So, why should taxpayers subsidize a business that does not allow a segment of the population to access them?
Businesses are spending that money to make things accessible, but the subsidy money is a pittance compared to their actual costs. Making a website S.508 compliant is very expensive and not as visually stimulating to their the vast majority of their customers. Since S.508 sites are seen as boring by the general population, typically a business has to have two websites, one accessible and one not. The government will allow tax deduction for the construction of the initial site, but not on the maintenance and upkeep; where the majority of the costs are.
So basically, the subsidies make things better but not perfect.
So, why don't people get all riled up about that money being wasted on corporate welfare?
Because it is us the people which make the laws and the American people decided to help encourage private business to build accessible stores and provide motorized carts via tax relief. If the American people were upset about it they would make it an issue. Besides, the bulk of tax dollars for the disabled are not going to corporations, they are going to the disabled directly. For example, I was reading an article about how much it costs the state to take care of a disabled child while in states custody. It was averaging around $100,000/year per child. I don't think corporation's see anything near that amount in tax relief.
Book publishers and TV stations are already covered by ADA laws, have been for quite a while.
Yes, but they are not required to make every book and show accessible. At least not yet.
I'm sorry you don't think the courts need to be involved. That's a blindness on your part.
I'm not blind... I just don't have the litigious mentality like some people have. These lawsuits are a cancer stripping away the rights of the business owner. Before you know it, all businesses will be required to have trans-gendered bathrooms for the pre/post-op crowd and extra wide doors for morbidly the obese; all in the name of inclusiveness.
Businesses and the gov't are flat out lazy and stubborn. They're closed mindedness is exactly why these kinds of suits are needed.
Those are two different things. The government is for the people by the people. That includes people with disabilities. If Target was a government institution, then they should be inclusive.
Private enterprise is just that, private. Target should have the freedom to make whatever decisions they want concerning what convenience features they want to provide to their clientele. The ability to view Targets website is a convenience and a privilege, not a right.
-Dan
P.S. I used <em> tags instead of <i> just for you.
I think its about damn time for this ruling--its been long overdue.
I'm sorry that you have a disability, but I don't think every business on the web needs to cater to you.
What's next? Suing book publishers for not providing braille versions of books? Suing TV stations for not having closed captioning for every single show? Suing shoe stores because amputees have to buy both shoes and not just the one they need?
Business that choose not to cater to those with disabilities will pay by bad PR and reduced patronage by disabled persons. The courts do not need to be involved.
There is no reason why a website should not be accessible to people with disabilities, other than poor coding and webdesign.
It is not as easy as you think.
I am a team lead for two web based products used by the US Government, which means they must be Section 508 compliant.
It is very very expensive and time consuming to make a website S.508 compliant. S.508 sites are plain and simple because in order to be compliant, you cannot take advantage of most of the DHTML and interactive content used on websites today. As a result, companies that want a slick website that is accessible tend to make two websites, one for disabled people and one for everyone else.
I grew up watching Star Trek, so I retain an affinity for it to this day. Although I am not a hardcore Trekkie, I still watch the show when it is on TV. To understand why the original series is the way it is, you have to understand what was going on culturally in the US during the time it was being aired.
Even though it is 40 years old, over the top, campy, and hilariously non politically correct, I find it better than most of the crap on TV nowadays (or perhaps I am just too old).
Tons of people bought XBOX for only *one* game (Halo... just in case you were wondering).
I have 16 games for my PSP and I only regret buying one of them (friggin Prince of Persia). I love how the PSP makes game developers deemphasize graphics and flash and concentrate on game play.
And 'biased reporting' is an overworn, inflammatory cliche drummed up by the conservative right some years ago in reaction the perception that the Fifth Estate was unfair to their ideals and goals and should be beholden to those in power instead of continuing the long standing tradition of questioning it.
I think your own biases are coming through here. Whenever someone points a finger (especially when it's pointing at a political party) they should evaluate whether there is evidence to back up their claims. Conjecture has no place in intellectual debate or unbiased journalism. Period.
Ever hear of William Randolph Hearst? His tactics were most certainly 'biased reporting'. Would you consider WRH to be the conservative right?
Yes, my company does this... but in our case the "IT Library" is our managers office. And since we have a "library", we can't buy more that one copy of a book.
We were fighting so much over reference books like "Regular Expressions", I just bought my own.
Just Google "software estimation" and you get a variety of ways of doing it (the most popular formal model is COCOMO). In the real world, most people don't have the luxury of doing estimates the right way. In my experience, the stakeholders want a good guess at first (aka SWAG, OOM, VROOM, LOE). They treat that initial guess at the high watermark and then expect you to either finish early if all went well or finish on time if there were problems.
How I go about making this initial guess is by breaking the project up into sub-projects and then creating a baseline estimate by determining how long it would take me to do each piece myself. I then determine which person on my team will be working on which piece and then adjust from the baseline for that component based on the engineer's performance level compared to mine.
Once I have all those man-hours calculated, I double it. This is now my code and unit test estimate. Finally, add 10% for project management and another 25-50% more for quality assurance.
