Accessibility under fire at the Supreme Court
September 30, 2019 11:32 AM Subscribe
Domino’s Wants to Slice Away at the Americans With Disabilities Act The potential consequences of this fill me with genuine terror because the consequences extend far beyond pizza. I’m legally blind, and the internet, phone apps, and e-commerce are more integral parts of my daily life than shopping malls or brick-and-mortar stores have ever been. If the Supreme Court were to eventually rule in the company’s favor, the blind, visually impaired, and others who rely on accessibility tools to use the web could be locked out of the modern economy—and much of modern life. If companies and other organizations are not required to make their websites and apps accessible, people like me would be unable to access our bank accounts, look up or pay our utility bills, or buy household essentials from Amazon or other retailers.
What? There was at least one lawsuit about this back in 2000.
posted by Melismata at 11:49 AM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Melismata at 11:49 AM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
"Domino’s says that it has “no interest in discriminating against potential customers” with disabilities but---"
Whoa, hold the fuck up. Why is there a but there? Either you have no interest in discriminating against potential customers or you have some non-zero interest in discriminating against potential customers. There's not but necessary. Make the shit accessible, who the fuck cares what the laws are or aren't. If they are as they claim, then accessibility is a priority for them regardless of the disabilities act.
They demonstrably do have some level of interest in discriminating against customers, otherwise this would just be "oh damn, u right, sorry, we'll get right on fixing that."
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:51 AM on September 30, 2019 [34 favorites]
Whoa, hold the fuck up. Why is there a but there? Either you have no interest in discriminating against potential customers or you have some non-zero interest in discriminating against potential customers. There's not but necessary. Make the shit accessible, who the fuck cares what the laws are or aren't. If they are as they claim, then accessibility is a priority for them regardless of the disabilities act.
They demonstrably do have some level of interest in discriminating against customers, otherwise this would just be "oh damn, u right, sorry, we'll get right on fixing that."
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:51 AM on September 30, 2019 [34 favorites]
If we lived in a functioning society, this would be a 9-0 verdict of “Fuck you, and you’re sending Mr. Robles a free pizza whenever he wants for the rest of his life for wasting our fucking time on this.”
Since the ADA is typically enforced via litigation (the cops don't show up if a business aren't ADA compliant, being ADA compliant protects against lawsuits) you should expect many (perhaps most) of the online communities near and dear to your heart to get sued into oblivion if this goes 9-0. But hey, that one guy gets his free pizza.
Also, while I'm sure the cost of getting this to SCOTUS dwarfs remediating the website, $38k is 3 weeks of a single decent engineer and therefore a total horseshit estimate.
posted by sideshow at 11:55 AM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
Since the ADA is typically enforced via litigation (the cops don't show up if a business aren't ADA compliant, being ADA compliant protects against lawsuits) you should expect many (perhaps most) of the online communities near and dear to your heart to get sued into oblivion if this goes 9-0. But hey, that one guy gets his free pizza.
Also, while I'm sure the cost of getting this to SCOTUS dwarfs remediating the website, $38k is 3 weeks of a single decent engineer and therefore a total horseshit estimate.
posted by sideshow at 11:55 AM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
These businesses claim their aversion to making websites accessible is not based in bias but rather is an unfortunate economic reality.
There is some consolation in that the economic reality argument (specious as it is) will soon reverse these discriminatory practices as the population ages. There are only ever going to be more disabled people out there.
I once heard a lecture from David Lepofsky, a lawyer here in Ontario who happens to be blind. He said "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are disabled, and those who are not disabled... yet."
There are only ever going to be more of us disabled in the marketplace. Might as well deal with that reality earlier rather than later, and not come off looking like a bunch of assholes.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:59 AM on September 30, 2019 [52 favorites]
There is some consolation in that the economic reality argument (specious as it is) will soon reverse these discriminatory practices as the population ages. There are only ever going to be more disabled people out there.
I once heard a lecture from David Lepofsky, a lawyer here in Ontario who happens to be blind. He said "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are disabled, and those who are not disabled... yet."
There are only ever going to be more of us disabled in the marketplace. Might as well deal with that reality earlier rather than later, and not come off looking like a bunch of assholes.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:59 AM on September 30, 2019 [52 favorites]
Also, while I'm sure the cost of getting this to SCOTUS dwarfs remediating the website, $38k is 3 weeks of a single decent engineer and therefore a total horseshit estimate.
I'd really like to see the source for the 38k figure (original and source articles don't cite any, just some person on twitter) because I think anyone who works in the industry knows that adding accessibility support across their entire platform is bound to cost a lot more than that. Not saying they can't afford it or shouldn't do it, but it doesn't serve your argument to low-ball the costs dramatically.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 12:08 PM on September 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
I'd really like to see the source for the 38k figure (original and source articles don't cite any, just some person on twitter) because I think anyone who works in the industry knows that adding accessibility support across their entire platform is bound to cost a lot more than that. Not saying they can't afford it or shouldn't do it, but it doesn't serve your argument to low-ball the costs dramatically.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 12:08 PM on September 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
Yeah the tricky thing about this is is that this could be any of us at any time who is put at a societal disadvantage. As a ux designer who makes my living with my eyes and finger & hand joints I don't have any fallback plan for when I don't have those anymore. It sucks that we built this whole ecosystem without really thinking about everyone who needs to use it, and now we're in a damned if you do, damned if you don't quagmire.
posted by bleep at 12:13 PM on September 30, 2019 [22 favorites]
posted by bleep at 12:13 PM on September 30, 2019 [22 favorites]
you should expect many (perhaps most) of the online communities near and dear to your heart to get sued into oblivion
This sounds an awful lot like the original counterargument that the ADA was going to drive small local businesses under because they had to widen a door or build a ramp.
Which - spoiler alert - didn’t happen.
The way our society attempts to accommodate universal design is one of the few things I’m still proud of about this country. Please don’t take it away due to perceived inconvenience.
posted by q*ben at 12:21 PM on September 30, 2019 [68 favorites]
This sounds an awful lot like the original counterargument that the ADA was going to drive small local businesses under because they had to widen a door or build a ramp.
Which - spoiler alert - didn’t happen.
The way our society attempts to accommodate universal design is one of the few things I’m still proud of about this country. Please don’t take it away due to perceived inconvenience.
posted by q*ben at 12:21 PM on September 30, 2019 [68 favorites]
It's not any of us at any time, it's all of us in time. Whoever doesn't die is going to grow older, and we will all have one or more disabilities to contend with as we age, if not earlier.
posted by jenkinsEar at 12:22 PM on September 30, 2019 [21 favorites]
posted by jenkinsEar at 12:22 PM on September 30, 2019 [21 favorites]
I have a genuine question: how does the tooling for creating responsive web content not automatically enable accessibility? It's been the law for so many years that most of the programmers of software around this ecosystem should know about it.
I made web sites in the 1990s -- with ALT tags for screen-readers and text-only visitors, thankyouverymuch -- but I drifted away from it years ago. Do those tricksy JavaScript frameworks just....not enable any accessibility features?
Or is it the very nature of their being able to reflow text and re-sample images and rearrange columns which means that web content is too fungible to guarantee it doesn't get mangled from viewer to viewer?
posted by wenestvedt at 12:22 PM on September 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
I made web sites in the 1990s -- with ALT tags for screen-readers and text-only visitors, thankyouverymuch -- but I drifted away from it years ago. Do those tricksy JavaScript frameworks just....not enable any accessibility features?
Or is it the very nature of their being able to reflow text and re-sample images and rearrange columns which means that web content is too fungible to guarantee it doesn't get mangled from viewer to viewer?
posted by wenestvedt at 12:22 PM on September 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
I manage a team of web programmers. We work to make our sites more accessible, even though our primary business is facilitating transactions of a product that is illegal for sight-impaired people to use. Accessibility work is not the highest-priority item on our list, although we do our best to fit it in when we can; I've certainly worked in places where we (the programmers) raised the possibility of lawsuits to provoke prioritization of the work, and my current employer holds events and regular audits of work across teams to find and fix accessibility issues. I've been doing work like this for over twenty years.
