I don’t think people should be profiteering significantly off of stuff like this, but I do think ADA compliant websites should exist. Why alienate people with vision issues just so you don’t need to build a website that has appropriate descriptions of your website elements?
It’s one of those things when threatened someone should have to fix or otherwise get a not-insignificant fine scaled appropriately based on revenue if they don’t fix it.
You don’t need paid education or significant experience to modify html and css to include the appropriate information. There’s even some free testing tools out there which will tell you about things that are problems.
The upside to private actions being allowed here is that you could have a nonprofit going around doing this for people, or even an individual trying to do the right thing. With the volume of ada-noncompliant websites out there I don’t think a government entity could keep up without efficient organization and automated tooling - both things I don’t really trust the government to do.
I don’t think people should be profiteering significantly off of stuff like this, but I do think ADA compliant websites should exist. Why alienate people with vision issues just so you don’t need to build a website that has appropriate descriptions of your website elements?
That’s a different case from the one in the article – which isn’t about whether the website is accessible to blind users, but whether the website contains statements about whether the rooms are accessible to mobility-impaired guests.
But in both cases, it seems like something similar to fire-safety inspections or health inspections would suffice. Where I live, fire protection systems (alarms, sprinklers, etc.) are inspected annually. Restaurants are regularly inspected for health code violations, and (importantly) can be re-inspected if a customer reports that they saw unsanitary conditions.
It’s just another checklist item. Check the fire alarms work; check there aren’t roaches in the kitchen; check the website mentions accessible rooms.
I don’t think people should be profiteering significantly off of stuff like this, but I do think ADA compliant websites should exist. Why alienate people with vision issues just so you don’t need to build a website that has appropriate descriptions of your website elements?
It’s one of those things when threatened someone should have to fix or otherwise get a not-insignificant fine scaled appropriately based on revenue if they don’t fix it.
You don’t need paid education or significant experience to modify html and css to include the appropriate information. There’s even some free testing tools out there which will tell you about things that are problems.
The upside to private actions being allowed here is that you could have a nonprofit going around doing this for people, or even an individual trying to do the right thing. With the volume of ada-noncompliant websites out there I don’t think a government entity could keep up without efficient organization and automated tooling - both things I don’t really trust the government to do.
That’s a different case from the one in the article – which isn’t about whether the website is accessible to blind users, but whether the website contains statements about whether the rooms are accessible to mobility-impaired guests.
But in both cases, it seems like something similar to fire-safety inspections or health inspections would suffice. Where I live, fire protection systems (alarms, sprinklers, etc.) are inspected annually. Restaurants are regularly inspected for health code violations, and (importantly) can be re-inspected if a customer reports that they saw unsanitary conditions.
It’s just another checklist item. Check the fire alarms work; check there aren’t roaches in the kitchen; check the website mentions accessible rooms.