The reason the vast majority of users have not heard of Linspire is because the "Linux Gurus" disreguard it as "not a real Linux" or insecure.
The goal of the talk was to get the Linux community the correct info about the product (aka dispel myths) so perhaps they will start recommending its use at their place of employment or to their friends and family.
Dirty Steve: "Did you see the size of that sandwich?"
All fast food ads shows a burger that is a half a foot tall with perfectly ripe vegitables and toppings that can't be contained by the bun. When was the last time you got a Whopper that looked like this?
I guess if they remove the COD2 ad they need to remove fast food ads as well.
In SOCOM they filter words like "briefcase", "english", "kfc", "girls", and "eggplant".
The best one is they filter the word "escort". The reason why that is funny is because that is one of the game modes where you escort VIP's to some destination. So when you type "You can't beat me at escort!" it displays "You can't beat me at ******!", which leaves what you said to the imagination.
Credit cards are a universally poor way to verify age. Anybody who claims to be using them for such is either stupid, or lying.
Both the Communications Decency Act (before it was overturned for other reasons) and the the Child Online Protection Act spedcified credit card validation was an acceptable age verification tool. I agree that it is a poor way to verify age, but that is the way the laws are written. This means that anyone with mature content can use credit card verification to avoid possible litigation.
Like it or not, credit card verification is common. Here are some links to read up on it.
the very notion of them asking for a credit card number for any reason other than selling things is suspect
The following is a quote from Zipper:
"The main reason SOCOM 3 verifies accounts through a credit card is to encourage unique accounts and fair play (no cheating or exploits) in ranked games and clan challenges. It is important to note that supplying a credit card is not necessary to play online."
The idea is that by using a credit card you are no longer anonymous (mostly... there are ways around it), and therefore less likely to do thing that violate the TOS. I suspect that another motivation is that since this is an M for Mature game and credit cards have generally been the accepted way to verify age/parental persission (i.e. online pron, Activision's Age Gate), this is a way for Zipper to CYA just in case someone tries to go after then for "corrrupting our youth".
Don't blame Zipper. The credit card verification policy is an added cost to an already free online game, so I am sure Zipper would have perfered not to do it. Blame the people that made Zipper implement a policy like this in the first place.
Why do God and Science have to be mutually exclusive?
Science isn't excluding God out of spite. Many scientists do believe in God. It is just that the practice of science excludes God because he/she/it is not scientifically observable.
There is a difference between an idea and a scientifc theory; just as there is a difference between how something came into existance and how it exists today. The ID camp needs separate the two and either start practicing real science or create a new thing that isn't science to classify their work.
I think it is you that is smoking something. I said "Perhaps someday they will sell a product geared towards gaming with a latency SLA". I said nothing about adding an SLA to standard broadband offerings. I would expect that a product geared towards gamers (instead of business) with a latency SLA would be more expensive than standard broadband, but less than business broadband.
You won't find an SLA on anything less than a ISDN/T1+ connection.
Incorrect. I work for a Tier 1 provider and we provide latency, availability, and packet loss SLA's on our DSL products. There are other providers which provide DSL SLA's as well. I know this because we are constantly tweaking our SLA's to remain competitive.
Most multiplayer games in general reqire a fast connection if you don't want to lag out all of the time.
It depends on your definition of fast. Most people equate fast to the amount of bandwidth they have. The fact is, most online games will not saturate your typical broadband connection. When it comes to online gaming, you really need low latency. It doesn't matter if you have 10Mb down and 1.5Mb up if you have 500ms latency!
The problem is that residential broadband service providers crank up the bandwidth but do not guarantee latency. Perhaps someday they will sell a product geared towards gaming with a latency SLA.
False. There are plenty of other exercises you can do that don't put strain on your knees.
I'm glad you pointed this out. I know several overweight people that get an injury and then immediately throw up their hands stating, "I can't work out now! I have a bad (back|knee|elbow|cankle)".
I've lost 30 pounds and my goal is to lose 20 more. Did I ever get a sore or injured (back|knee|elbow|cankle) while working out? Yes I did. The difference was, I continued with workouts that burnt calories without aggravating the areas that were hurt and healing. It just takes willpower; something that most overweight people are in short supply of.
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully I have acceptable answers :)
Businesses are spending that money to make things accessible, but the subsidy money is a pittance compared to their actual costs. Making a website S.508 compliant is very expensive and not as visually stimulating to their the vast majority of their customers. Since S.508 sites are seen as boring by the general population, typically a business has to have two websites, one accessible and one not. The government will allow tax deduction for the construction of the initial site, but not on the maintenance and upkeep; where the majority of the costs are.
So basically, the subsidies make things better but not perfect.
Because it is us the people which make the laws and the American people decided to help encourage private business to build accessible stores and provide motorized carts via tax relief. If the American people were upset about it they would make it an issue. Besides, the bulk of tax dollars for the disabled are not going to corporations, they are going to the disabled directly. For example, I was reading an article about how much it costs the state to take care of a disabled child while in states custody. It was averaging around $100,000/year per child. I don't think corporation's see anything near that amount in tax relief.
-Dan
I hate replying to AC's, but what the heck...