So I feel reasonably qualified to say: having an explicit law stating we must make our sites accessible, clear guidelines on what the law considers "accessible" for sites as a baseline, and clear penalties that will be imposed if we fail to meet the letter of the law makes it easier for us to have the opportunity to do the work that so many of us want to do to support every single one of our users. Relying on good will or waiting for businesses to justify it financially isn't going to work any better than it did for architects before the law stepped in there.
posted by davejay at 12:27 PM on September 30, 2019 [69 favorites]
So I feel reasonably qualified to say: having an explicit law stating we must make our sites accessible, clear guidelines on what the law considers "accessible" for sites as a baseline, and clear penalties that will be imposed if we fail to meet the letter of the law makes it easier for us to have the opportunity to do the work that so many of us want to do to support every single one of our users. Relying on good will or waiting for businesses to justify it financially isn't going to work any better than it did for architects before the law stepped in there.
posted by davejay at 12:27 PM on September 30, 2019 [69 favorites]
As a web developer that has responsibilities involving making sure the product I work on is accessible, that 38k figure is an extreme lowball. Making any web app accessible isn't a matter of sprinkling the magic accessibility fairy dust on the site but requires thought at every level of planning, design and implementation to carry out successfully. There is a very real and likely possibility that they will have to redo a *lot* of work costing millions of dollars if they don't prevail on appeal.
That said, as someone who recognizes the importance of that accessibility work, I say a pox on Domino's. I hope they lose so badly as to send shockwaves through the entire industry.
posted by Aleyn at 12:27 PM on September 30, 2019 [41 favorites]
That said, as someone who recognizes the importance of that accessibility work, I say a pox on Domino's. I hope they lose so badly as to send shockwaves through the entire industry.
posted by Aleyn at 12:27 PM on September 30, 2019 [41 favorites]
Back in the dark days of my conservative youth, we only ordered Domino's pizza (which was then the Worst Delivery Pizza) because the owner Tom Monaghan was "pro-life." (He apparently left in 1998).
posted by emjaybee at 12:27 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 12:27 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
As a web developer that has responsibilities involving making sure the product I work on is accessible, that 38k figure is an extreme lowball. Making any web app accessible isn't a matter of sprinkling the magic accessibility fairy dust on the site but requires thought at every level of planning, design and implementation to carry out successfully
QFT
posted by davejay at 12:30 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
QFT
posted by davejay at 12:30 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
Years ago I was a front end web developer, and I always used to wonder about potential lawsuits under the ADA. For the people I worked for, it was never talked about. At the design level, it was never mentioned, never budgeted for, and the bosses really only cared that the web pages worked on the major browsers. Nobody ever said "we'll get it working, and then do an accessibility pass." Accessibility got done when it was easier, conformed to best practices, or at least didn't add much time. And we (my immediate boss and I) thought it was the right thing to do, though not enough to add a text browser or screen reader to the list of browsers we tested against, I'm ashamed to say.
posted by surlyben at 12:31 PM on September 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by surlyben at 12:31 PM on September 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
Do those tricksy JavaScript frameworks just....not enable any accessibility features?There's two factors at work here. One is that frameworks are often actively hostile to accessibility, because they may encourage developers to use non-semantic elements (like JS-clickable divs instead of buttons). The other is that the way you make a document accessible can be very different from what it takes to make a legit application accessible. Handling focus changes, (in)visible content, and form error states can be tricky.
I'm sympathetic to the latter, and much less so to the former. But when you combine the two, you get a lack of a11y best practice in the dev community compounded by libraries/frameworks that undermine the browser's existing accessibility tools, and that's a recipe for disaster.
posted by Four String Riot at 12:31 PM on September 30, 2019 [13 favorites]
I have a genuine question: how does the tooling for creating responsive web content not automatically enable accessibility? It's been the law for so many years that most of the programmers of software around this ecosystem should know about it.
I made web sites in the 1990s -- with ALT tags for screen-readers and text-only visitors, thankyouverymuch -- but I drifted away from it years ago. Do those tricksy JavaScript frameworks just....not enable any accessibility features?
The problem, I think is that accessibility and responsiveness are profoundly different problems, and so need to be solved in different ways. Responsiveness is solved largely through css. You put your classes on the different elements to size them correctly (which is something you were going to have to do anyway) and the stylesheet uses media queries or some such to size and arrange those classes correctly based on the screen. It doesn't matter what goes inside those classes.
Accessibility, on the other hand, requires active developer decisions every step of the way. If you have an image, you need an ALT, and no framework can add one for you, because you need to know what the image is so you know what to write in the ALT. Similarly, you want to make sure that someone can tab through your form in an order that makes sense, but only you know what that is, so you need to take them time to add the relevant attributes.
In fact, I'd say that the frameworks (and I assume you're talking about css frameworks like bootstrap, not web app frameworks like React or Angular) have made some problems worse. Like, ideally, you want to be using all of html5's semantic tags, so that you put the header in a tag, etc. But css frameworks got a lot of people used to just using a for everything and then putting the relevant class on it.
Of course, none of this is an argument against accessibility - it's just that the frameworks can't save us here. We have to do the work.
posted by Ragged Richard at 12:35 PM on September 30, 2019 [14 favorites]
I made web sites in the 1990s -- with ALT tags for screen-readers and text-only visitors, thankyouverymuch -- but I drifted away from it years ago. Do those tricksy JavaScript frameworks just....not enable any accessibility features?
The problem, I think is that accessibility and responsiveness are profoundly different problems, and so need to be solved in different ways. Responsiveness is solved largely through css. You put your classes on the different elements to size them correctly (which is something you were going to have to do anyway) and the stylesheet uses media queries or some such to size and arrange those classes correctly based on the screen. It doesn't matter what goes inside those classes.
Accessibility, on the other hand, requires active developer decisions every step of the way. If you have an image, you need an ALT, and no framework can add one for you, because you need to know what the image is so you know what to write in the ALT. Similarly, you want to make sure that someone can tab through your form in an order that makes sense, but only you know what that is, so you need to take them time to add the relevant attributes.
In fact, I'd say that the frameworks (and I assume you're talking about css frameworks like bootstrap, not web app frameworks like React or Angular) have made some problems worse. Like, ideally, you want to be using all of html5's semantic tags, so that you put the header in a
Of course, none of this is an argument against accessibility - it's just that the frameworks can't save us here. We have to do the work.
posted by Ragged Richard at 12:35 PM on September 30, 2019 [14 favorites]
Either you have no interest in discriminating against potential customers or you have some non-zero interest in discriminating against potential customers
We don't want to discriminate against potential customers, but it's easier if we do.
posted by aubilenon at 12:49 PM on September 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
We don't want to discriminate against potential customers, but it's easier if we do.
posted by aubilenon at 12:49 PM on September 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
Speaking as a total amateur here, I've been building websites for fun for 20+ years. I learned about 508 compliance a long time ago and did my best to make my site work for everyone. It also boosted the search result ratings, which was a nice side benefit.
Part of my actual professional job entails creating forms to be distributed to people within my local division of a Federal agency. I have edit rights to our website to post said forms. I am unable to upload forms that don't meet 508 compliance. I'm not even supposed to EMAIL them to anyone, really.
So - I know the basic rules, I know the intent, I am mandated to make it happen, and I know how to do it. But it isn't easy. Whether some of my forms are compliant or not depends on what tool the auditor uses (and the audit tool changes regularly, because the Feds renegotiate the contract and pick whoever is currently cheapest). Better yet, I don't have access to the audit tool - I can use the audit tools in Acrobat, but that's it, and often whatever Acrobat rates as OK gets dinged by whatever tool the auditor uses this week.
On the plus side, one form that was a major struggle to get right was requested by a visually impaired woman, and I was really happy to provide it to her knowing she could read it. (Even happier when I ran into her again a few days later - turns out she is my next-door neighbor's mother. How would I have felt if I had brushed off her request?)
posted by caution live frogs at 12:51 PM on September 30, 2019 [13 favorites]
Part of my actual professional job entails creating forms to be distributed to people within my local division of a Federal agency. I have edit rights to our website to post said forms. I am unable to upload forms that don't meet 508 compliance. I'm not even supposed to EMAIL them to anyone, really.
So - I know the basic rules, I know the intent, I am mandated to make it happen, and I know how to do it. But it isn't easy. Whether some of my forms are compliant or not depends on what tool the auditor uses (and the audit tool changes regularly, because the Feds renegotiate the contract and pick whoever is currently cheapest). Better yet, I don't have access to the audit tool - I can use the audit tools in Acrobat, but that's it, and often whatever Acrobat rates as OK gets dinged by whatever tool the auditor uses this week.
