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

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-subject-to-your-laws dept.

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 The decision is 'unpublished,' meaning it isn't intended to be used as precedent in other cases.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."

48 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Not to mention they aren't a monopoly by Loopy · · Score: 2

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

    1. Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly by kenai_alpenglow · · Score: 2

      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.

    2. Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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".

    3. Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly by TWX · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    6. Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    7. Re:Not to mention they aren't a monopoly by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Informative

      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...

  2. Nonprecedential but citable. by Etherwalk · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Nonprecedential but citable. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Nonprecedential but citable. by AuMatar · · Score: 3, Informative

      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,

      --
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    3. Re:Nonprecedential but citable. by Etherwalk · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.)

    4. Re:Nonprecedential but citable. by Rakarra · · Score: 2

      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.

    5. Re:Nonprecedential but citable. by Etherwalk · · Score: 2

      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.

    6. Re:Nonprecedential but citable. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

  3. Why Netflix ? by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  4. Re:Yify by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

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

  5. Unpublished by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Unpublished by russotto · · Score: 2

      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.

    2. Re:Unpublished by Anubis+IV · · Score: 3, Informative

      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

  6. Good by Karmashock · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Good by AuMatar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    3. Re:Good by Karmashock · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

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    4. Re:Good by rahvin112 · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    5. Re:Good by rahvin112 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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

    6. Re:Good by Karmashock · · Score: 2

      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.

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    7. Re:Good by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      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....

    8. Re:Good by Karmashock · · Score: 2

      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. :)

      --
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  7. Corollary by WinstonWolfIT · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Corollary by Livius · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  8. Re:Sense by Crashmarik · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 ?

  9. Re:Yify by preaction · · Score: 2

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

  10. Re:Sense by Eristone · · Score: 2

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

  11. Blame the lawyer surplus.... by rahvin112 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Blame the lawyer surplus.... by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
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    2. Re:Blame the lawyer surplus.... by jythie · · Score: 2

      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.

    3. Re:Blame the lawyer surplus.... by jythie · · Score: 2

      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.

  12. This sounds familiar. by arthurpaliden · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
  13. Re:Yify by Rakarra · · Score: 2

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

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

  14. Re:ADA insanity... by man_ls · · Score: 2

    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.

  15. extremists by Tom · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  16. Re:Pushing their rights to the extreme by xSander · · Score: 2

    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.

  17. Re:Sense by jythie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  18. Re:Sense by OhPlz · · Score: 2

    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.

  19. Re:Sense by GoddersUK · · Score: 2

    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.)

  20. Re:Sense by GoddersUK · · Score: 2

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

  21. Re:Sense by rpstrong · · Score: 2

    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.