9th Circuit Rules Netflix Isn't Subject To Disability Law

An anonymous reader writes with news that the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled that Netflix doesn't have to caption their videos. "A federal appeals court ruled (PDF) yesterday that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) doesn't apply to Netflix, since the online video provider is 'not connected to any actual, physical place.' Donald Cullen sued Netflix in March 2011, attempting to kick off a class-action lawsuit on behalf of disabled people who didn't have full use of the videos because they aren't all captioned. A district court judge threw out his lawsuit in 2013, and yesterday's ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upholds that decision. The decision is 'unpublished,' meaning it isn't intended to be used as precedent in other cases. However, it certainly doesn't bode well for any plaintiff thinking about filing a similar case in the 9th Circuit, which covers most of the Western US."

Comments

Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes me want to watch Sense and Sensibility tonight on Netflix. Wow. An ADA ruling that isn't completely asinine. What will they think of next.

Re:Sense

[Crashmarik]

Makes me want to watch Sense and Sensibility tonight on Netflix. Wow. An ADA ruling that isn't completely asinine. What will they think of next.

From the Ninth Circuit no less.

Did they start putting meds in the water out there ?

Re:Sense

[Eristone]

We'd just be happy with having water out here, little more meds in them to work on the 9th. :)

Re:Sense

[jythie]

Yeah, we normal people really stuck it to those degenerate disabled people this time! It is their own fault for being poor, otherwise the market would cater to them.

Re:Sense

[jythie]

The ADA was written in such a way that it is only triggered BY lawsuits. The government refuses to actually inspect or regulate, but instead drops the burden on the disabled community to enforce it themselves. It was a brilliant piece of anti-disabled propaganda slid into the law since it was intended to inspire just the type of attitude that you have.

Re:Sense

[OhPlz]

The government has the constitutional right to control all economic relationships.

Where exactly in the Constitution are you finding that? The feds have limited powers to protect interstate commerce and anything crossing the national border, but they certainly have no authority to control anything and everything to do with commerce.

Re:Sense

[JackieBrown]

Did you build your own roads to get from your house to other locations

Is that an option we can use now?

Re:Sense

[GoddersUK]

The government has the constitutional right to control all economic relationships.

OK, step away from Wickard v. Filburn.

It is, probably, the stupidist SCOTUS ruling in history. (Closely followed by Schenck v. US and Jim Crow, in that order.)

Re:Sense

[GoddersUK]

Presumably Wickard v. Filburn. It's unconstitutional as hell but it's currently the legal precedent.

Re:Sense

[Coren22]

Taker? No, I pay a ton of taxes (a little over 30% of my salary goes to income taxes), therefore I paid for those roads. I also pay gas taxes and tolls that pay for the roads I use.

Re:Sense

[Cheer Up Queefy Jean]

If freedom doesn't apply in economic matters, then there is no freedom at all. All action is inherently economic in nature.

Re:Sense

[MachineShedFred]

I had no idea that paying over $35k in taxes last year made me a "taker" and a "leech" if I didn't also construct my own roads in addition.

Ignorant asshole.

Re:Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

The ADA was written in such a way that it is only triggered BY lawsuits. The government refuses to actually inspect or regulate, but instead drops the burden on the disabled community to enforce it themselves. It was a brilliant piece of anti-disabled propaganda slid into the law since it was intended to inspire just the type of attitude that you have.

Um... no. I'm not a huge fan of the law (mostly because in Chicago, we're sick and tired of the new bumpy walking curbs constantly cracking and having to be replaced... when they are replaced) but you aren't thinking this through... and this came up when the law pased.

The reason there aren't inspections and ticketing beforehand is that that'd automatically have hit the economy and owners and become this big political thing in a huge wave which would have made things seem more more negative. And the idea is between "hey, does the pizza place in the alaskan mining camp really need to spend $x to install a ramp and bathroom and braille if there are no disabled customers" vs "Maybe they'd have disabled customers if they had those things..."

It was simply a judgement call to help mitigate some of the very real costs of the law (this money all comes from somewhere, aka the middle class and poor) for where it's actually needed, and to help it actuall pass.

I'm only bothering to reply because I'm amazed that people thought it was insightful to think that someone anti-disabled intentionally slid this in to turn people against the disabled because they couldn't stop the passage of the law or something. I'd question your critical thinking capacity, but don't want to get sued. ;)

Re:Sense

[rpstrong]

No need to step away. The ruling was based on the interstate commerce laws - it does not give the gov't jurisdiction over ALL economic activity. And a fairly recent attempt to force another fit scenario - a federal ban on guns near school, 'cuz the gun was probably bought across state lines and because a dead student can't engage in interstate commerce - was struck down by the courts.

Re:Sense

[shutdown -p now]

The ruling was based on the interstate commerce laws - it does not give the gov't jurisdiction over ALL economic activity.

Yeah, only that which can affect interstate commerce even it a very indirect way (to remind, Filburn was growing for his own consumption!) - such as by affecting the supply and demand of the market as a whole. Basically, unless some commodity trades only within state boundaries, Wickard says that it can be regulated by the feds.

Re:Sense

[ebvwfbw]

From the Ninth Circuit no less.

Did they start putting meds in the water out there ?

Nah, they're just making trips to Colorado... to get some weed.

Hell of an indictment on that idea, eh? Stick a fork in it, I think it's done.

Re:Sense

[GoddersUK]

No need to step away. The ruling was based on the interstate commerce laws

I take it you don't actually know what the ruling was. There was no interstate commerce. A farmer was growing a regulated crop, for his own private consumption, but the ability of the federal government to interfere was upheld regardless. Precedent from drugs cases seems to suggest that the courts will uphold this even when the market in question is a black market.

So, although the (federal) government has very limited power to interfere in commerce constitutionally the precedent for interpretation of the constitution has given them carte blanche to do what they like.

Re:Sense

[rpstrong]

I hadn't even heard of before, but the linked Wiki article made it abundantly clear that misusing the Commerce Clause was indeed the rationale for the court's ruling - what part am I not getting?

Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Loopy]

Hulu has captions. Amazon Prime Video has captions. It's not like you're being completely denied the joys of interwebs TV.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[kenai_alpenglow]

And to be honest, though my hearing is fine I like having the captions (watch it on phone in bed while wife is sleeping). So if netflix doesn't do CC and Amazon does, I'm more likely to keep Amazon then netflix when the $$'s get tight. Capitalism works.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Hulu has captions. Amazon Prime Video has captions. It's not like you're being completely denied the joys of interwebs TV.

Netflix has captions too. They are suing because Netflix doesn't have captions on 100% of its programming. As in "they aren't all captioned".

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix also has captions/subtitles. Just not -everything- has it. It's not a deficiency of the service but rather the content.

Take into account that:
a) Most DVD's have "hard" subtitles, so anything from a DVD source is not going to have subtitles on Netflix unless someone goes out of their way to OCR them (like pirates do)
b) Most BD source content has actual "text" subtitles that can be styled, and thus no transcription is required.

You're going to find that Anime will normally have subtitles for the dialog only. While English language content will only carry subtitles/captions if the original source content had it, eg some documentaries will have it. On the average, just about everything on Netflix does indeed have subtitles, but I don't know if everything does.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[MightyMartian]

Yet another way in which illegal file sharers provide a superior product.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

This was my thought as well, the pirates are out-doing the "legitimate" market once again, and for free. A lot of times when you download a pirate copy you even get .srt files for multiple languages.

Re: Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[jd2112]

It's pretty easy to rip closed captioning from a DVD without resorting to OCR.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Darinbob]

Netflix also has captions. They're just noton every single thing available from Netflix. The same applies to Hulu or Amazon Prime as well, as it is an additional expense.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Darinbob]

I've not run across anything on Netflix that didn't have titles. The Netflix subtitles are superior to anything I've seen with close captioning or pirated anime.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is exactly the same for broadcast television. Some shows have closed captioning, some don't.

The guy who filed this lawsuit obviously has another disability located between his ears.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[TWX]

Even some shows that try to have closed-captioning have such awful results that it's useless. Live shows are essentially unwatchable with closed captioning, and the cheaper the show (especially time-filler shows mid-day on weekdays) the worse the captioning.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[misosoup7]

Amazon Prime Video doesn't have captions for all videos either. Neither does Hulu...

Re: Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[wonkey_monkey]

If it has closed captions. Don't they generally just use DVD bitmaps these days?

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Bite The Pillow]

they aren't all captioned

Well, they all look the same to me.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Shows are required by law to have captioning but they are not required by law to have good captioning. Hence networks taking minimum cost automated voice to text option.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Rakarra]

Some of the pirate subtitles I've found are quite superior to the on-disc subtitles on a few of my anime movies. I end up ripping the movie off dvd/blu-ray, but adding in the 3rd-party subtitles to the resulting file.

Re: Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[khellendros1984]

Some DVDs only provide bitmap captions, without the text encoded anywhere. In fact, more of my DVDs work that way than actually have a text CC stream. If you have a bitmap of some text, OCR is the way to go to extract it.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Noah Haders]

And to be honest, though my hearing is fine I like having the captions (watch it on phone in bed while wife is sleeping).