On the plus side, one form that was a major struggle to get right was requested by a visually impaired woman, and I was really happy to provide it to her knowing she could read it. (Even happier when I ran into her again a few days later - turns out she is my next-door neighbor's mother. How would I have felt if I had brushed off her request?)
posted by caution live frogs at 12:51 PM on September 30, 2019 [13 favorites]
Of course my html tags got stripped out above. That should have been:
Like, ideally, you want to be using all of html5's semantic tags, so that you put the header in a 'header'
tag, etc. But css frameworks got a lot of people used to just using a 'div' for everything and then putting the relevant class on it.
posted by Ragged Richard at 12:52 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Like, ideally, you want to be using all of html5's semantic tags, so that you put the header in a 'header'
tag, etc. But css frameworks got a lot of people used to just using a 'div' for everything and then putting the relevant class on it.
posted by Ragged Richard at 12:52 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Part of my work as a web developer involves implementing things in accessible ways. We usually aim for WCAG 2.0 AA. Mozilla's pages about accessibility are a pretty good starting place to get an understanding of just what making a website/app accessible entails. Alt text for images is just the beginning, we also need to follow guidelines for color contrast, font size/resizing ability, keyboard and screen reader stuff, tab order, focusing after events, providing required controls for any sort of animation, etc...
WRT js frameworks and accessibility, we use React for newer projects and we haven't had too much trouble keeping things accessible. There is even official documentation to help ensure React apps are built accessibly.
posted by Television Name at 1:01 PM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
WRT js frameworks and accessibility, we use React for newer projects and we haven't had too much trouble keeping things accessible. There is even official documentation to help ensure React apps are built accessibly.
posted by Television Name at 1:01 PM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
wow, another reason to never order Domino's
posted by roger ackroyd at 1:02 PM on September 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by roger ackroyd at 1:02 PM on September 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
Since the ADA is typically enforced via litigation (the cops don't show up if a business aren't ADA compliant, being ADA compliant protects against lawsuits) you should expect many (perhaps most) of the online communities near and dear to your heart to get sued into oblivion if this goes 9-0.
I’m sure you anticipated this being a great rhetorical flourish that would cow me into reconsidering my foolish absolutism. Instead, I offer you a reiteration: Make them accessible or burn them down.
posted by Etrigan at 1:02 PM on September 30, 2019 [32 favorites]
I’m sure you anticipated this being a great rhetorical flourish that would cow me into reconsidering my foolish absolutism. Instead, I offer you a reiteration: Make them accessible or burn them down.
posted by Etrigan at 1:02 PM on September 30, 2019 [32 favorites]
Conservatives have hated the ADA since forever. "Making a Federal case out of whether a sidewalk has a ramp" was a criticism from Day 1.
part of every common control. Alas.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:04 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Since the ADA is typically enforced via litigation (the cops don't show up if a business aren't ADA compliant, being ADA compliant protects against lawsuits) you should expect many (perhaps most) of the online communities near and dear to your heart to get sued into oblivion if this goes 9-0. But hey, that one guy gets his free pizza.You're saying... what, exactly? That because ADA depends on litigation for enforcement, it ought not to get litigated?
I have a genuine question: how does the tooling for creating responsive web content not automatically enable accessibility? It's been the law for so many years that most of the programmers of software around this ecosystem should know about it.As a developer working on Federal contracts, my software has to be 508-compliant. Commercial software, not so much. I've mostly worked on fat-client systems, and can attest that Windows provides little support for accessibility-aware programming. So much heartache would be avoidable if they'd made a
void * ACCESSIBILITY_INFOpart of every common control. Alas.
So I feel reasonably qualified to say: having an explicit law stating we must make our sites accessible, clear guidelines on what the law considers "accessible" for sites as a baseline, and clear penalties that will be imposed if we fail to meet the letter of the law makes it easier for us to have the opportunity to do the work that so many of us want to do to support every single one of our users.Two bits of emphasis added there... "clear guidelines" (i.e. easily translatable into requirements) are sorely lacking in the current environment. My impression is that a lot of thinking went into how to make 1980s-vintage green-screen apps accessible, and that never got revisited when everything got GUI. Which is why I call out "makes it easier..." that ought to be in the subjunctive here.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:04 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
I learned about 508 compliance a long time ago and did my best to make my site work for everyone.
As a developer working on Federal contracts, my software has to be 508-compliant. Commercial software, not so much.
Software development methodology as typically practiced by the Federal Government compared to software development methodology as followed by most of private industry (things like SAFE) are two different beasts. Domino's can't spend the next six months doing requirements analysis as part of a firm-fixed price 5 year contract to develop a universal accessibility framework, but that's exactly how most federal software development projects are funded and run. Accessibility is important, but it also can be difficult and expensive, and ignoring or pretending that's not the case doesn't make it true.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 1:06 PM on September 30, 2019
As a developer working on Federal contracts, my software has to be 508-compliant. Commercial software, not so much.
Software development methodology as typically practiced by the Federal Government compared to software development methodology as followed by most of private industry (things like SAFE) are two different beasts. Domino's can't spend the next six months doing requirements analysis as part of a firm-fixed price 5 year contract to develop a universal accessibility framework, but that's exactly how most federal software development projects are funded and run. Accessibility is important, but it also can be difficult and expensive, and ignoring or pretending that's not the case doesn't make it true.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 1:06 PM on September 30, 2019
As a web developer, our agency tries to adhere to WCAG 2 guidelines as much as possible, which is good, but not enough. I think the bigger concern on the design and development side is that the ADA has very specific design standards, but only for physical spaces. Designing and building websites and mobile applications to be accessible certainly can and should be done, but exactly what "accessible" means in this context is still in limbo. The DOJ has suggested that WCAG 2 guildelines should be followed to ensure ADA compliance, but that hasn't been confirmed as the legal standard - and Trump's administration has ensured it won't be as part of their efforts for "deregulation".
I'm 100% on favor of making sites and apps accessible, but there absolutely needs to be clear legal standards if end users can (and should) file lawsuits to ensure ADA compliance.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 1:11 PM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'm 100% on favor of making sites and apps accessible, but there absolutely needs to be clear legal standards if end users can (and should) file lawsuits to ensure ADA compliance.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 1:11 PM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
As a developer working on Federal contracts...
Software development methodology as typically practiced by the Federal Government...These two things are not the same. In particular,
... part of a firm-fixed price 5 year contract ...How do you get contracts like that? I want to work on that kind of contract!
... to develop a universal accessibility frameworkPart of the problem, as noted above, is that there isn't such a framework. Maybe if the private sector were required to have one, say by having costs imposed on them for not having one, that would change?
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:14 PM on September 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
This almost makes me wish I actually ever patronized Domino's so that I could rescind my business and boycott them. Is there a way I can order negative Domino's?
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:15 PM on September 30, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:15 PM on September 30, 2019 [8 favorites]
How do you get contracts like that? I want to work on that kind of contract!
Go work for DOD, lol :-)
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 1:16 PM on September 30, 2019
Go work for DOD, lol :-)
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 1:16 PM on September 30, 2019
Also, while I'm sure the cost of getting this to SCOTUS dwarfs remediating the website, $38k is 3 weeks of a single decent engineer and therefore a total horseshit estimate.
Are you seriously claiming that the going rate for a "decent" engineer is over $658,000 a year?
posted by enn at 1:21 PM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
Are you seriously claiming that the going rate for a "decent" engineer is over $658,000 a year?
posted by enn at 1:21 PM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
Poor, poor Dominos - they cheaped out making their website in the first place, and now they have to pay money to fix it. Boo fucking hoo. We were making websites accessible in 1998, and that is plenty of time to get it up to speed. (I use the word "we" here very loosely - the people I worked with, not me.) Yes, it's expensive. Learn from your mistakes. Hope you never need to use it. Assholes.
posted by corvikate at 1:28 PM on September 30, 2019 [21 favorites]
posted by corvikate at 1:28 PM on September 30, 2019 [21 favorites]
Part of the problem, as noted above, is that there isn't such a framework. Maybe if the private sector were required to have one, say by having costs imposed on them for not having one, that would change?
But that's the thing, the Federal Government gets to define scope of their contract - you shall make this website accessible, and here are the requirements that must be addressed as part of the RFP. Domino's doesn't have any contact with the people ordering their pizza online, they (arguably) want to make it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to order pizza, so the incentives are completely different.
Are you seriously claiming that the going rate for a "decent" engineer is over $658,000 a year?
Engineering cost is not just take-home salary. Don't forget the cost associated with things like scaling out infrastructure for testing. 38k is high, but it's not that high. It's amazing how much some seemingly simple things end up costing.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 1:28 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
But that's the thing, the Federal Government gets to define scope of their contract - you shall make this website accessible, and here are the requirements that must be addressed as part of the RFP. Domino's doesn't have any contact with the people ordering their pizza online, they (arguably) want to make it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to order pizza, so the incentives are completely different.
Are you seriously claiming that the going rate for a "decent" engineer is over $658,000 a year?
