Drive by lawsuits for discrimination? I'd like to hear more about how this would work.. Is this a thing? Like you would go sue a perfectly legitimate and non-discriminatory business for excluding black people, even though no such discrimination exists? And how would they win that? And how many attempts before they lose their license and/or are barred from bring any more cases?
Here's the Unrah Act:
All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.
Seems to me that the only business that would be concerned is a business that is engaged in activity that they shouldn't be doing anyway. And if that's the case, they should be sued.
So your example is a website that does violate the ADA. I understand that ADA compliance is hard for websites... that's not a legal issue so much as a technical issue. We do treat support for the blind, et al as an afterthought. So is your complaint here that the ADA is being enforced? Like we should just get rid of the ADA because people aren't complying? Or are you upset the ADA doesn't say: please make your best effort? Better support for the disabled in our front end frameworks would be awesome.. It is too bad there isn't more focus on it.
I'll bite the bullet and say it: If the ADA requires UC Berkeley to take down 20,000 hours of lecture videos[1] because some of them lacked subtitles and some lacked audio descriptions of slides, then the ADA needs to be changed. And any university that commits civil disobedience by not removing such content is making the world a better place.
Arguably they can afford the 3.5 - 7 million dollars but if they aren't reusing the material for current students they may reasonably desire to spend the money elsewhere.
I would argue that you shouldn't acquire an obligation by providing something for free without benefit to themselves.
The ADA may not require it, but the compliance costs it imposes are a strong disincentive for publishing.
The ADA in that case turned an unmitigated public good from "Sure, why not publish them online?" into "We can't publish this content without paying a lot of money we don't have, so we just won't publish it.".
I think what you're missing is that the websites may be 100% in compliance with the ADA- the site owners simply can't risk the expense & uncertainty of a lawsuit, so they settle. It's (legal) extortion, the law is simply the vehicle by which they do it. And it certainly doesn't make the world a better place for the disabled, it's just a payoff for the attorneys. It is literally the same concept as patent trolling.
Maybe a solution would be to change these laws so that the outcome of the lawsuit is a mandated change to ADA standards, but no damages, and parties have to pay their own attorney's fees. That would achieve what you say you're looking for, good faith ADA compliance, without incentivizing strongarm attorneys looking for a quick buck
Does this not also disincentivize the little guy from taking on BigCorp? I might be willing to put up tens of thousands of dollars to fight for justice but I can't risk owing millions to BigCorp lawyers if a judge or jury disagrees.
>Maybe a solution would be to change these laws so that the outcome of the lawsuit is a mandated change to ADA standards, but no damages,
We pretty much have this for violations of civil law. The judge says "just make your crap in compliance and we won't fine you" and continues the case to a later date and if it's in compliance by that later date they don't fine you.
Of course that doesn't solve the trolls that send a scary looking letter even when no violation exists and hope that the victim settles but it's better than the trolls being able to win in court.
oh no, I have absolutely no complaint. I 100% support the ADA and think it is incredibly underused. The way we treat people who are disabled in this country is morally indefensible. The ADA doesn't go nearly far enough, and the burden should not be on the person who needs access.
That being said...
The problem in this case is the rammifications are not always more accessibility, in fact they are often less accessibility and even less availability. It's not dissimilar to copyright trolls and striking youtube videos that happened to have happy birthday playing in the background. The frivolous label gets applied and undermines greater accessibility.
An example of where this can go bad:
1) Materials that are not accessible are taken down under threat of lawsuit, now its not available to anyone. Could they have been made accessible? Sure! did anyone ask...or did they start with a lawsuit? - https://www.theledger.com/news/20190420/ada-compliance-polk-...
You might hope that the risk of legal damages would spur better technological solutions. Businesses won't take these issues seriously unless it impacts their bottom line, so that's the point of these laws.
There's also virtuous cycle here: sites that are more accessible to screen readers would generally have better semantic markup, and be better for machine parsing, too.
Here's the Unrah Act:
All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.
Seems to me that the only business that would be concerned is a business that is engaged in activity that they shouldn't be doing anyway. And if that's the case, they should be sued.