They made a new invention called earmuffs and you put them on your wife.

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[David_Hart]

And to be honest, though my hearing is fine I like having the captions (watch it on phone in bed while wife is sleeping).

They made a new invention called earmuffs and you put them on your wife.

Better yet, how about a nice set of 5.1 surround sound headphones. You get a fun new gadget and she gets a good nights sleep... Win-win....

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Dahamma]

The actual FCC rule about whether captions are required for streaming depends on two things: when the content originally aired on TV and when the device displaying them was built/updated (so that devices that were built before the rules don't apply). It's actually pretty fair.

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/capt...

The lawsuit was basically an attempt by lawyers to apply the ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) to Internet closed captions to argue that those reasonable FCC rules aren't enough, and they should "get money" from companies that are really trying as hard as they can to follow the actual rules...

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[2fuf]

Well I heard this bite tornado stuff also seems to have a pretty extensive library of media available, but probably won't be able to afford that high quality stuff

Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[Coren22]

We are all Homos, Homo Sapiens.

Re: Not to mention they aren't a monopoly

[khellendros1984]

Sometimes the font is unattractive, and I'm sure that Netflix would prefer to have captions that appear the same between their different offerings. Plus, it's better to have nicer text than the stuff that was optimized for display on a 480i CRT.

Nonprecedential but citable.

[Etherwalk]

Ninth Circuit unpublished cases issued after 2006 can be cited to. They are not binding precedent, so a court doesn't *have* to follow them and you don't want to cite to them if you don't have to, but they do have a small but important persuasive role where the facts are very similar to a new case.

Re:Nonprecedential but citable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in number of cases, not percentage. You have to take into account the vast size of the 9th district and the number of cases they take to understand why that often quoted statistic is meaningless.

Re:Nonprecedential but citable.

[AuMatar]

The 9th circuit is the largest court with the most cases. So of course it has more overturned. When viewed by percentages they're one of the least overturned courts. The whole "9th is the most overturned court" meme is from Republican wishful thinking trying to downplay importance of cases out of there,

Re:Nonprecedential but citable.

[Etherwalk]

Enh... where I'm hesitating here is that the 9th has a reputation as the most overturned court in the nation, and that may have a bearing on the argument also. (Although, IANAL, I believe if a lower decision is upheld, as in this case, it can't be sent to the supreme court, so they can't be overturned here.)

No; the Supreme Court can generally hear cases from Circuit Courts of Appeals or State Supreme Courts (on Federal or Constitutional issues) regardless of which way the case went. The only obvious exceptions are where they lack jurisdiction because there is no genuine "case or controversy" as required by the Constitution, or where Congress has specifically excluded a law or area from being reviewable by them. (Congress has a Constitutionally granted power to do this, with some limitations. It rarely does.)

Re:Nonprecedential but citable.

[Rakarra]

If a 9th Circuit case goes up for review, it has more of a chance of getting overturned. However, it has a higher rate of cases that are left to stand (not affirmed, not struck down) than the other circuit court. I suppose you could oversimplify by saying that the 9th circuit doesn't blow it that often, but when they do, they REALLY blow it.

Re:Nonprecedential but citable.

[Etherwalk]

Congress has specifically excluded a law or area from being reviewable by them. (Congress has a Constitutionally granted power to do this, with some limitations. It rarely does.)

Can you expand on this? I was pretty sure the only things SCOTUS couldn't review (i.e. they deny themselves the power to review) were Political Question situations and core functions of the other branches, like Congress' internal rulemaking, executive power to conduct foreign relations and make combat decisions, etc.

I was not aware of a constitutional grant of authority for Congress to pass certain laws that were unreviewable by their own say so.

Article III, Section 2 of the constitution specifically provides that "In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

In practice, both the Supreme Court's power to strike down a law and the Congress's power to make laws unreviewable are rarely used, but serve as a kind of latent check on the authority of the other--the threat or possibility of it will sometimes reign in either branch of government from doing what it otherwise would do.

From Wikipedia, recent examples of jurisdiction stripping include the following:

        Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (inter alia, stripped the federal judiciary of its jurisdiction to review certain Immigration and Naturalization Service decisions),
        Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 (restricting the remedies available to prison inmates),
        Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (limiting the number of habeas corpus petitions available to prison inmates),
        Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, ruled an unconstitutional denial of the right of habeas corpus pursuant to the Suspension clause. Boumediene v. Bush.

There have also been hundreds of unsuccessful bills in Congress to strip federal courts of jurisdiction.

Re:Nonprecedential but citable.

[Etherwalk]

There is no such thing as a "binding precedent", just as there is no such way to make a un-unprecedented. Something has either preceded or proceded. Declaring public records and rulings as unpublished is about as whacko-liberal as you get. If you actually live within the 9th ditrict, this probably suits you just fine, but you double-speaking OJ lovers are stewing in your own mess.

FYI, it has nothing to do with liberal v. conservative. "Published" just means "published in the official reporter." Almost all of them are published in the ordinary sense of the word "published."

It has to do with judges either being risk-averse or being pressed for time, or both. You don't have to edit an opinion as thoroughly or be as careful about the implications how you decide the case will have for future cases if future cases won't be decided based on how you decide your case. It also becomes less likely that you will be overturned, and no judge likes to be overturned.

Re:Nonprecedential but citable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you need a little more info than you supply. For example, what are you using to determine reversal rate? Reversals of all cases heard by the court, or only those appealed AND heard by SCOTUS?

http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/intelprop/magazine/LandslideJan2010_Hofer.authcheckdam.pdf for the full details.

Looking at the 9th Circuit: From FY99 to FY08, they closed 114,199 cases (the largest number of all circuits...the 5th and 11th are distant second and third overall numbers-wise) . Inthe same timeframe, SCOTUS heard only 175 cases ruled on by the 9th Circuit. Even if all 175 were reversed, it would be less than than 2% of all cases heard in the 9th Circuit would have been reversed. The reality is, not all cases heard by SCOTUS are reversed or remanded back to the lower court , and as the SCOTUS only really hears cases where contraversy exists (ie two or more circuits disagree on how an issue should be ruled) or where there are significant Consitutional issues, it isn't surprising that the court with the largest number of cases has the largest number of cases heard by SCOTUS, and subsequently the largest number reversed.

Re:Nonprecedential but citable.

[david_thornley]

You're still not using the right statistics.

You're counting reversals for cases that were appealed to the Supreme Court, and which the Supreme Court accepted. The reversal rate is going to be pretty high, since the loser(s) need a justification for the appeal, and the Supremes are likely to not bother hearing cases they think handled well by the circuit court (except to settle contradictory rulings in different circuits).

It would be better to compare reversals to total cases handled. That doesn't control for differences in the types of cases heard, but it's going to be a lot more meaningful than reversals for cases expected to be reversed.

Yify

[MrL0G1C]

Yify torrents have subtitles and don't cost a dime, piracy FTW once again.

Re:Yify

[Anonymous Coward]

Yify torrents also have more artifacts than the Smithsonian. It may *technically* be 1080p but it's not fooling anyone.

Re:Yify

[preaction]

Mod parent up. I get better quality from my potato.

Re:Yify

[Rakarra]

Yify torrents have subtitles and don't cost a dime, piracy FTW once again.

Thanks, but I'm not interested in torrenting furry porn.

Re:Yify

[drinkypoo]

Yify torrents also have more artifacts than the Smithsonian. It may *technically* be 1080p but it's not fooling anyone.

So, just like Netflix, then? Netflix is "best" at low resolutions, where quality is defined as perceived image quality divided by used bandwidth.

Why Netflix ?

[Alain Williams]

Surely the case should be against the film studios that made the films and not Netflix which is just distributing them ?

Re:Why Netflix ?

[tchuladdiass]

Or they should sue the company who made the copper wire that brings the internet to their homes. Makes about as much sense.

Re:Why Netflix ?

[roc97007]

I could be wrong on this, but if the studio captioned the film, wouldn't the film be "hard captioned", where the captioning is part of the image, and can't be turned off? I'm aware that technology has gone beyond this, but that doesn't mean the studios have adopted it.

Re:Why Netflix ?

[dissy]

Surely the case should be against the film studios that made the films and not Netflix which is just distributing them ?

According to the film studios, adding subtitles creates a derivative work and the distribution of it a copyright violation, and the person doing it a horrible human being that should be burnt alive after being fined a hundred trillion dollars for damages.

He should have just sued the MPAA instead, then everyone wins! :P

Re:Why Netflix ?

[silas_moeckel]

What idiot would put hard captions on anything? This is just let another issue with DRM laden rent seeking, I DL a movie and I can get captions for a multitude of languages and often of a higher quality especially for content like anime that has a vibrant culture. Hell at this point it's automated, the fetching of subs in my preferred languages just happens every time a new piece of content is added to my library.

Re:Why Netflix ?