Engineering cost is not just take-home salary. Don't forget the cost associated with things like scaling out infrastructure for testing. 38k is high, but it's not that high. It's amazing how much some seemingly simple things end up costing.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 1:28 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
As a web developer that has responsibilities involving making sure the product I work on is accessible, that 38k figure is an extreme lowball. Making any web app accessible isn't a matter of sprinkling the magic accessibility fairy dust on the site but requires thought at every level of planning, design and implementation to carry out successfully.
I never knew that websites were built on the fly by the JS developer on production servers. It's an aspect to the planning that needs to be done just like everything else.
If Google started ranking sites by accessibility tomorrow you bet your ass corporate C levels around the world would instantly start demanding developers not develop web applications like monkeys on meth.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 1:29 PM on September 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
I never knew that websites were built on the fly by the JS developer on production servers. It's an aspect to the planning that needs to be done just like everything else.
If Google started ranking sites by accessibility tomorrow you bet your ass corporate C levels around the world would instantly start demanding developers not develop web applications like monkeys on meth.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 1:29 PM on September 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
Is there a way I can order negative Domino's?
Found the QA engineer.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 1:29 PM on September 30, 2019 [49 favorites]
Found the QA engineer.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 1:29 PM on September 30, 2019 [49 favorites]
Is there a way I can order negative Domino's?
Why sure there is. Every time you order a pizza from someone else take a few minutes of that time you were going to spend pining away, waiting for za to call Domino's and tell then you just spent $31 at Pizza Hut (or where ever) and you didn't choose them because of their ADA stance. Ask that this be mentioned to the manager. Repeat as needed, particularly on Super Bowl Sunday.
posted by Cris E at 1:30 PM on September 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
Why sure there is. Every time you order a pizza from someone else take a few minutes of that time you were going to spend pining away, waiting for za to call Domino's and tell then you just spent $31 at Pizza Hut (or where ever) and you didn't choose them because of their ADA stance. Ask that this be mentioned to the manager. Repeat as needed, particularly on Super Bowl Sunday.
posted by Cris E at 1:30 PM on September 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
I posted about this on twitter a while back
https://twitter.com/dreamling/status/1157332696059789312
Basically though, after running some audits on their site I found that "Some patient web developers working for/with @dominos have taken the time to address accessibility errors. "
So while they may be arguing in court that it's too expensive to retrofit their site to be accessible... it has been for weeks now.
posted by dreamling at 1:43 PM on September 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
https://twitter.com/dreamling/status/1157332696059789312
Basically though, after running some audits on their site I found that "Some patient web developers working for/with @dominos have taken the time to address accessibility errors. "
So while they may be arguing in court that it's too expensive to retrofit their site to be accessible... it has been for weeks now.
posted by dreamling at 1:43 PM on September 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
If Google started ranking sites by accessibility tomorrow you bet your ass corporate C levels around the world would instantly start demanding developers not develop web applications like monkeys on meth.
Accessibility is one factor that is influenced in search results although we do not know to what extent and what specific criteria because Google does not share the specific (a whole another issue) criteria. (Google Lighthouse does some measurements the amount of as well as other things like measure the bandwidth (and energy) used to display a page on a website.
As a web developer who is responsible for ensuring content on our site is accessible and training fellow staff members, my biggest frustration with accessibility is that most commonly used set of guidelines for determining if web content is accessible - WCAG 2.1 - are very vague.
posted by fizzix at 1:52 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Accessibility is one factor that is influenced in search results although we do not know to what extent and what specific criteria because Google does not share the specific (a whole another issue) criteria. (Google Lighthouse does some measurements the amount of as well as other things like measure the bandwidth (and energy) used to display a page on a website.
As a web developer who is responsible for ensuring content on our site is accessible and training fellow staff members, my biggest frustration with accessibility is that most commonly used set of guidelines for determining if web content is accessible - WCAG 2.1 - are very vague.
posted by fizzix at 1:52 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Repeat as needed, particularly on Super Bowl Sunday.
That is indeed a good way to stick it to the teenagers working at your local Domino's.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:07 PM on September 30, 2019 [17 favorites]
That is indeed a good way to stick it to the teenagers working at your local Domino's.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:07 PM on September 30, 2019 [17 favorites]
Per dreamling's tweet - yes, they are already improving their website, but the crux of their argument, per their brief, is not "screw it, it's too expensive to fix", it is that a ruling against them puts them (and essentially all other website/app owners with brick and mortar locations in the US) in an impossible position; there would be legal precedent set for requiring fully accessibility, but without any actual requirements as to what compliance entails.
At the risk of angering the masses here, I think Domino's legal argument is sound, and their problem here is PR. Since the lawsuit was filed, they have improved the accessibility of their site and app, but they maintain the position that holding them legally liable for shortcomings isn't just since there are no legal standards in place to adhere to. This is precisely why the district court initially dismissed the suit, and what they are looking to have confirmed.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 2:09 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
At the risk of angering the masses here, I think Domino's legal argument is sound, and their problem here is PR. Since the lawsuit was filed, they have improved the accessibility of their site and app, but they maintain the position that holding them legally liable for shortcomings isn't just since there are no legal standards in place to adhere to. This is precisely why the district court initially dismissed the suit, and what they are looking to have confirmed.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 2:09 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
it is that a ruling against them puts them (and essentially all other website/app owners with brick and mortar locations in the US) in an impossible position; there would be legal precedent set for requiring fully accessibility, but without any actual requirements as to what compliance entails.
But it's not about any notion of "requiring fully accessibility" because the ADA has the word "reasonable" next to accommodations. What can be reasonably codified and what's reasonable are often two different things. It's reasonable to put a ramp on the side of the building. It's unreasonable to demand a functioning all weather outdoor scissor lift with 0% downtime. It's reasonable to allow a pregnant woman to have a chair or a stool despite a job typically requiring standing. It's not reasonable for the pregnant woman to require the seating conveyance be made of the finest Italian leather.
The law is asking the developer to make a good faith effort that it covers most of the common stuff. Developers don't have to support every edge case. Someone isn't going to be able to sue because a circa 2019 Javascript abomination doesn't render through Arachne and Dr Sbastio under FreeDOS 7.2. But developers should make sure a web app is usable through the top operating systems, top market share screen readers, and provide transcripts. You know, stuff that should be done anyway.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:42 PM on September 30, 2019 [14 favorites]
But it's not about any notion of "requiring fully accessibility" because the ADA has the word "reasonable" next to accommodations. What can be reasonably codified and what's reasonable are often two different things. It's reasonable to put a ramp on the side of the building. It's unreasonable to demand a functioning all weather outdoor scissor lift with 0% downtime. It's reasonable to allow a pregnant woman to have a chair or a stool despite a job typically requiring standing. It's not reasonable for the pregnant woman to require the seating conveyance be made of the finest Italian leather.
The law is asking the developer to make a good faith effort that it covers most of the common stuff. Developers don't have to support every edge case. Someone isn't going to be able to sue because a circa 2019 Javascript abomination doesn't render through Arachne and Dr Sbastio under FreeDOS 7.2. But developers should make sure a web app is usable through the top operating systems, top market share screen readers, and provide transcripts. You know, stuff that should be done anyway.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:42 PM on September 30, 2019 [14 favorites]
I agree in theory that "reasonable" accommodations should be sufficient, but when you get into the realm of being held legally liable, good faith will only get you so far. ADA Design Recommendations prescribe, for example, the slope of the ramp on the side of the building. There is no legal document like that for websites and mobile applications. As I previously stated, WCAG guidelines are the most reasonable standard, but even following those does not ensure compliance as they are, for now, just recommendations and not a legal standard.
Ultimately, I fear that with the current administration and Court, a ruling in Domino's favor is not unlikely, which will only prolong this terrible situation. The intent of the ADA certainly applies to websites and mobile apps, and the Obama administration sought to codify that by making that the letter of the law, but that progress has been intentionally halted by the current administration.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 2:56 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Ultimately, I fear that with the current administration and Court, a ruling in Domino's favor is not unlikely, which will only prolong this terrible situation. The intent of the ADA certainly applies to websites and mobile apps, and the Obama administration sought to codify that by making that the letter of the law, but that progress has been intentionally halted by the current administration.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 2:56 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
I've worked on a number of WCAG 2.0 AA remediation projects for large websites. $38k isn't even close for a site like Domino's. Remediating a site of that size is complex, it's complicated, you deal with multiple systems and it's all worth it. WCAG 2.0 AA should be the baseline. But it is non-trivial. It's not just design and it's not just development, it's also business processes. Content strategy needs to understand user needs and organize content in a way that is cognitively accessible. Content authoring needs to know what works with screen readers and what doesn't. It's a complex series of practices on complex software platforms in order to provide a seamless customer experience for everyone.
