><USER3> Well, for example if somebody asked me the circumference of the earth and I replied with "40,075 km" how do I actually know that?

I certainly have never measured it, so all I can do is cite sources of information which are assumed to be authorities. I can be relatively confident in my reply by citing multiple sources of information but I'm still ultimately relying on something I can't realistically provide other evidence for.

According to wikipedia the second could possibly fall under "Circumstantial Ad hominem" in that suggesting a source has bias does not necessarily make them incorrect. Though this depends on the nature of the argument.

I think the third is more tricky to pin down because it is going to depend again on the nature of the argument. You may suggest concern about some policy without a concrete example of X leading to Y because it may not have happened before. But again this depends on the nature of the argument.

I think my problem is more with the way in which logical fallacies are abused in internet arguments rather than the fallacies themselves. For example somebody saying "You are wrong to be concerned about policy X because slippery slope fallacy".

<comment><USER4> 1\. Yeah, this will probably be an accepted fallacy for day to day usage. You could quote leading geologists/physicists and the implication is that they have a vested interest in being correct. But the reasoning there isn't just "Because they're experts, so trust them!", it's "They purport to have measured it and I trust that they did so accurately because of their position as leaders of their field and their desire to remain as such.". Still technically might be a fallacy, but I would accept it in the case of a casual conversation about the Earth's circumference.

2\. Agreed that it's contextual. I merely wanted to point out that not all discrediting is ad hominem as you seemed to imply.

3\. Also agreed that it's highly dependent on context. Again, just pointing out that one can speak out about policy direction without committing a fallacy.

And yes, I dislike that as well! The fallacy fallacy: <https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I studied formal Logic in high school (sadly, we were the second last cohort before it was discontinued due to lack of interest). Undoubtedly one of the best decisions I ever made, for examining my own thinking and arguments as much as those around me.

Logical Fallacies was one of my favourite elements. (Deductive logic is fabulous as well, but of limited application in a real world of probabilities.) If I could wave my magic wand and change education, logic would be right up there with entrepreneurial economics as a mandatory class to support kids understanding how the world works (and how it can work in their favour).

</comment><comment><USER6> I've found Wikipedia's list[0] to be both more complete and more Ctrl-F -able, but this is certainly attractively laid out and has good descriptions.

0: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies>

<comment><USER7> hey, site owner here. the idea for the site was to show the most common fallacies in clear language and pretty visuals. For a comprehensive list i highly recommend the fallacy files' taxonomy: www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonomy.html

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The first one it showed me was "slippery slope", and I don't think that's a fallacy. It may be an invalid argument or prediction depending on the evidence, but it's not structurally invalid the way ad hominem and tu quoque are. Why is it there?

<comment><USER9> I'm assuming it's there because it's a popular bad argument.

Well, it's an argument that's _often_ bad. Slippery slopes can actually happen in the real world. But I suppose anyone making a slippery slope argument has the burden of showing that the slipping is likely to occur.

<comment><USER8> Yes, the burden of proof for a prediction (slippery slope is an instance of a prediction) lies with the party making the prediction. The exact same goes for any argument, and such a prediction should get the same respect as any other potentially flawed argument.

If someone is saying "A will cause Z OMG!" without a strong causal chain, the fallacy you want is probably "non sequitur", or you point out what other thing is wrong with their reasoning. But you don't just assume the argument is invalid, as you do with formal fallacies, because slippery slopes are indeed real.

At the risk of going too meta, someday am I going to have to deal with some idiot who thinks "slippery slope" is a formal fallacy, because they were all lumped together like this? If the site gets enough traffic, it _will_ get some people who can't tell the difference, who will come away with the wrong impression. Not that many, but the possibility is, IMO, an indicator that lumping them together like this is a bad idea.

<comment><USER10> _At the risk of going too meta, someday am I going to have to deal with some idiot who thinks "slippery slope" is a formal fallacy..._

It already happens elsewhere. You can observe an ongoing trend and justify the expectation that it will continue using the motivations and past behavior of the actors involved, and someone will _still_ say, "Slippery slope, I win!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have you considered the .is TLD?

yourlogicalfallacy.is/ad-hominem

</comment><comment><USER6> As good as it is to identify these, it's worth pointing out that another fallacy is the assumption that the point a fallacious argument is trying to prove is wrong because it has a fallacy. It's possible to be right but still commit a fallacy in your argument.

<comment><USER12> This is a fallacy listed, "the fallacy fallacy", first column second row on the left with the symbol of a fractal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another great visualization of logical fallacies: [http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/rhetolo...](http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/rhetological- fallacies/)

</comment><comment><USER14> The biggest fallacy I'd add is Mood Affiliation:

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/the...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/the- fallacy-of-mood-affiliation.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right> , _"The Art of Being Right: 38 Ways to Win an Argument (1831) [...] written by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in sarcastic deadpan."_

Rhetorical training was a paying job back in the days when public speaking was a major source of entertainment. It's a pity it is not more widely taught, for self-defense purposes.

</comment><comment><USER16> Read this as a list of effective ways to communicate your point beyond mere facts. If anyone has ever said your appeals are dry, sprinkle in these lightly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I look forward to replying to misguided online arguments with a simple link. If everyone started doing that, no one would be committing logical fallacies anymore!

<https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope>

<comment><USER17> I have a sense that what you've said (If everyone started doing that) is another form of fallacy, but I myself might be putting some fallacy here... oh well...

<comment><USER4> Whoosh

<comment><USER18> Was your first comment intended as irony?

When arguing with others it is best to employ the principle of charity, even to the point of improving the other party's arguments to make them as strong as possible, and then pointing out where you think they are wrong.

It is best to study fallacies in order to avoid making them, rather than throwing them at others in the manner of the proverbial religious hypocrite who 'read ye good booke in order to rake all the blessings unto himself, and to shovel all the curses unto his neighbours'.

<comment><USER4> I agree that the principle of charity should be employed. Sometimes though, the conversation benefits from someone knowing why their arguments aren't solid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of my logic class in college, very well laid out and it serves as a reminder to watch our yourself and others while falling for one of these fallacies.

</comment><comment><USER20> A blog (and a book) related to the subject: <http://youarenotsosmart.com/>

I really enjoyed the book, fun read.

</comment><comment><USER21> What a wonderfully worded website and poster. Wit and humor and intelligence are a powerful combination.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't help but think of politicians while reading these.

</comment><comment><USER23> 5\. Potato</comment>


Researchers crack open unusually advanced malware that hid for 5 years - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/researchers-crack-open-unusually-advanced-malware-that-hid-for-5-years/ <comment><USER2> I am not surprised to see quite the orcish commentary by the guy calling himself Grashnak upon the article about the Project Sauron. Where is Gandalf?</comment>


Show HN: Developers and Startups sharing Revenue Numbers about their Projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.transparentstartups.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN community! I really want to know your opinion about these changes. Is now the message clear about what a "Transparent Startup" is? Please give me some feedback. Thank you in advance.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've listened to you guys, so this an improved version of my side-project, reflecting the feedback you gave me some days ago. Hope you like it more now!</comment>