[Dahamma]

It's common for movies that are distributed in a country that generally doesn't speak the movie's language, of course. Though they are called subtitles in that case.

Re:Why Netflix ?

[Chris Mattern]

The customer also pays the cable company (or whoever provides their connection). Why don't they have to answer to this customer grievance?

Re:Why Netflix ?

[david_thornley]

Huh? Assuming the subtitles have some trace of creativity (perhaps the timing, or if they're a translation), applying them to the original work yields a derivative work, and that derivative work may not be distributed without licenses for both the original work and the modifications. It's hard to see how copyright law would work otherwise.

Copyright holders are normally not going to be happy about somebody illegally distributing a slightly modified version of something they have a copyright on.

There's certainly plenty of things to blame on the film studios, but I don't see this as out of line.

Re:Why Netflix ?

[Reziac]

Why Netflix? Because some lawyer thought Netflix's pockets were deep enough and that they looked like a low-hanging fruit.

Re:Why Netflix ?

[tepples]

The service purchased from the ISP is packet forwarding. The service purchased from Netflix is an application that runs on top of packet forwarding, namely video distribution. Accessibility applies to the latter, not the former.

FCC

[n1ywb]

The FCC could possibly regulate this.

Not tied to a place?

[sanf780]

But it sure is tied to IP geo location!

Sent from a place where there is no Netflix service.

Netflix - Customer Friendly?

[jtollefson]

Too true that Netflix doesn't need to offer this, with this ruling that point is even backed-up. But, can any internet based service these days really do anything that's considered a "dick-move"? The people are fickle, and "bad news" travels a heck of a lot faster these days than it did in the past.

Frankly, I think it's a heck of a risk to fight it. They're probably going to end up putting it in anyways.

Unpublished

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unpublished because it wasn't considered consequential. The panel affirmed the judgment without hesitation because existing precedent was crystal clear. Per the unpublished opinion:

We have previously interpreted the statutory term “place of public accommodation” to require “some connection between the good or service complained of and an actual physical place.” See Weyer v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 198 F.3d 1104, 1114 (9th Cir. 2000). Because Netflix’s services are not connected to any “actual, physical place,” Netflix is not subject to the ADA. See id. Therefore, in light of Weyer, Cullen’s ADA-predicated Disabled Persons Act and Unruh Civil Rights Act claims fail as a matter of law. See id.

In other words, the actually interesting case occurred in 2000 where it was decided that there must be a nexus among the good or service, the public accommodation, and a physical place. Your TV or computer might exist in a physical place, but it doesn't constitute a public place of accommodation. If we presume for the sake of argument that Netflix headquarters is a public place of accommodation, that's not where the relevant good or service is provided. All three things must come together for the ADA to apply.

It would suck if the plaintiff won. I love captions, and am glad that Netflix recently added them, but if Netflix lost this case then anybody with a business website would be required to make their site compatible with screen readers, etc. That's a good idea in principle, but to require by law everybody to do that would be insane.
Congress or a regulatory agency can always craft a much more narrowly tailored law which provides the same substantial benefit.

Re:Unpublished

[queazocotal]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... - would seem to have come to the other conclusion in a somewhat similar case.
Was this under a different section of the ADA - or is this discriminated from in some manner.

Re:Unpublished

[rahvin112]

AFAIK the only people that can control closed captioning are the FCC.

It's a voluntary entertainment service, not access to a vital place. For example, the ADA would come into play for a physical store a disabled person might need because they might not be able to function in society without access. But an entertainment system where there is no "place" and no compelling interest for access means it isn't going to be regulated by the ADA. Though the FCC could step in and apply their own regulations I doubt they would even consider it for non-broadcast access.

Re:Unpublished

[russotto]

Target has stores, Netflix does not. The Target website was in some way related to the stores, so the lawsuit was tied to a public accomodation.

Re:Unpublished

[Anubis IV]

In the Target case, the court certified the plaintiff as a class that could initiate a class action suit on the basis that they may have been being discriminated against in the "enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, or privileges". An out-of-court settlement was reached between Target and the plaintiff, so the matter was never settled in court.

The problem? The court handling the Target case is in the 9th Circuit Court's jurisdiction, and the 9th Circuit Court had already established a precedent over this exact same topic way back in 2000 (if that case looks familiar, it's because it's the same precedent they're citing in the current case). If you look in section II.B, what you'll see is that the 9th asserts the whole "enjoyment" thing only pertains to places of "public accommodation", and that if you understand "public accommodation" in the context in which it was used, it's abundantly clear that Congress was specifically talking about physical locations (it really is pretty clear...even without being a lawyer, the language is easy to understand). Congress even gave examples, like zoos, restaurants, auditoriums, and laundromats. Notably missing: mail order catalogs, infomercials, or any number of other ways that people might have procured goods and services (that text was written in 1990, so it's understandable that the Internet wouldn't have been mentioned).

Which is to say, the lower court decided that instead of following precedent, they'd ignore it and interpret the ADA text in a way that was both contrary to how the relatively plain and easy to understand language was written by Congress and was also contrary to how the higher court they are under had said it should be interpreted. The judge in the Target case even made comments indicating their interest in seeing the plaintiff's success in the case help extend the law into areas where it hadn't reached before (i.e. places where it wasn't supposed to reach to begin with, a fact which the judge was ignoring). Moreover, had that case been allowed to progress, it would have established a wide-reaching precedent that could have been used to impose ADA restrictions on practically anything and everything, even when it would make no sense to do so.

All of which is to say, whatever precedent might have been set by that court would have been wiped out by the 9th's earlier decision that was completely contrary to theirs. Had Target not settled, I'd wager that they'd have easily won in appeals, since the next court up is the 9th, and they appear to have a better memory for precedent than the lower court does.

Disclaimer: IANAL

Re:Unpublished

[Dahamma]

Though the FCC could step in and apply their own regulations I doubt they would even consider it for non-broadcast access.

Actually, they already have very specific rules for captioning Internet streaming content that Netflix and all other streaming companies follow (the misunderstanding that Netflix "doesn't do captions" is totally wrong - the vasty majority of their content is captioned):

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/capt...

This lawsuit was trying to claim that those already extensive rules aren't enough and the ADA requires all content to be captioned. Luckily the courts didn't agree...

Re:Unpublished

[Afty0r]

It would suck if the plaintiff won. I love captions, and am glad that Netflix recently added them, but if Netflix lost this case then anybody with a business website would be required to make their site compatible with screen readers, etc. That's a good idea in principle, but to require by law everybody to do that would be insane.

I'm a web developer, and there are already fairly strict requirements about catering for various disabilities if you are writing websites for the public sector (varies by jurisdiction/country). The private sector not so much - but it would not be a particularly onerous burden if the requirements were reasonable - it would add a small additional cost to the cost of producing most websites, but then all disabled people would be able to partake in the web ecosystem, I suspect it's (mostly) a price worth paying. There might be a small hump in prices while the masses of weaker web developers had to learn some new techniques, but ultimately it would become standard, and built into frameworks and process driving the price down close to zero.

Many years ago people used to say things VERY similar to your sentence about disabled ramps/toilets etc. for access to premises - "the cost would be enormous to fit out every building for the disabled!". Yet now in my country almost all businesses must provide reasonable assistance both to disabled employees and disabled customers. I think you would find it difficult to find someone who would now argue that that this requirement was a "bad thing".

Re:Unpublished

[Chris Mattern]

The person ordering doesn't necessarily have to be the person driving the car.

What was Netflix supposed to do about it?

[iamacat]

They didn't make those video and they certainly provide a way for content creators to submit captions. Require new releases over certain budget to include captions, but don't expect one company to be responsible for entire entertainment industry.

Good

[Karmashock]

The ADA is horribly abused and has been a gold mine for slimy trial lawyers for years.

So many of their rules are stupid. Take ramps for example, the rules are TWELVE FEET of distance for every FOOT of rise. That's 1/12... By this logic, half the streets in san francisco are in violation of the ADA... that is the fucking hills have grades that are steeper than that. It is stupid.

The ADA should generally be repealed. Most businesses want customers disabled or otherwise to feel comfortable there and use their services. That alone should be enough to see that most things are accessible. Yes, seriously disabled people are going to need help. Let us not pretend that if we cover the world with ramps that such people can live on their own without assistance. Who bathes them etc? And here you might sight some fellow that winches himself into the tub with pullies. Any such fellow isn't going to need a 1/12 ramp to get into a shop.

Being disabled sucks. But being disabled is not a license to force everyone in the rest of society to cover the world in bubblewrap.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Get in a wheelchair and try wheeling your ass up anything steeper than 1/12. It's not as easy as you seem to think. Oh by the way at 1/10 be careful your chair doesn't tip backwards and land you on your head.

Naturally occurring hills cant be helped. An entry ramp can.

Re:Good

[AuMatar]

And living near San Francisco, there's streets my mother or grandmother wouldn't be able to climb. Even most locals won't walk in those areas. We can't control nature, but that's no excuse for not doing better than that when we can. Out of all the point of the ADA that could use fixing, you picked the one that makes perfect sense to complain about?