To echo some folks above, it would be nice if we had codified standards. There's no such thing as a perfectly accessible website or app. It's making sure that you serve the broadest audience possible. Which, at the end of the day, is good for business.
posted by ryoshu at 3:03 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
To echo some folks above, it would be nice if we had codified standards. There's no such thing as a perfectly accessible website or app. It's making sure that you serve the broadest audience possible. Which, at the end of the day, is good for business.
posted by ryoshu at 3:03 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
As someone who's worked on federal contracts. Even asking people in the same department got different answers on 508 fixes.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 3:50 PM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 3:50 PM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
If web developers want accessibility standards, then they need a working group to sit down and write those standards, not wait for a regulatory agency to do to for them. This is perhaps the most important purpose of professional societies - to facilitate these kinds of working groups. For example most of the ADA's building requirements come from an ANSI document that was published 11 years before the ADA regulations were codified.
posted by muddgirl at 3:55 PM on September 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 3:55 PM on September 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
That's exactly what the WCAG 2 guidelines are - recommended standards from the W3C working group that are roughly 11 years old. As stated before, this was the direction the Obama administration was headed in, but it has been derailed.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 4:33 PM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by hankscorpio83 at 4:33 PM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
So Domino's claiming they don't have any guidelines to follow is false, no? They have voluntary industry standards. I don't see why they have to wait for the federal government to codify those standards.
If there were several sets of radically different industry standards, then maybe they have an argument.
posted by muddgirl at 5:16 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
If there were several sets of radically different industry standards, then maybe they have an argument.
posted by muddgirl at 5:16 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
They aren't claiming that. They are stating that there are no legal requirements in place to evaluate compliance with the ADA, which is why the initial case was dismissed.
Further, while meeting the WCAG "industry standards" (which don't necessarily apply to mobile applications) would certainly help website accessibility (and should be done for websites like this), those recommendations 1) aren't legally binding, and 2) aren't completely aligned with other similar accessibility requirements, such as Section 508 compliance for governmental websites. Legally, there isn't a clear path for compliance.
Ethics, PR, and good business practices aside, the legal merits of this case and the impact of this potential ruling seem fairly clear. There needs to be clarification around legally binding requirements rather than intentional "deregulation" and further attempts at bills that limit the ability of injured parties to sue. Congress should have made these clarifications years ago, and/or delegated the responsibility to the DOJ to avoid this type of legal situation in the first place.
Not legally speaking, meeting the WCAG guidelines is indeed the current best practice and should be done. For what it's worth, Domino's has acted in good faith and cleaned up their site and app since the lawsuit was filed. That doesn't invalidate their legal argument though.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 6:08 PM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
Further, while meeting the WCAG "industry standards" (which don't necessarily apply to mobile applications) would certainly help website accessibility (and should be done for websites like this), those recommendations 1) aren't legally binding, and 2) aren't completely aligned with other similar accessibility requirements, such as Section 508 compliance for governmental websites. Legally, there isn't a clear path for compliance.
Ethics, PR, and good business practices aside, the legal merits of this case and the impact of this potential ruling seem fairly clear. There needs to be clarification around legally binding requirements rather than intentional "deregulation" and further attempts at bills that limit the ability of injured parties to sue. Congress should have made these clarifications years ago, and/or delegated the responsibility to the DOJ to avoid this type of legal situation in the first place.
Not legally speaking, meeting the WCAG guidelines is indeed the current best practice and should be done. For what it's worth, Domino's has acted in good faith and cleaned up their site and app since the lawsuit was filed. That doesn't invalidate their legal argument though.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 6:08 PM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
We work to make our sites more accessible, even though our primary business is facilitating transactions of a product that is illegal for sight-impaired people to use.I am trying to imagine a product that "is illegal for sight-impaired people to use." I am finding it challenging. Hard to use, sure. Requires special adaptations, sure. But ... illegal? I mean, there are blind people that target shoot and downhill ski, right?
On another front, it seems to me that if you want to send the message that you're sending your business elsewhere, rather than calling the local Dominos, use Tweeter, since they'll realize that a g'billion other people are seeing your messages and they're probably losing even more business.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:19 PM on September 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
Yeah, fuck Domino's.
No, the problem of making a responsive, basically built on the fly, database driven, site like theirs ADA compliant isn't exactly trivial, but neither is it impossible or even especially more difficult than making it accessible to sighted people.
They just didn't even think to include blind folk when they were making their site initially and now rather than admitting that and saying sorry they're trying to make out as if it's some huge business burden to include people with visual impairment.
One of my guiding principles is that when people start talking about how much being civilized will hurt business they're lying. They claimed that ending slavery would destroy the economy. They claimed that ending child labor would destroy the economy. They claimed that paying in money instead of company scrip would destroy the economy. They claimed the 40 hour work week would destroy the economy. They claimed paying women as much as men would destroy the economy. Every single time they were lying.
Making a website accessable to blind people will not destroy the economy, or hurt anyone at all.
posted by sotonohito at 6:28 PM on September 30, 2019 [21 favorites]
No, the problem of making a responsive, basically built on the fly, database driven, site like theirs ADA compliant isn't exactly trivial, but neither is it impossible or even especially more difficult than making it accessible to sighted people.
They just didn't even think to include blind folk when they were making their site initially and now rather than admitting that and saying sorry they're trying to make out as if it's some huge business burden to include people with visual impairment.
One of my guiding principles is that when people start talking about how much being civilized will hurt business they're lying. They claimed that ending slavery would destroy the economy. They claimed that ending child labor would destroy the economy. They claimed that paying in money instead of company scrip would destroy the economy. They claimed the 40 hour work week would destroy the economy. They claimed paying women as much as men would destroy the economy. Every single time they were lying.
Making a website accessable to blind people will not destroy the economy, or hurt anyone at all.
posted by sotonohito at 6:28 PM on September 30, 2019 [21 favorites]
I am trying to imagine a product that "is illegal for sight-impaired people to use."
Depending on the level of sight impairment, vehicles like cars and motorcycles fit that description. But we still need to build websites like those that are accessible for screen readers. And otherwise as accessible as possible.
posted by ryoshu at 6:29 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Depending on the level of sight impairment, vehicles like cars and motorcycles fit that description. But we still need to build websites like those that are accessible for screen readers. And otherwise as accessible as possible.
posted by ryoshu at 6:29 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
At the risk of angering the masses here, I think Domino's legal argument is sound, and their problem here is PR. Since the lawsuit was filed, they have improved the accessibility of their site and app, but they maintain the position that holding them legally liable for shortcomings isn't just since there are no legal standards in place to adhere to. This is precisely why the district court initially dismissed the suit, and what they are looking to have confirmed.
Yes -- if you want a thing, pass a law that explicitly mandates it, and also creates a national framework and an administrative infrastructure for regulatory enforcement and compliance. Don't let plaintiffs bring thousands of lawsuits to enforce a vague standard in a piecemeal fashion.
Domino's isn't necessarily just being evil here, if you read their Supreme Court petition on the matter.
posted by killdevil at 6:44 PM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yes -- if you want a thing, pass a law that explicitly mandates it, and also creates a national framework and an administrative infrastructure for regulatory enforcement and compliance. Don't let plaintiffs bring thousands of lawsuits to enforce a vague standard in a piecemeal fashion.
Domino's isn't necessarily just being evil here, if you read their Supreme Court petition on the matter.
posted by killdevil at 6:44 PM on September 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
Using responsive design and alt tags is no guarantee that you have accommodated disabled users; it helps but you really need user testing or understand how your app interacts with screen readers, input devices and other tools. You also may want to consider things like color blindness in your design.
posted by interogative mood at 6:46 PM on September 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 6:46 PM on September 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Richard Supple's final point is a good one:
Importantly, businesses do not decide in a vacuum that accessibility is one of their lowest priorities. Corporate decisionmakers are surrounded by signals confirming their implicit understanding that equal access for the 61 million Americans with disabilities is a pie-in-the-sky ideal that society aspires to only when it is not a significant inconvenience.
Nearly 30 years after the ADA was enacted, less than 20 percent of NYC public schools are fully accessible to children with disabilities, only 25 percent of subway stations are wheelchair-accessible, and under 3 percent of the city’s intersections have accessible pedestrian signals. Across the U.S., an inadequate 40 percent of polling locations in the 2016 presidential election were accessible, according to a government analysis.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:50 PM on September 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
Importantly, businesses do not decide in a vacuum that accessibility is one of their lowest priorities. Corporate decisionmakers are surrounded by signals confirming their implicit understanding that equal access for the 61 million Americans with disabilities is a pie-in-the-sky ideal that society aspires to only when it is not a significant inconvenience.
Nearly 30 years after the ADA was enacted, less than 20 percent of NYC public schools are fully accessible to children with disabilities, only 25 percent of subway stations are wheelchair-accessible, and under 3 percent of the city’s intersections have accessible pedestrian signals. Across the U.S., an inadequate 40 percent of polling locations in the 2016 presidential election were accessible, according to a government analysis.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:50 PM on September 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
The web is accessible by default, it's us monkeying about and doing stupid things like making a button out of a
This should be a slam dunk, and in fact Deque will give you an hour-long seminar on the ROI of accessibility that has "Do you now what even the best-case scenario of a lawsuit will cost you?" as a centerpiece.
However, put it in front of the most business-friendly Supreme Court in years.... Well, this is why a lot of people I know in tech have a "Get out of tech forever" fantasy.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:21 PM on September 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
<div> just because we can that makes it worse. This should be a slam dunk, and in fact Deque will give you an hour-long seminar on the ROI of accessibility that has "Do you now what even the best-case scenario of a lawsuit will cost you?" as a centerpiece.
However, put it in front of the most business-friendly Supreme Court in years.... Well, this is why a lot of people I know in tech have a "Get out of tech forever" fantasy.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:21 PM on September 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
Even though it's a pain, without legislation providing an incentive to actually work on accessibility, it will rarely get into the "next sprint."
posted by adzm at 7:56 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by adzm at 7:56 PM on September 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
The web is accessible by default, it's us monkeying about and doing stupid things like making a button out of a just because we can that makes it worse.
I mean, if you limit the DOM elements used to headings, paragraphs, and links, and don't use JavaScript or CSS, that would be true. In 2019 though, that isn't really a legitimate claim.
A perfectly valid video element without captions isn't accessible. Poorly considered colors that don't provide enough contrast aren't accessible. Images without alt text aren't accessible. Forms that don't save your progress aren't accessible. Websites that aren't fully navigable by alternate input devices aren't accessible. Those are all common errors due to laziness, inattentiveness, or ignorance. Add in all the actual monekying around and the it really does get worse.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 8:10 PM on September 30, 2019 [8 favorites]
I mean, if you limit the DOM elements used to headings, paragraphs, and links, and don't use JavaScript or CSS, that would be true. In 2019 though, that isn't really a legitimate claim.
A perfectly valid video element without captions isn't accessible. Poorly considered colors that don't provide enough contrast aren't accessible. Images without alt text aren't accessible. Forms that don't save your progress aren't accessible. Websites that aren't fully navigable by alternate input devices aren't accessible. Those are all common errors due to laziness, inattentiveness, or ignorance. Add in all the actual monekying around and the it really does get worse.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 8:10 PM on September 30, 2019 [8 favorites]
at some point we decided to make a markup format into an application platform, and computers kept getting faster so we could ignore the wasteful absurdity of that design decision
it's the original soon sin that will be the root cause of decades of suffering, accessibility problems aren't the least of it
posted by idiopath at 8:48 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
it's the original soon sin that will be the root cause of decades of suffering, accessibility problems aren't the least of it
posted by idiopath at 8:48 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
Domino's isn't necessarily just being evil here.
Then why did Domino's go out of their way to pick this particular hill to die on? They are a company worth almost $10 billion. Complying with a reasonable good faith effort would cost them a trivial amount of money.
Yet they decided that they needed to go all the way to the Supreme Court in a fight for what -- the libertarian rights of every billion dollar company in the country? Don't tell me they were just looking out for mom and pop web retailers. They are doing this to send a message.
posted by JackFlash at 9:24 PM on September 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
Then why did Domino's go out of their way to pick this particular hill to die on? They are a company worth almost $10 billion. Complying with a reasonable good faith effort would cost them a trivial amount of money.
Yet they decided that they needed to go all the way to the Supreme Court in a fight for what -- the libertarian rights of every billion dollar company in the country? Don't tell me they were just looking out for mom and pop web retailers. They are doing this to send a message.
posted by JackFlash at 9:24 PM on September 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
Is there a way I can order negative Domino's?
These days we call that "talking shit on Twitter."
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:07 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
These days we call that "talking shit on Twitter."
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:07 PM on September 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
"Domino’s says it cannot scrape together the funds to make its site and app accessible, a process it warns could “run into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.” One estimate puts the cost at about $38,000. For context, Domino’s topped $13.5 billion in global sales last year."
Says it all, really.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:35 PM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
Says it all, really.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:35 PM on September 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
This problem will eventually solve itself when every business moves to Facebook. They'll throw some AI at it.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:25 AM on October 1, 2019
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:25 AM on October 1, 2019
Maybe I woke up cranky today, but if software people want to adopt the "architect" title for themselves, maybe they should also learn from the practice of architecture and find a way to make accessibility a default. Architects do it, surely the super logical coding people can figure it out. Most of the internet we use today is younger than the ADA, it's not like you're trying to retrofit something 100 years old. We want to build eye-catching things, too. We either make them accessible or we don't build them.*
* yeah I know some architects suck and fail at this
posted by sepviva at 6:35 AM on October 1, 2019 [11 favorites]
All of the handwringing by Domino's et al. over the terrible injustice of accessibility standards being established/enforced through litigation is pretty absurd. That's how the law was designed to work.
If business groups had been pushing for amendments to the ADA to establish an administrative regulatory framework and uniform standards for web/app accessibility, Congress would have gotten it done faster than you can say "Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act."
Instead, they wanted deregulation. Well, it doesn't get more deregulated than a simple, judicially-enforced requirement of reasonableness.
Notably this case seems to be the intentional culmination of a long-running disinformation campaign about the supposed horrors of "drive-by" ADA lawsuits, a campaign that has been frequently abetted by the reliably awful American Bar Association and the reliably awful mainstream US media. The cert petition's references to "copy-and-paste" ADA web accessibility lawsuits (o noes!) seem clearly intended to appeal to justices who have already spent years simmering gently in that disinfo broth.
posted by shenderson at 7:47 AM on October 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
If business groups had been pushing for amendments to the ADA to establish an administrative regulatory framework and uniform standards for web/app accessibility, Congress would have gotten it done faster than you can say "Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act."
Instead, they wanted deregulation. Well, it doesn't get more deregulated than a simple, judicially-enforced requirement of reasonableness.
Notably this case seems to be the intentional culmination of a long-running disinformation campaign about the supposed horrors of "drive-by" ADA lawsuits, a campaign that has been frequently abetted by the reliably awful American Bar Association and the reliably awful mainstream US media. The cert petition's references to "copy-and-paste" ADA web accessibility lawsuits (o noes!) seem clearly intended to appeal to justices who have already spent years simmering gently in that disinfo broth.
posted by shenderson at 7:47 AM on October 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
Quote from the cert petition (emphasis added):
posted by shenderson at 7:53 AM on October 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
Achieving online accessibility involves creating “alternative text” descriptions for every image and incorporating other features into websites and apps. Those upgrades often require retaining outside consultants to create and maintain websites.Alt text for every image! Outside consultants! Why, such a demand would bring any company to its knees!
posted by shenderson at 7:53 AM on October 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
Are you seriously claiming that the going rate for a "decent" engineer is over $658,000 a year?
With benefits and RSUs and whatnot? Yes. Although I was thinking more like $300/hr which is closer to $600k
Perhaps “decent” is the wrong word, but this is the cost those companies you heard of pay for front end engineers. Who do you think is buying those $2M 1200 sq ft houses?
posted by sideshow at 8:33 AM on October 1, 2019
With benefits and RSUs and whatnot? Yes. Although I was thinking more like $300/hr which is closer to $600k
Perhaps “decent” is the wrong word, but this is the cost those companies you heard of pay for front end engineers. Who do you think is buying those $2M 1200 sq ft houses?
posted by sideshow at 8:33 AM on October 1, 2019
shenderson: Notably this case seems to be the intentional culmination of a long-running disinformation campaign about the supposed horrors of "drive-by" ADA lawsuits, a campaign that has been frequently abetted by the reliably awful American Bar Association and the reliably awful mainstream US media. The cert petition's references to "copy-and-paste" ADA web accessibility lawsuits (o noes!) seem clearly intended to appeal to justices who have already spent years simmering gently in that disinfo broth.
Exactly!