Re:Good

[Livius]

Naturally occurring hills cant be helped. An entry ramp can.

Wrong. Both are simply an issue of budget and geometry. But sometimes enough is enough.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

they're not naturally occurring hills, they're ROADS on hills. No one says the roads have to go up the hills perpendicular to the peak. You could zig zag the roads or spiral them up the hill. That would give you any grade you wanted.

As to you landing on your ass at 1/10... so for four feet of rise you expect me to build you 48 feet of ramp. I would sooner carry you into the store/restaurant myself and place you in your chair of choice.

If my offer to personally carry you into the establishment is not sufficient sacrifice and I have to spend tens of thousands of dollars... then I really just have zero sympathy at that point. It is too expensive.

Much like the idea of demolishing those old victorian style houses on those hills in SF and then coming up with some stupid road pattern that is ADA compliant, you're sometimes asking businesses to do too much.

Sometimes it isn't a big deal. Sometimes it really isn't practical to comply. I'm sorry. Any establishment is going to do its level best to make you feel comfortable and enjoy your experience. But there are limits. Some of these regulations are very expensive to comply with especially for legacy construction that wasn't built with these standards in mind.

There is a botanical garden in my area that was built about 100 years ago. Not ADA compliant. They run the whole operation with community donations. They're in jeopardy of being shut down unless they tear up all the landscaping and completely redesign the whole thing to be ADA complaint.

Grasp this... this hostility you're reading from me... it comes from some place real. And blowing me off because you think you're the only opinion with a greivance and all other positions should have a gun pressed against their heads and told to comply or die... is not acceptable.

And yes, that is what happens when you make something a federal mandate. You don't comply and they put pressure on you until you do comply. Such pressure will escalate eventually to guns pressed against heads.

Just because you send out a cute little court order saying "do this by this date or we'll fine you" does not mean that behind it all is not a threat of violence.

I am fine with ADA GUIDELINES. By all means, recommend stuff. And those that can practically comply will do so. New construction will make use of it. Whatever. But were not applicable... sorry. I didn't make you a cripple. I have disabled family members as well if that makes any difference to you and they agree with me.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Your statement would be more persuasive if the ADA didn't already provide for the limits to the accommodations under reasonable standards of feasibility.

Re:Good

[rahvin112]

Naturally occurring terrain isn't regulated by the ADA. Access to a business is.

Re:Good

[rahvin112]

o many of their rules are stupid. Take ramps for example, the rules are TWELVE FEET of distance for every FOOT of rise. That's 1/12... By this logic, half the streets in san francisco are in violation of the ADA... that is the fucking hills have grades that are steeper than that. It is stupid.

As others have said, you don't know what you are talking about. Put yourself in a wheelchair sometime and try it sometime.

The ADA should generally be repealed.

No it shouldn't. I wouldn't have a problem with repealing you though.

Most businesses want customers disabled or otherwise to feel comfortable there and use their services. That alone should be enough to see that most things are accessible.

History proves this absolutely false. Frankly you don't know what you are talking about. Generally the ADA only even applies in the case of NEW construction. Some of the accommodation rules do apply to existing businesses because the only other option would be to either tell the disabled person to go off a die or raise taxes and supply them a government helper to do all their shopping and errands for them. The ADA rules are far cheaper and reasonable.

Yes, seriously disabled people are going to need help. Let us not pretend that if we cover the world with ramps that such people can live on their own without assistance.

History again proves this as utter nonsense. With appropriate accommodation the disabled can live healthy productive lives without needing others help to survive. With the appropriate ADA accommodations in place a man in a wheelchair can live alone, feed, transport, work and shop all by himself and be a productive member of society. Without those accommodations he will be home bound, rely on government support including someone to go buy his groceries and take him places like the doctor. The cost of the ADA is far out weighed by the cost savings of allowing the disabled to support themselves. It's literally a 10:1 cost/benefit ratio.

Let us not pretend that if we cover the world with ramps that such people can live on their own without assistance. Who bathes them etc? And here you might sight some fellow that winches himself into the tub with pullies. Any such fellow isn't going to need a 1/12 ramp to get into a shop.

With proper accommodation a disabled person can function independently. In fact the vast majority of disabled do, the ones that don't often are mentally handicapped or so severely handicapped they can't. Again you have no concept about what slopes do and what impact they have in a wheelchair, (try one out and walk in their shoes before you start railing about their worthlessness). Though the most important part of ramps is NOT the slope rate but the very existence of a ramp. The legal rate simply sets the standard so the slope is not 1:2. Without the ramp the person in the wheelchair cannot enter the building, whether that is a grocery store or a doctors office. I'd also like to point out the ADA isn't just about wheelchairs, it's about the blind, the deaf and frankly anyone with a disability.

But being disabled is not a license to force everyone in the rest of society to cover the world in bubblewrap.

You are an asshole. You being an asshole is not a license to force everyone else to tolerate you.

The ADA doesn't "wrap the world in bubblewrap" as you claim, what it does is allow the disabled to take care of themselves with dignity. In the 50's someone in a wheelchair would need a co-worker to carry them into the bathroom and put them on toilet (that is if they even had a job because most couldn't even get into the building). Because of the ADA the bathroom door is now wide enough to fit the wheel chair through, there is a stall big enough to get the wheel chair in (while closing the door) and handles and railings to allo

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

I would never be so self absorbed and entitled to suggest that the entire world should mold itself to my disabilities.

The number of places that have spent tens of thousands to have these ramps in place and yet not had a single disabled customer are legion.

if there were any kind of disabled traffic going on, that would be one thing. But when there isn't, you're asking me to shell out a lot of money for nothing.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

I've always wondered, why doesn't someone build a castle or something out there? I would totally consider building a compound in the middle of that hell hole. 20 foot walls with spikes on the tops of course... and gate possibly with a portcullis... maybe a moat... full of something horrible that can live in detroit. I guess I could heat the water in the winter but I'd prefer not to.

The land has to be so cheap that you could do some funny stuff with it.

Re:Good

[AthanasiusKircher]

As others have said, you don't know what you are talking about. Put yourself in a wheelchair sometime and try it sometime.

I agree with you that GP is being a jerk. On the other hand...

The ADA should generally be repealed.

No it shouldn't. I wouldn't have a problem with repealing you though.

While I absolutely agree with the ideas behind the ADA, in practice it has led to some serious legal abuse. Google "ADA extortion" or something like that, and you'll find dozens and dozens of stories about people -- who often aren't really disabled and go around threatening small businesses with lawsuits in the name of the ADA. Often the accommodations demanded by these folks would require a complete reconstruction or redesign of a building just to make a bathroom a few inches wider or something, so the businesses often "settle" with these thugs, paying out thousands of dollars rather than the tens of thousands or more they might be required to do.

There are many, many of these people who have made a living (i.e., hundreds of thousands of dollars) going around suing or threatening to sue over ADA accommodations. Granted, in some cases they lie or misrepresent the ADA to trick businesses into settling. At other times, they follow overly-strict or selective interpretations of the ADA to force lawsuits. Not saying the ADA should be repealed, but it probably could use some serious tweaking and the precedents around it need some serious attention to get us to a reasonable state.

In any case, these sorts of cases are a huge problem. Heck, if you search for it, you'll find organizations of lawyers complaining about it among the top links.

And when crazy lawsuits have multiplied so much that lawyers are complaining about it, you know something has gone seriously wrong in the legal world....

Re:Good

[Black Diamond]

As long as those things you do are ADA compliant.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

Given that at most I might see one person every two months with such a condition, it really would be no hardship at all.

And if I had to do three times a day, I still wouldn't mind.

Really.

I'm not a bad guy, brother. You just can't expect people to drop 30k on something like that when often as not no one that is disabled ever comes. I mean... ever. Sure they could... but on that basis you can't ask me to spend 30k. I'm very happy to go out in the cold and wind and help anyone. Really. And if I need some help because the guy is really fat, I'll grab another employee for it. No big deal.

I would do it with a smile.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

Given that business owners are routinely forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars to comply or sued millions for not complying and then forced to pay for the remodel on top of that... you can jam that comment in sideways.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

You're right, when I sided with human decency, I must have sided against civilization as well... if your civilization has no concept of human decency.

In which case, yeah... fuck your civilization.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

Thanks... I was hoping someone with a disability would validate my position here. :)

So many moral crusaders about these days... people that bitch just to feel superior without any real objective besides that.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

Except for restaurants have been literally carrying wheel chairs into establishments for years. It was a common thing to do. A guy would show up in a wheel chair, 4 waiters would go out there, each grab a corner, and carry him up the stairs. Many wheel chairs used to have handles there specifically for this purpose.

And that ignores the fact that a pretty steep ramp is totally reasonable if someone is pushing you up it. Which is something any establishment would be happy to help with. I've never known a business owner that wouldn't do that. I'm sure they are out there, but most people are not assholes. You can't use the occasional asshole to justify tyranny. Its fucked up.

Anyway, I just got a guy with a spinal injury that has been in a wheel chair for years to back me up in this thread. So. I feel validated.

Suck it. :)

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

I love that you think naked trolls where you just make dumb insults is somehow giving you any kind of edge on me. All your dumb insults do is make you sound petty, childish, and weak.

You sound like a petulant child.

And the fact that you're hiding behind the AC to troll doesn't speak well of you either.

Re:Good

[stdarg]

Why should it attack your dignity to need help and ask for it? Maybe that's the problem that should be addressed.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying something is a tautology does not make it so.

1. ADA regulates within it's mandate.
2. Naturally occurring terrain is not in that mandate.
3. Therefore ADA does not apply to naturally occurring terrain.

Really if you must use logic terms, please at least try to be educated in the use of logic.

Re:Good

[drinkypoo]

The ADA doesn't "wrap the world in bubblewrap" as you claim, what it does is allow the disabled to take care of themselves with dignity.

No, what it does is force the rest of us to take care of the disabled. If they were taking care of themselves, they would be installing the wheelchair ramps, and paying for them too. That's not what's happening.

Obviously you think that this is something which we should be doing — I would personally argue that only utilities and necessities should have to accommodate access — but it's unclear why you have to disingenuously mischaracterize the ADA if it's such a positive thing.

And EVERYONE benefits from the accommodations.

You say that, but there is actually substantial harm to society in enabling meaningless, mindless, needless commerce. So again, there is a reasonable argument to be made for enabling access to necessities, but not for frivolities.

Re:Good

[jareth-0205]

As to wheel chairs needing that rise, if they do they're poorly designed.

Given you've never designed or had to use a wheelchair, your assertion is not very convincing. Making a wheelchair that can go up steep gradients is going to have lots of knock-on effects to the design like weight, size, cost, and since you can't push yourself up such gradients with your arms for any length of time it would be a waste anyway.

I told you, I'd be happy to carry you into the store myself. I'd be happy to push your wheel chair up my ramp. No need for anyone else. I would do it gladly.

Let's assume for a second that you really are that nice (hard to do based on other things you have said, but OK). Do you think it is important for a person to be able to live with dignity? What dignity could there be in a life where you have to ask someone to *carry* you every time you go into a shop... multiple times per day. You would have to find a fine nice person like you to go out of their way *every* time an obstacle is encountered, which in your world would be pretty often.

Re:Good

[drinkypoo]

Naturally occurring hills cant be helped.

What? Who told you that? You can't do much about it for new construction, but you absolutely can address it for new. You can make laws stating that roads shall be on grades no steeper than X, and then require that any roads be constructed such that they avoid any grades steeper, even if that means taking a longer route and spending more on construction. And this is precisely what the ADA does, except on a smaller scale. What exactly causes you to imagine that we can't do it on a larger one?

Re:Good

[SuiteSisterMary]

That's an issue with the legal system, not with the ADA. America is a litigious society.

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

Thanks for the response. I am one of those fairly seriously disabled people for whom access is all-important to for example employment -- because the world is fairly accessible, I was able to get educated and to now work in software engineering, where I'm doing well for myself. I do need a couple of hours of outside help per week primarily in my own home for cleaning and and such things, but otherwise I'm self-sufficient.

If I couldn't get physically anywhere in the outside world, I'd be institutionalized at worst. And at that point, the logical next step is to start saying that I'm a useless ward of the state.

People criticising disability accommodations should consider whether they want to morally blame me for causing costs for being out there, applying myself to the maximum of my ability, or whether they want to blame me for causing costs being a "useless eater" -- although I'm sure minimizing the said costs by reducing me to the bare minimum of existence might feel easier that way. Mind you, while being employed, currently my income level is sufficient to cover a lot of the extras I need out of my own pocket. This helps create the hypothetical free market of services that disabled people are supposed to be using. But nothing of that sort would ever happen without accessibility in the first place.

I actually live in Europe which tends to be quite "socialist" about these things, and in the disability community over here, we're quite jealous of the ADA and accessibility in the USA in general. That's saying much, considering we rarely otherwise would want to live in the States.

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

What about the other person constantly having to be at the mercy of the random goodwill of strangers?

You may see me once in a lifetime, but I'd have to be "carried to stores" all the time, by the other people, and I'd have to be asking for it all the time... at what point can the other people just decide that "oh well, let's just do something about the root cause of the problem"? It's not as if a minority such as the disabled can force legislation through alone...

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

We already get to do it enough as it is, no need for you to be concerned for that. Getting to do things on your own without it turning to a constant exercise in dependence of random strangers is worth quite a bit. For one, you can't plan on anything on that basis.

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

Do tell, what would you consider "neccesities" for me?

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

Interestingly, you failed to get the point there is about parents providing room and board for eternity, though. Access is important for independent living, lest you be stored in institutions or live with your parents.

Re:Good

[drinkypoo]

Do tell, what would you consider "neccesities" for me?

The same things as are necessities for everyone else — food, clothes, medical care, all government offices since we all pay for that stuff and it allegedly belongs to all of us, anything legally mandatory like car insurance, utilities, banks, public transportation, medical supplies and care. This list is possibly not exhaustive, but it is illustrative. It doesn't include toy stores, or hobby shops, or basically anything else which does not primarily sell necessities.

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

The idea of "necessary" is a bit of a slippery slope, although I admit it can go both ways. You have your idea of it, someone else might find that me living at home and having someone bring my groceries is what is sufficient. For me it is quite necessary that there is an accessible toilet at my office. Being a consultant who often needs to deal with clients at their premises, general accessibility is a great thing to have.

I sometimes even need to go shopping for toys, and I do even have hobbies. Whether my purchasing power is sufficient to encourage access on a purely individual business basis, is questionable in particular if my achievement of said purchasing power would be strongly limited by lack of access in ... uh, necessities.

Interestingly, I'm quite pro-market in most things and really like seeing it when a market is created to cater to in particular special needs, but when the market fails to provide for some people's general participation in the world at large, I see no problems in democracy making decisions that mandate "mindless commerce" especially in cases where competitive pressures would discourage individual actors from stuff like providing access, which in the long term and in aggregate is beneficial in the total costs incurred sense. Environmental protection is another case in point.

It's funny how I am probably the most understanding of the "you can't fix everything at once by legislating" kind of thinking of all the disabled people I know, but the sentiments expressed here that it's perfectly OK for me to ask for people to carry me around is what make me want to take a hard turn to the left...

Re:Good

[Livius]

There is additionally a completely different, and perhaps even worse, problem with ADA and similar legislation. Once society has gone through so much expense, inconvenience, and nuisance, private citizens are completely absolved from any moral duty to be charitable to the disabled. And since most of the measures ostensibly meant to help the disabled achieve independence and dignity are actually humiliating in-your-face political statements with little or no practical value (accessibility ramps being about the only significant counter-example, and then only sometimes), the disabled are worse off.

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

Carrying wheelchairs or people up stairs is incredibly dangerous. Ramps which have ridiculously steep grades are similarly dangerous when, say, a power wheelchair loses traction and/or tips over.

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

... and if there is no access, there certainly is no disabled traffic to begin with. Win-win. So your argument now moves on to the idea that the customer base, serving which with access should just work, does not exist so there is no reason to serve them with access?

Re:Good

[JesseMcDonald]

What dignity could there be in a life where you have to ask someone to *carry* you every time you go into a shop... multiple times per day.

The alternative appears to be asking the government to employ force on your behalf to continually coerce every provider of so-called "public accommodations" into taking your disability (and every other possible disability) into account, regardless of actual demand, and at a far greater expense than simply providing you with individual assistance as needed or working out some alternative method of providing the service. Perhaps the coercion feels more "dignified" to you, but I find it quite the opposite. There is nothing undignified about asking for help when needed. It seems like you've simply found a way to take for granted as your right (and others' obligation) that others will make accommodation for you without being asked. That makes you more dependent, not less. Finding ways to induce others to help you voluntarily would be a form of self-sufficiency, which would be much more dignified than stooping to force or manipulation.

Re:Good

[Livius]

What we should be doing is revoking all welfare programs

No, just the ones that are hopelessly inefficient or are just for show, or create unequal burdens, or are based on treating the unfortunate with pity instead of dignity.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

Exactly. They're saying they would rather have a guy point a gun in my face and have me spend 30k remodeling than ask for some help.

Most businesses are quite happy to give you a hand if you need it. So for example, if I had a steep ramp that requires someone pushing you up it to get you up... why is that a problem? I'd help anyone that needed a hand up that whenever it was needed. Again, number of people that would even want to use the ramp due to disability would be perhaps two people a year. A steep ramp is cheap. I can do that for you. And if you need a hand, you can get that.

If you're so proud that you can't ask for help, then be so proud as to not ask the government to point a gun in my face.