Per Mary Johnson's Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve and The Case Against Disability Rights, you could call it pulling a Clint Eastwood:
The early chapters use the Clint Eastwood case, in which he fought against making his Mission Ranch hotel compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as a media-frenzied example of how many businesspeople will not comply with the law and blame lawyers for spurring disabled people into the suing. This case is used effectively and is particularly telling because when a well-known celebrity is involved, the news media pay attention. And this meant, according to Johnson, the media were buying into Eastwood's argument that the ADA and aggressive lawyers for disabled people are hurting American business. She teases out the rhetoric of the case in which Eastwood and businesspeople like him argue that they are not "against the handicapped" but are against the "special" requirements of the ADA and the lawyers who sue them over it. It's clear from Eastwood's statements that he never saw disability rights as a civil rights movement.
If Domino's were acting in good faith, they'd be pouring blood and treasure into lobbying for clearer legislation and standards, but they're not doing that. They want standards and legislation to go away and they're happy to spend their money on trying to make that happen in the courts.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:34 AM on October 1, 2019 [7 favorites]
Exactly!
Per Mary Johnson's Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve and The Case Against Disability Rights, you could call it pulling a Clint Eastwood:
The early chapters use the Clint Eastwood case, in which he fought against making his Mission Ranch hotel compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as a media-frenzied example of how many businesspeople will not comply with the law and blame lawyers for spurring disabled people into the suing. This case is used effectively and is particularly telling because when a well-known celebrity is involved, the news media pay attention. And this meant, according to Johnson, the media were buying into Eastwood's argument that the ADA and aggressive lawyers for disabled people are hurting American business. She teases out the rhetoric of the case in which Eastwood and businesspeople like him argue that they are not "against the handicapped" but are against the "special" requirements of the ADA and the lawyers who sue them over it. It's clear from Eastwood's statements that he never saw disability rights as a civil rights movement.
If Domino's were acting in good faith, they'd be pouring blood and treasure into lobbying for clearer legislation and standards, but they're not doing that. They want standards and legislation to go away and they're happy to spend their money on trying to make that happen in the courts.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:34 AM on October 1, 2019 [7 favorites]
EJ, physical ability is associated with virtue, and disability with weakness, so there is a lot of subconscious victim blaming when talking about accessibility. For instance, griping about mobility scooters in public places, which I’ve been guilty of before, assumes that impacted mobility is an option that people choose through life decisions, and thus is worthy of criticism.
Anectode: I once got into a discussion with a police chief over whether ADA applied in office areas within the station. He was making the argument that only able bodied individuals are allowed on the force and thus the standards were not necessary. I do not think this individual hated people with disabilities, but he was reacting to the perception that his staff might be “weak” in some way as disability in our culture is constantly associated with weakness.
The argument ended when one of his officers walked by us on crutches, having broken his foot in the line of duty.
posted by q*ben at 9:13 AM on October 1, 2019 [11 favorites]
Anectode: I once got into a discussion with a police chief over whether ADA applied in office areas within the station. He was making the argument that only able bodied individuals are allowed on the force and thus the standards were not necessary. I do not think this individual hated people with disabilities, but he was reacting to the perception that his staff might be “weak” in some way as disability in our culture is constantly associated with weakness.
The argument ended when one of his officers walked by us on crutches, having broken his foot in the line of duty.
posted by q*ben at 9:13 AM on October 1, 2019 [11 favorites]
Architects do it, surely the super logical coding people can figure it out.
It's not an architecture problem, it's a business problem. If you don't have the resources to test and get feedback from actual users, you aren't going to be successful. Saying "just design it better up front" sounds great but flops on its face when you come in contact with a novel combination of screen reader + OS + user expectation.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:37 AM on October 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
It's not an architecture problem, it's a business problem. If you don't have the resources to test and get feedback from actual users, you aren't going to be successful. Saying "just design it better up front" sounds great but flops on its face when you come in contact with a novel combination of screen reader + OS + user expectation.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:37 AM on October 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
The CEO of Dominos mades over $5 million a year. The idea that Dominos can't afford to fix its web site is a joke.
Of course a big chunk of that compensation is stock options predicated on him not spending money on things like fixing their web site.
posted by JackFlash at 9:54 AM on October 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
Of course a big chunk of that compensation is stock options predicated on him not spending money on things like fixing their web site.
posted by JackFlash at 9:54 AM on October 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
Saying "just design it better up front" sounds great but flops on its face when you come in contact with a novel combination of screen reader + OS + user expectation.
The law says a REASONABLE accommodation. That means it may not work with every single possible screenreader/OS combination.
Domino's argument is that "LOL We can't do that so fuck this law"
posted by Paladin1138 at 10:51 AM on October 1, 2019 [5 favorites]
The law says a REASONABLE accommodation. That means it may not work with every single possible screenreader/OS combination.
Domino's argument is that "LOL We can't do that so fuck this law"
posted by Paladin1138 at 10:51 AM on October 1, 2019 [5 favorites]
Of course a big chunk of that compensation is stock options predicated on him not spending money on things like fixing their web site.
The law says a REASONABLE accommodation. That means it may not work with every single possible screenreader/OS combination.
I feel like people missed the message above, that dominos.com currently scores a 95 on Google's Lighthouse accessibility audit. Metafilter, by contrast, scores a 75. Does that mean Metafilter devs don't 'give a fuck' about accessibility, or maybe that accessibility is difficult and time consuming to implement correctly and it tends gets weighed against other feature requests?
Maybe I woke up cranky today, but if software people want to adopt the "architect" title for themselves, maybe they should also learn from the practice of architecture and find a way to make accessibility a default. Architects do it, surely the super logical coding people can figure it out.
This comment completely misunderstands what software architecture is effectively about. RobotVoodooPower is completely right that this is a business problem, not a technical problem. Regulation needs to enforce requirements for things like this, akin to a Building Code, if they want them to be adopted by the business types that drive product development. It's something that has potential effects the entire development cycle and could touch a lot of different stakeholders (for lack of a better word). It's not just 'slap some alt text descriptions on your images' and you're good, modern large-scale web application's like Dominos just don't work like that.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 12:55 PM on October 1, 2019 [5 favorites]
The law says a REASONABLE accommodation. That means it may not work with every single possible screenreader/OS combination.
I feel like people missed the message above, that dominos.com currently scores a 95 on Google's Lighthouse accessibility audit. Metafilter, by contrast, scores a 75. Does that mean Metafilter devs don't 'give a fuck' about accessibility, or maybe that accessibility is difficult and time consuming to implement correctly and it tends gets weighed against other feature requests?
Maybe I woke up cranky today, but if software people want to adopt the "architect" title for themselves, maybe they should also learn from the practice of architecture and find a way to make accessibility a default. Architects do it, surely the super logical coding people can figure it out.
This comment completely misunderstands what software architecture is effectively about. RobotVoodooPower is completely right that this is a business problem, not a technical problem. Regulation needs to enforce requirements for things like this, akin to a Building Code, if they want them to be adopted by the business types that drive product development. It's something that has potential effects the entire development cycle and could touch a lot of different stakeholders (for lack of a better word). It's not just 'slap some alt text descriptions on your images' and you're good, modern large-scale web application's like Dominos just don't work like that.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 12:55 PM on October 1, 2019 [5 favorites]
Does that mean Metafilter devs don't 'give a fuck' about accessibility, or maybe that accessibility is difficult and time consuming to implement correctly and it tends gets weighed against other feature requests?
If Domino's stamped the phrase "difficult and time consuming to implement correctly" on $100,000 bills (the largest denomination of U.S. currency ever printed) at the rate of one letter per bill, including spaces, it would represent 1.4% of their profits from 2018 alone. Just to put in perspective of how little weight they appear to assign to it.
posted by Etrigan at 1:34 PM on October 1, 2019 [4 favorites]
If Domino's stamped the phrase "difficult and time consuming to implement correctly" on $100,000 bills (the largest denomination of U.S. currency ever printed) at the rate of one letter per bill, including spaces, it would represent 1.4% of their profits from 2018 alone. Just to put in perspective of how little weight they appear to assign to it.
posted by Etrigan at 1:34 PM on October 1, 2019 [4 favorites]
Nobody is saying the issue is strictly business or strictly technical, but in the face of lacking regulatory structure, choices can be made that steer the general standard best practices towards something more equitable.
This is sort of a nice thing to hear and sounds good, but at the same time it's fairly obvious that Product Managers at Domino's are not incentivized toward equity and accessibility, they're incentivized to figure out ways sell pizza. Expecting a business to just do it because it's ethically correct is sort of naive, because I think we all understand they're seldom going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts. It needs to be driven from the top down via regulation by the Government.
Telling disabled people to sit on their hands and wait for the all encompassing winged angel of regulation to swoop down from on high and lay its holy light on this blighted landscape is not an answer, it's another dodge, especially under the current administration.
But that's the thing, they already did it. If you read dreamling's comment above, they've updated their website to be accessible over the past few months and currently score pretty high on Google's accessibility audit. So it sounds like one wing of the company is doing exactly what you suggest while another wing is arguing that they shouldn't have to, which isn't uncommon in large organizations.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 1:39 PM on October 1, 2019
This is sort of a nice thing to hear and sounds good, but at the same time it's fairly obvious that Product Managers at Domino's are not incentivized toward equity and accessibility, they're incentivized to figure out ways sell pizza. Expecting a business to just do it because it's ethically correct is sort of naive, because I think we all understand they're seldom going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts. It needs to be driven from the top down via regulation by the Government.
Telling disabled people to sit on their hands and wait for the all encompassing winged angel of regulation to swoop down from on high and lay its holy light on this blighted landscape is not an answer, it's another dodge, especially under the current administration.
But that's the thing, they already did it. If you read dreamling's comment above, they've updated their website to be accessible over the past few months and currently score pretty high on Google's accessibility audit. So it sounds like one wing of the company is doing exactly what you suggest while another wing is arguing that they shouldn't have to, which isn't uncommon in large organizations.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 1:39 PM on October 1, 2019
Yeah, but if they win this suit, then ALL websites owned by large corporations will not have to make their sites accessible to the sight impaired, which is bullshit. It's not about just Dominos, right?
posted by agregoli at 1:48 PM on October 1, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by agregoli at 1:48 PM on October 1, 2019 [5 favorites]
So Domino's claiming they don't have any guidelines to follow is false, no? They have voluntary industry standards. I don't see why they have to wait for the federal government to codify those standards.
I believe that governments in some other countries require web sites to follow the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:45 PM on October 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
I believe that governments in some other countries require web sites to follow the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:45 PM on October 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
I believe that governments in some other countries require web sites to follow the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.
Yep, the regulations under the AODA in Ontario, for example, do so:
Accessible websites and web content
14. (1) The Government of Ontario and the Legislative Assembly shall make their internet and intranet websites and web content conform with the World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, at Level AA, and shall do so in accordance with the schedule set out in this section. O. Reg. 191/11, s. 14 (1).
(2) Designated public sector organizations and large organizations shall make their internet websites and web content conform with the World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, initially at Level A and increasing to Level AA, and shall do so in accordance with the schedule set out in this section.
The legislation defines a "large organization" as an "organization with 50 or more employees in Ontario, other than the Government of Ontario, the Legislative Assembly or a designated public sector organization."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:08 PM on October 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yep, the regulations under the AODA in Ontario, for example, do so:
Accessible websites and web content
14. (1) The Government of Ontario and the Legislative Assembly shall make their internet and intranet websites and web content conform with the World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, at Level AA, and shall do so in accordance with the schedule set out in this section. O. Reg. 191/11, s. 14 (1).
(2) Designated public sector organizations and large organizations shall make their internet websites and web content conform with the World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, initially at Level A and increasing to Level AA, and shall do so in accordance with the schedule set out in this section.
The legislation defines a "large organization" as an "organization with 50 or more employees in Ontario, other than the Government of Ontario, the Legislative Assembly or a designated public sector organization."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:08 PM on October 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yes, in Australia too. Government websites must meet WCAG 2.1 by law, and the courts have ruled in favour of disabled people in the few corporate cases which have made it to court. A couple of corporates thought they'd try their luck, but ended up settling out of court when they compared the quote from the lawyers to the quote from the accessibility consultants. Having a law to mandate compliance gives support to anyone who's trying to do the right thing.
And honestly, WCAG compliance isn't that bloody hard. I know because I've done it for years. Good usable designs make it easy, especially if you employ people with disabilities to co-design with you. Good development practices (including actually using HTML properly instead of div soup) give you a solid base to work from, automated tools will pick up tiny problems with the code. Then 5 minutes of keyboard testing and a check with a free screen reader in a popular browser should get you most of the way. If you need to be certain, you can hire a professional to audit it after that.
The excuses being offered in this thread are frankly pathetic. People with disabilities make up nearly 20% of the population, so there's a business case as well as a moral imperative. You don't have to be perfect, but you do have to try.
I hope Dominos get their arse handed to them.
posted by harriet vane at 6:04 AM on October 2, 2019 [6 favorites]
And honestly, WCAG compliance isn't that bloody hard. I know because I've done it for years. Good usable designs make it easy, especially if you employ people with disabilities to co-design with you. Good development practices (including actually using HTML properly instead of div soup) give you a solid base to work from, automated tools will pick up tiny problems with the code. Then 5 minutes of keyboard testing and a check with a free screen reader in a popular browser should get you most of the way. If you need to be certain, you can hire a professional to audit it after that.
The excuses being offered in this thread are frankly pathetic. People with disabilities make up nearly 20% of the population, so there's a business case as well as a moral imperative. You don't have to be perfect, but you do have to try.
I hope Dominos get their arse handed to them.
posted by harriet vane at 6:04 AM on October 2, 2019 [6 favorites]
The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, a win for the web and users. Big loss for Domino's and whoever was backing their play.
I'm pleasantly surprised by this news.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:50 AM on October 7, 2019 [15 favorites]
I'm pleasantly surprised by this news.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:50 AM on October 7, 2019 [15 favorites]
More coverage, from Ars Technica: Accessibility, the future, and why Domino’s matters -- Is the Web subject to the ADA? "Of course," says congressman who wrote the ADA.
Also: in the latest quarter, Domino's revenue was $820.8 million (Yahoo Finance, October 8, 2019), so the cost to make an ADA compliant app would be a rounding error to their quarterly earnings.
The right to discriminate, indeed.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:22 AM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]
Retired Rep. Tony Coehlo, a Democrat who represented California's 15th district in Congress from 1979-1991, introduced the ADA to the House in May 1989. He now serves on the board of AudioEye, an accessible design firm. As the author of the bill, Coelho firmly believes it applies to digital space.Bolded for truth.
"I put in the ADA obviously before the Internet came on board," Coehlo told Ars. "But what we did is, we provided the language that basically said, 'accommodation for the infrastructure,' in effect."
The definition of "infrastructure" has been challenged, and it's evolved, over time. And so, as digital commerce came along in the subsequent decades, the question became: is the digital sphere part of American infrastructure?
"Of course," Coehlo said. "It's just how people communicate, it's how people get into commerce, it's how people relate to each other, and so forth. It's a critical part of our infrastructure! In my view, without reservation, the ADA was not meant to be something that was in place at the time alone. It basically sets the standard for going forward.
...
Designers and advocates in the field were extremely concerned about the stakes and less confident the case, if the Court took it up, could be easily won. Sina Bahram, an inclusive design expert and president of Prime Access Consulting, spoke with Ars at length about both the case and the field.
Over the summer, the figure of $38,000 was circulating online: that's how much Domino's had reportedly said it would cost to make the required upgrades to the company's app. "As somebody who does this kind of work, that seems correct," Bahram said. "That's not an outlandish number. It's not a too-small number. It's in the ballpark, it's within the realm of reason. And so what's frustrating about that is: I do not know the costs associated with appealing something to [the Supreme Court], but I would put hard money that it is greater than $38,000."
Given the sorts of fees corporate law firms tend to command, Bahram's bet seems extremely plausible.
"And so the frustration that I and a lot of other people in the community I know have is: this is not some company going 'we can't afford to do this,' or 'it's an unreasonable requirement,' or anything like that," Bahram said. Yet he says the Domino's case had potential to "destroy the foundation of Web accessibility for basically 20% of the population."
"It's fundamentally terrifying, because if that is a route to make it essentially invalid, then it could invalidate the Web as a place of public accommodation under the ADA. That's really, really concerning," Bahram added.
Whitney Quesenbery is a user-experience design expert who in 2013 co-founded the Center for Civic Design, which helps make election and voting design more widely accessible. She has also published several books about inclusive design. And she recognizes this seemingly bizarre decision to legislate rather than update.
"Here's what's shocking about Domino's: like Target [in 2008], just fixing the problem costs a great deal less than suing. So they were suing for the right to discriminate," Quesenbery told Ars.
Also: in the latest quarter, Domino's revenue was $820.8 million (Yahoo Finance, October 8, 2019), so the cost to make an ADA compliant app would be a rounding error to their quarterly earnings.
The right to discriminate, indeed.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:22 AM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]
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If we lived in a functioning society, this would be a 9-0 verdict of “Fuck you, and you’re sending Mr. Robles a free pizza whenever he wants for the rest of his life for wasting our fucking time on this.”
It’s been thirty years. Make it accessible or burn it down.
posted by Etrigan at 11:43 AM on September 30, 2019 [108 favorites]