It is a contradiction to say you lose face by asking for help but you don't lose face by getting the government to force me. It is the same thing only instead of being nice and respectful you're being an asshole.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

I can't make you not disabled and it isn't my fault you are disabled. Blame God.

that you need help is not my fault. And you being uncomfortable with asking for help does not mean you inherent the right to get government to put a gun in my face and say "spend the 30k to remodel or I'll put you down".

Here is a compromise.

Have the government pay for the remodel. Then the cost of the whole thing shows up not on my balance sheet but on the government's balance sheet.

That's the best offer I'm giving you with a smile. Everything beyond that is extortion.

I've offered to push you up a steeper ramp. I've offered to help carry you into a place or offer any other physical assistance as required.

You say the place has to be remodeled at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars? Who pays for that? You? The government?

Am I just the sap that gets fucked in this little morality play while you get to pretend you're not an asshole?

It is a joke. And everyone knows it is a joke. The lawyers know it is a joke. The politicians know it is a joke. The people in wheel chairs know it is a joke.

The only people that don't seem to get it are a few retards with their heads so far up their own asses that they can't see what is actually going on here.

At the very least put some flexibility into the law to address unreasonable circumstances and make it harder for asshole slimy lawyers to sue random people to extort settlements that are paid ON TOP of any remodel costs.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

It is a litigious society because it is a republic and republic means "rule by law"... we do not have a democracy... or a rule by majority.

We are ruled by law. It is the way our society is structured. And the law is only a problem when the law is written by a team of concussed monkeys on LSD.

You say the problem is with the legal system ignoring that the legal system is a product of laws and the ADA is a law.

Change the ADA to less odious and we can move on to the next issue.

*slaps gavel down*

Next case.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

Well, whether I have to build the 30k ramp or not, I'm going to be compassionate because I'm a genuinely nice person.

I really am. I don't need validation on that point. I know what I am. I am a good guy.

But it definitely means that people don't have to help these people as much directly because there is a certain amount of infrastructure that means people can basically ignore the guy.

That over time could get people to take for granted that disabled people don't need help. I personally am not going to have that problem because as I said, there are people in my family with serious disabilities and I know they need help. My uncle can't really do anything without help. He has fairly advanced MS. He's on a permanent IV drip, he uses a catheter permanently, and while he used to be able to use a motorized chair, he really has to just be wheeled around now because he can't use the control stick on the chair anymore.

So I understand that situation. But for all his disabilities, he wouldn't demand that a business spend 30k to make the place marginally more useful to him. He'd instead simply ask someone to help him up the stairs.

Most places for utility reasons have some way of getting heavy things into and out of the building. If you need to bring appliances in or furnature then there is typically a way to do that. Sometimes that is just some big strong guys to carry stuff. Sometimes there is a ramp that sits in a back room and is rolled out on need. And sometimes there is a back door that is more level with the street. There are ways into most places with or without the ADA that are typically quite workable for someone in a wheel chair. My uncle has entered many restaurants through the kitchen because the service entrance was easier to get through than the front door. No big deal.

He didn't care. The restaurant didn't care. Why does society care?

That's life when your nervous system stops working.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

You don't know what tautology means.

1. As to something regulating within its mandate. I didn't say it didn't. However, saying something is right because that is the law is saying something is valid law because it is valid law.

Legally that is valid position. But morally or ethically you can't just say "this is a given".

As to naturally occurring terrain not being covered by the mandate, roads are not naturally occurring terrain. You don't have to build a road perpendicular to the peak of the hill or mountain. Think of mountain roads. Do they just go straight up the mountain or do they zig zag about? They zig zag. Why? To account for the steep grade, they don't go straight up the mountain.

So in SF, you could tear up all the streets on those hills because they're not ADA compliant, and then build a much gentler grade street that either zig zagged or spiraled up the hill at a gentle grade. Any buildings in the way of that road would have to be demolished and you could rebuild those structures as you see fit where ever the road was not.

This would be quite expensive but no expense is unreasonable when the ADA is relevant. You can't say "that would cost more than X". Compliance has no limiting cost factor. You have to comply or you get your license pulled.

Same deal. No cost is too high.

There's no reason why every road couldn't be ADA complaint.

Your statement that because the law doesn't apply to something it is suddenly not a moral or ethical need for them to apply is tautology. You're saying the law itself is some given of the universe.

Prior to the ADA these things were not required... it was not within the mandate of the government to require such things. And yet now it is... why is that? Because laws change and you can change them to say whatever you want.

You could say Tuesdays are silly hat days. Is it right to say that everyone must wear a silly hat on a Tuesday or be executed on the spot? That's what the new law says so according to you that must be reasonable.

That is why tautology is bullshit.

Keep up... don't make me carry you in this discussion.

Re:Good

[uninformedLuddite]

So you get to make all the decisions because those people with a differing opinion are incapable? When all is said and done you're just a prick.

Re:Good

[uninformedLuddite]

That's because they generally don't use changing rooms for obvious reasons. Not that any government types can work that out.

Re:Good

[uninformedLuddite]

Isn't forcing someone to spend their money on you a form of dependence?

Re:Good

[uninformedLuddite]

You're butting heads with a member of the entitlement generation. You won't win.

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

At what point would I then become an "asshole" for always feeling "entitled" to being carried around personally to places, say, to my customer meeting a couple of days ago that took place a couple of floors up? Sounds like something I hear about from my friends who are knowledgeable about these issues as they stand in Africa...

The whole point of policies such as these is to, believe it or not, allow for independent functioning. It appears that there is widespread support in society to choose that it happens like this instead of people carrying me around in a set of small morality plays that take place all the time. Your solution is not realistic and frankly I suspect you'd be fine with the end result being me actually not being able to function in society.

Your suggestion about government paying for the modifications is actually somewhat like what happens over here, although of course there are guidelines for new construction. It is interesting to note that you may at least be amenable to the idea that costs like these need to be "socialized" beyond competitive pressures, which would otherwise give a strong incentive for individual actors to do nothing.

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

Social policies such as these generally work like that; they move people away from the individual charity-games that they would have to constantly rely on otherwise and give them an assurance that they can, at their own choice, do certain things. The majority of people simply choose that they'd rather just deal with this effectively like that. You may disagree but the difference to Victorian England is quite remarkable, let me assure you. It's a valid choice to just enable people to go about their business instead of having to be bothered by the immediate carrying-around...

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

This seems to be the exact problem with the ADA indeed. It feeds into this rhetoric of the disabled people being personally guilty of moral wrongs when the goal of the legislation is to enable them to function better in the world. If someone disagrees with the goal, then they do and I'm not sure they should try to sugar-coat it with the idea that they'd be in the chain to carry disabled people around when they go about their daily affairs.

Re:Good

[CptPicard]

Wow. I'm glad a lot of people actually take accessibility as a practical problem that can be solved and got out of the way so that we can then move on to other things, instead of being concerned for me being their fount of charitable feelings towards the less fortunate...

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

Their heads are soft and full of shit... I am not afraid.

Re:Good

[Karmashock]

I don't think the costs need to be socialized as you put it.

I think that if you give me a stupid order that is expensive you had better damn well pay for it.

That is what I think. You want to call that socializing? Fine. use your politically appropriate buzz words that make everything right if that is what makes you feel good. It does nothing for me. Those words rather than being a comfort are a warning to people like me to watch our wallets.

My only hope is that if the government has to bare enough of the expenses the cost alone will encourage the legislature to put in some loop holes... or just bulldoze half of san francisco and rebuild it so its ADA compliant. :D

Either way. I'll be happy.

Corollary

[WinstonWolfIT]

That would be like suing a book store for not having audiobooks and braille for all of their titles. Sometimes that little prick in a wheel chair causing trouble at the end of the day is just a little prick.

Re:Corollary

[Livius]

I sometimes hear that people with disabilities are "just like everybody else". Which, of course, is true. That means that some of them are heroically overcoming adversity, but it also means some of them are self-absorbed jerks.

Re:Corollary

[Reziac]

There's a lawyer in Los Angeles (at least one I know of, maybe more) who is in cahoots with someone in a wheelchair... they make a nice living suing businesses for being insufficiently ADA-compliant. Specifically, they target businesses that are grandfathered and not required to be compliant, or that have a variance because compliance would be excessively burdensome. Doesn't stop 'em from being the object of a lawsuit, or that it's usually cheaper to pay them to go away than to fight it in court.

Re:Corollary

[WinstonWolfIT]

That guy in a wheelchair is specifically who I was referencing above. I was involved in ADA in California when it rolled out, working within a consultancy that advised businesses specifically in how to handle this tactic. The fun part is the consultant attorneys were formally qualified to argue to the California Supreme Court, whereas this guy's attorney couldn't get beyond municipal. Good times.

Re:Corollary

[Reziac]

Small world :) I'd like to see pricks like that one's pet shyster get disbarred, but not likely to happen very often.

Blame the lawyer surplus....

[rahvin112]

They are being sued because a lawyer saw a chance to extort money from Netflix. AFAIK this lawyer didn't even have any plaintiffs.

For those that aren't aware we have a HUGE surplus of lawyers in this country. I'd wager better than half the law school graduates these days can't find jobs. What that means in practical terms is that we have a whole lot of lawyers trying to survive by launching lawsuits in "creative" manners. In plain English there are a bunch of sleazy lawyers trying to extort money from anyone they can using their law degrees. You see this in suits like this and the blatant extortion going on in the copyright trolling regime. It doesn't help that the legal profession seems to draw sociopaths to the career.

Expect to see these type of lawsuits all the time for the next decade at least.

Re:Blame the lawyer surplus....

[rahvin112]

What a bunch of hogwash. The problem with lawyers is that for the last 30 years everyone has encouraged their kids to become lawyers. It's in every fucking TV show and movie since the 50's. Since the 50's it has been seen as one of a very short list of professions that would get wealthy and have guaranteed jobs. The vast oversupply is tied to that not your partisan bullshit. Talk about absurd but I can't expect much from someone like you. You are either a conspiracy minded nut or are being paid to spread propaganda. Either of which means your value as a human being is NILL.

The only thing I will be remembering at election time is that BOTH parties serve the same master and that master has interests contrary to my benefit. I will also keep in mind that a lessor evil is better and that I'd rather have a tax and spend democrat in the presidents office than a tax-cut and spend republican who's bent on regulating what I do in my bedroom. Neither party has my interests at heart but the democrats are the lessor evil. The only republican president in the last 30 years that had an ounce of fiscal responsibility was George HW Bush (Bush Senior). Every other president has been a fiscal train wreck with tax-cut and spend. This country is 17 trillion in debt because of the last republican president.

Re:Blame the lawyer surplus....

[Anonymous Coward]

I will also keep in mind that a lessor evil is better ...

I disagree. I would not want to lease anything from an evil.

Re:Blame the lawyer surplus....

[Dr_Barnowl]

Medical bills in the US are high for a variety of reasons, more expertly laid out than I can here by one of the vlogbrothers

Most of the reason is your costs.

e.g.

Lipitor, 30 days dosage ; US $124 ; New Zealand $7

Re:Blame the lawyer surplus....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not lawsuit costs, that's monopoly prices and the cost not being paid by the customer but by the insurer.

The insurer takes a percentage, so the more expensive the product it has to pay, the more money they make. Doctors don't care, and with the fragmentation of markets by your refusal to have a government single payer system available, the fact that there is no pressure to reduce costs by the insurers, doctors or customers (they complain about the cost of insurance, not the cost of medical care), means that your sellers are hiking prices to what the market will bear.

Which is over 15 times the cost New Zealand will bear.

Re:Blame the lawyer surplus....

[squiggleslash]

No, it isn't. You see even your high end of 50% (which is absurd BTW) would make a $7 item $14, not $124. For it to be $124, and assuming there are no lawsuits in Canada, lawsuits would have to be about 95% of healthcare costs.

Also bear in mind that the majority of lawsuits related to healthcare are to determine which insurance company foots the bill, not to hand someone $1M for slipping on a wet floor and mildly hurting their butt as they fell as the crude stereotype of healthcare related lawsuits suggests.

Re:Blame the lawyer surplus....

[jythie]

Well, yes, you should expect these kinds of lawsuits because unlike many regulations, the ADA was written specifically to require them. Rather than enforce regulation or have inspectors looking for violations, it is only triggered BY a civil suit. It was a stroke of genius on the part of lawmakers since the disabled are already socially shamed for being disabled, and then you can pile more shame on them if they try to actually enforce the rules designed to protect them.

Re:Blame the lawyer surplus....

[jythie]

Yeah, I keep having to remember that people are generally ignorant of the fact congress is the institution that sets both the budget and tax rates, and the executive branch is only tasked with spending the funds and begging for congress to release the money it is requiring be spent.

Re:Blame the lawyer surplus....

[jythie]

Costs due to malpractice insurance is only a few percent of the total cost. But good job swallowing that line, it is a great tool for beating back those patients and their pesky protections. Things were so much cheaper when doctors and hospitals did not have to worry about problems they cause having consequences for them.

Re:Blame the lawyer surplus....

[MachineShedFred]

Not only that, but Congress enshrines into law what money is spent where. If the President doesn't veto the appropriation, it's beholden to execute the Congress's fiscal will.

This sounds familiar.

[arthurpaliden]

I was once part of an audio book venture that created a book reader app and and associated library application library that was specifically designed to be used by the blind and severely disabled. It actually met all its goals in regards to usability. So the company took it to the largest national organizations to get their seal of approval for it. The company was turned down by all of them because although application interface years ahead of any other application in regrades to the blind and severely disabled, their words, it did not accommodate the deaf. An audio book application that did not accommodate the deaf.

Re:This sounds familiar.

[breeze95]

I was once part of an audio book venture that created a book reader app and and associated library application library that was specifically designed to be used by the blind and severely disabled. It actually met all its goals in regards to usability. So the company took it to the largest national organizations to get their seal of approval for it. The company was turned down by all of them because although application interface years ahead of any other application in regrades to the blind and severely disabled, their words, it did not accommodate the deaf. An audio book application that did not accommodate the deaf.

Sorry dude but your story sounds like an urban myth. I'm not buying it.

Re:This sounds familiar.

[stephanruby]

I was once part of an audio book venture that created a book reader app and and associated library application library that was specifically designed to be used by the blind and severely disabled. It actually met all its goals in regards to usability.

You must be from the future, because if there is a silver-bullet book reader solution for blind people, I certainly couldn't find one for my half-blind mother.

Currently, there is the audiobook reader provided for free by the Library of Congress. That reader is great in terms of physical interface design, but it's limited only to books that have had professional voice actors read them.

And then in terms of text-to-speech technology, the best technological solution out there is currently Ivona (now owned by Amazon), but despite all the awesome progress this technology has made over the years, it still isn't good enough for most blind users who want a book read to them for leisure.

So the company took it to the largest national organizations to get their seal of approval for it. The company was turned down by all of them because although application interface years ahead of any other application in regrades to the blind and severely disabled, their words, it did not accommodate the deaf. An audio book application that did not accommodate the deaf.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the largest national organizations" out there, and why you would even need their seal of approval in the first place, but if your venture was looking to get cash from them, or get some kind of exclusive endorsement from them, for what seemed like a commercial venture, it doesn't really matter the reason they gave you for that denial.

There is currently no perfect usable book reader for the blind. It doesn't really matter if the blind person is deaf, or not. For instance, my mother certainly wasn't deaf, and she certainly loved books, but there really wasn't a book reader solution that was satisfactory to her.

Re:This sounds familiar.

[drinkypoo]

I was once part of an audio book venture that created a book reader app and and associated library application library that was specifically designed to be used by the blind and severely disabled. It actually met all its goals in regards to usability. So the company took it to the largest national organizations to get their seal of approval for it. The company was turned down by all of them

You must be from the future, because if there is a silver-bullet book reader solution for blind people, I certainly couldn't find one for my half-blind mother.

You must be from a place where they don't read comments before replying, since the GP clearly said both "It actually met all its goals in regards to usability" which doesn't actually mean that it was any good, and that "The company was turned down" for the "seal of approval" for their product — it may consequently have never been produced and marketed at all.

Re:This sounds familiar.

[penguinoid]

An audio book application that did not accommodate the deaf.

Just pass your audiobook through a speech-to-text...

Re:This sounds familiar.

[shutdown -p now]

You know cars fit more than one person at a time, right? And only one of them is driving?

Re:This sounds familiar.

[uninformedLuddite]

That wouldn't serve the needs of the illiterate

Re:ADA insanity...

[TC (WC)]

I REALLY hate the concept of service animals...

Haha, What?

DRM

[jopsen]

That would be like suing a book store for not having audiobooks and braille for all of their titles. Sometimes that little prick in a wheel chair causing trouble at the end of the day is just a little prick.

I see a potential argument that DRM prevents assistive technologies that can do transcription for you...
It true that many books aren't available as audiobooks or braille, but they are not intentionally covered with a plastic film designed to make it impossible to scan them into a program that can read out loud...
In fact many people with dyslexia relies on a scanning books and text-to-speech technology for their studies.

Anyways, yes, requiring all titles to have subtitles might be crazy... But NetFlix is actively preventing disabled people from using their content with DRM. I'm not sure that's okay, it's certainly different from not having audiobooks for all titles.

Re:DRM

[Anubis IV]

As much as I don't like DRM, suggestively equating DRM with a lack of accessibility for the disabled is a disservice to both of those issues.

If someone is trying to do an automated transcription from Netflix, there's nothing stopping them today. The audio signal is readily available. It's not like it's DRM'd all the way to the speaker. It's not even DRM'd the entire time it's on the playback device. This isn't HDCP, and your suggestions that their DRM is blocking these sorts of efforts is only serving to confuse the issue.

Moreover, failing to provide a service is not the same as "actively preventing". If I put a restaurant on top of a mountain without a clear way up, I'm failing to provide potential customers with a way to my business (not a smart move, but it's my business to run), but that's quite different from turning them away at the door if they figure out how to get up on their own. That said, in some cases the very act of failing to provide something (e.g. a wheelchair ramp) can be considered an act of discrimination (see: ADA and its provisions), but there's precedent going back over 15 years in this jurisdiction alone that makes it clear that isn't the case with Netflix here.

Re:DRM

[jopsen]

Moreover, failing to provide a service is not the same as "actively preventing".

Agree... My point was that it would like be fruitful to argue that against DRM using ADA.
By implication one could also make the argument that DRM which is "actively preventing" automatic transcription in turn obligates Netflix to provide transcripts.

It's a far out argument... I don't think Netflix should be required to provide transcripts for everything. But I do think that DRM is wrong, that it is discrimination against anyone who needs assistive technologies. IMO, applying ADA and similar provisions would be interesting in the fight against DRM.

Re:ADA insanity...

[silas_moeckel]

You have an issue with a seeing eye dog?

Service animals are problematic as no training is required and it was open to abuse (NYC service purse dogs).

Re:ADA insanity...

[man_ls]

Legally there are a few types of animals. A real service dog is like a seeing eye dog, or a seizure warning dog. They're ridiculously trained and only available from a prescription...which is fairly difficult to get, and bringing them with you is backed up by the force of law. I'm sure the people who need service dogs really would prefer they didn't need them.

On the other hand, "emotional support animals" and "therapy animals" require little more than self-report, or an advisory note, and most of the time aren't afforded the same legal protections as genuine service dogs.

It's often up to individual establishment's policy on such animals, but few make such a differentiation since the penalty for questioning someone and getting it wrong is somewhere between a bad Yelp review and a lawsuit. It's also too easy to just put a dog in a purse and get away with it, without even the pretext of a condition. So, yeah.

Misplaced anger, man.

extremists

[Tom]

I understand not being an asshole to disabled people. Not making their life intentionally more difficult than it is.

I understand helping others if possible. Adding captions when you're doing subtitles in other languages anyways, putting ramps next to stairs when you're rebuilding the entrance anyway, that kind of thing.

I understand you might want to add these things by themselves for a bigger market or because of customer loyalty, or just because you can and it's not a big expense.

What I don't understand is this extremist approach of having the entire world change for your specific need. Old buildings that need to be damaged and reworked to cater to wheelchair people. A lawsuit not because you refuse to do captions, but because you don't have 100% coverage of them. This kind of crap gives people less desire to be friendly to disabled people, and very soon they'll do it only because the law requires it and only to the extent that the law requires.

Re:extremists

[Kjella]

You could make the exact same argument about the whole ADA, the truth is that it wouldn't happen by itself. I can't count the number of wheelchair users but I very rarely see one out and about shopping, strictly from a business point of view they're a <0.1% market that wouldn't even pay off the ramp. The only reason we give them special privilege in law is because they're not trying to be special snowflakes, they don't have a choice about being disabled. And beating shop owners over the head with the law has been the best way to get results.

I don't have any disabilities, but I do have a few food allergies. I can with certainty say I'd be pretty furious if I went to a restaurant and they said we serve a set menu, either you eat it or not but we don't care about your allergies and won't offer any alternatives. It's not as if I went to a sushi restaurant and they don't have steak. Sure some are just bitter but many simply don't want to be beggars, they feel they deserve and have the right to equal access and not be at the mercy of the owner's charity. Sometimes they just get a little carried away and try using the law where reality won't let it happen.

Re:extremists

[drinkypoo]

The only reason we give them special privilege in law is because they're not trying to be special snowflakes, they don't have a choice about being disabled.

They have a choice about where they shop.

It's reasonable for things which people need (utilities, food, government services) to have to accommodate the disabled, but not things which people don't need. But the same cudgel is used against all.

I don't have any disabilities, but I do have a few food allergies. I can with certainty say I'd be pretty furious if I went to a restaurant and they said we serve a set menu, either you eat it or not but we don't care about your allergies and won't offer any alternatives.

Apparently, you're not smart enough to find out ahead of time whether a restaurant will coddle you. There are certainly high-concept restaurants which don't give a shit what you can eat, you can skip a course if you like but they're not giving you anything else.

It's not as if I went to a sushi restaurant and they don't have steak.

But that's precisely what the ADA is like. You go to a place that doesn't have a ramp, and then you demand that they get one. Without the ADA, we'd probably have ubiquitous stair-climbing wheelchairs by now.

Re:extremists

[drinkypoo]

Life is cruel and those who rant about the "abuses" now may find themselves needing the things they want abolished eventually.

Like I said, covering needs is precisely what the ADA should do. All government buildings, all utilities, all groceries and even all clothing stores which are open to the public ought to be accessible. We all need these things.

Re:extremists

[Tom]

You could make the exact same argument about the whole ADA

And in fact I do.

the truth is that it wouldn't happen by itself.

True, but the solution for "too little" is not "too much". When I drive into the city, I see a lot of free parking spaces all the time - for disabled people. It seems there's half a million disabled car drivers in this city, except that they're never parking anywhere. I understand handicapped parking. But when you can mark the times you see these spots actually used in a calendar, then maybe the amount is not right?

And beating shop owners over the head with the law has been the best way to get results.

Again, to some degree, yes. As with everything in life, there's a balance. The rest of us take a little inconvenience or additional cost upon ourselves to help out the disabled. We shouldn't be punished for making an effort just because that effort is not 100% perfect.

Re:extremists

[Tom]

I see most here ranting about the law appear to be in the libertarian mode of the market will fix everything

Not me. Extreme capitalism is just as bad as any other extremism. I'm just here to say that suing someone because some but not all of their content has captions is overdoing it.

Re:Pushing their rights to the extreme

[Anonymous Coward]

I fucking love that almost all (in excess of 90% in my experience) Netflix things have captions. My hearing is fine, but I use captions all the damn time, whenever available. Whenever I go to movies (rarely) I'm always subconsciously looking for captions for the first five minutes and being disappointed by occasionally muddy indecipherable dialogue thereafter.

Re:Pushing their rights to the extreme

[xSander]

have they even thought of that "caption option" might become a burden for other Netflix users?

Why would it be? It's not like you can't turn it off.

Comparing captions to wheelchair ramps is a stretch.

Re:ADA insanity...

[silas_moeckel]

The problem is the ADA pretty much turned anything anybody said was a service animal into one under law. They have no training requirements merely that somebody (including the owner) say it's been trained. They had to go back and reword it to specifically be dogs (but throw in service horses with a lower requirement).

Amazon has some but not many

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Hulu has captions. Amazon Prime Video has captions. It's not like you're being completely denied the joys of interwebs TV.

My experience is that Netflix has a lot more videos with captions than Amazon Prime. Last year I had a girlfriend who spoke English as a second language. Her English was pretty good, but not fluent. She wanted to improve, so sometimes we would stream movies and I would turn on the captions or subtitles (whichever is the right term) if available as she said it helped her. There were several times when both Amazon and Netflix had a movie and only Netflix has the captions. It got so common that basically we only used Amazon in cases where Netflix simply didn't have it available for streaming. I'm sure there are some movies or shows where Amazon has captions and Netflix didn't, but I think that those are exceptions.

Re:Pushing their rights to the extreme

[Coren22]

Cost. When the captions are mandated, all those who don't use them pay for them as well.

It costs money to have captions put on things, it isn't free.

Re:Pushing their rights to the extreme

[Anonymous Coward]

Most new shows (shows made since the ADA) made in the US will come with captions, since those were made mandatory for broadcast (I assume, otherwise it is voluntary compliance, which I doubt). These shows all seem to have captions on Netflix. The problem is that the back-catalog, would either need to have captions added or be removed entirely.

This is where the 'caption option' becomes a burden for others, Netflix can perhaps start working on the back-catalog, but if they can't show anything without captions, that takes away choice from everyone else.

Maybe the disabled should get discounts

[frog_strat]

This verdict seems due to the wording of the law, and Netflix not being associated with a physical location. And captioning all the content could be burdensome. But why make the disabled pay for content they cannot hear or understand ? Why not just give them a discount ?

Re:Pushing their rights to the extreme

[shutdown -p now]

This is true of pretty much any case where disabled have to be accommodated. We as a society have decided that free market won't work here (because they're too few, and so it generally doesn't make sense to cater to them), and that burdening the disabled themselves with those costs is unfair, and it's better to spread them around.

What is licensed is not infringement

[tepples]

According to the film studios, adding subtitles creates a derivative work and the distribution of it a copyright violation

Providing service at all is a copyright violation outside of a negotiated license. Providing captions is not an infringement if captioning is in the license agreement. Had the court found Netflix subject to disability accommodation law, Netflix might have had more leverage to amend captioning into the agreements with the studios.

Blind exceptions

[tepples]

There exist explicit exceptions under U.S. copyright law for braille books and for audio books in special formats for use by blind people. (See Pratt-Smoot Act as amended.) There do not yet exist such exceptions for captions in devices used by deaf people. Netflix would have to negotiate captioning with the movie studios.