Yes, but they are not required to make every book and show accessible. At least not yet.
I'm not blind... I just don't have the litigious mentality like some people have. These lawsuits are a cancer stripping away the rights of the business owner. Before you know it, all businesses will be required to have trans-gendered bathrooms for the pre/post-op crowd and extra wide doors for morbidly the obese; all in the name of inclusiveness.
Those are two different things. The government is for the people by the people. That includes people with disabilities. If Target was a government institution, then they should be inclusive.
Private enterprise is just that, private. Target should have the freedom to make whatever decisions they want concerning what convenience features they want to provide to their clientele. The ability to view Targets website is a convenience and a privilege, not a right.
-Dan
P.S. I used <em> tags instead of <i> just for you.
I'm sorry that you have a disability, but I don't think every business on the web needs to cater to you.
What's next? Suing book publishers for not providing braille versions of books? Suing TV stations for not having closed captioning for every single show? Suing shoe stores because amputees have to buy both shoes and not just the one they need?
Business that choose not to cater to those with disabilities will pay by bad PR and reduced patronage by disabled persons. The courts do not need to be involved.
-Dan
It is not as easy as you think.
I am a team lead for two web based products used by the US Government, which means they must be Section 508 compliant.
It is very very expensive and time consuming to make a website S.508 compliant. S.508 sites are plain and simple because in order to be compliant, you cannot take advantage of most of the DHTML and interactive content used on websites today. As a result, companies that want a slick website that is accessible tend to make two websites, one for disabled people and one for everyone else.
-Dan
I grew up watching Star Trek, so I retain an affinity for it to this day. Although I am not a hardcore Trekkie, I still watch the show when it is on TV. To understand why the original series is the way it is, you have to understand what was going on culturally in the US during the time it was being aired.
Even though it is 40 years old, over the top, campy, and hilariously non politically correct, I find it better than most of the crap on TV nowadays (or perhaps I am just too old).
How many good games do you need for a console?
Tons of people bought XBOX for only *one* game (Halo... just in case you were wondering).
I have 16 games for my PSP and I only regret buying one of them (friggin Prince of Persia). I love how the PSP makes game developers deemphasize graphics and flash and concentrate on game play.
I think your own biases are coming through here. Whenever someone points a finger (especially when it's pointing at a political party) they should evaluate whether there is evidence to back up their claims. Conjecture has no place in intellectual debate or unbiased journalism. Period.
Ever hear of William Randolph Hearst? His tactics were most certainly 'biased reporting'. Would you consider WRH to be the conservative right?
Yes, my company does this... but in our case the "IT Library" is our managers office. And since we have a "library", we can't buy more that one copy of a book.
We were fighting so much over reference books like "Regular Expressions", I just bought my own.
If you look at the training, they are not certifying ethics. I think they came up with the name like this:
Black Hat = Unethical Hacker
White Hat = Ethical Hacker
So they basically teach you how to hack and probably have a few topics on when it is OK to use your mad skillz.
A lot of admins in my company seem to like the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) training (http://www.eccouncil.org/CEH.htm).
Just Google "software estimation" and you get a variety of ways of doing it (the most popular formal model is COCOMO). In the real world, most people don't have the luxury of doing estimates the right way. In my experience, the stakeholders want a good guess at first (aka SWAG, OOM, VROOM, LOE). They treat that initial guess at the high watermark and then expect you to either finish early if all went well or finish on time if there were problems.
How I go about making this initial guess is by breaking the project up into sub-projects and then creating a baseline estimate by determining how long it would take me to do each piece myself. I then determine which person on my team will be working on which piece and then adjust from the baseline for that component based on the engineer's performance level compared to mine.
Once I have all those man-hours calculated, I double it. This is now my code and unit test estimate. Finally, add 10% for project management and another 25-50% more for quality assurance.
It seems kind of loose, but it works for me.
I have to say, Seaman is a really bad game name!
So... when did you steal your first car? ;)
The reason the vast majority of users have not heard of Linspire is because the "Linux Gurus" disreguard it as "not a real Linux" or insecure.
The goal of the talk was to get the Linux community the correct info about the product (aka dispel myths) so perhaps they will start recommending its use at their place of employment or to their friends and family.
All fast food ads shows a burger that is a half a foot tall with perfectly ripe vegitables and toppings that can't be contained by the bun. When was the last time you got a Whopper that looked like this?
I guess if they remove the COD2 ad they need to remove fast food ads as well.
In SOCOM they filter words like "briefcase", "english", "kfc", "girls", and "eggplant".
The best one is they filter the word "escort". The reason why that is funny is because that is one of the game modes where you escort VIP's to some destination. So when you type "You can't beat me at escort!" it displays "You can't beat me at ******!", which leaves what you said to the imagination.
Both the Communications Decency Act (before it was overturned for other reasons) and the the Child Online Protection Act spedcified credit card validation was an acceptable age verification tool. I agree that it is a poor way to verify age, but that is the way the laws are written. This means that anyone with mature content can use credit card verification to avoid possible litigation.
Like it or not, credit card verification is common. Here are some links to read up on it.
Age Verification Systems
Yahoo! Credit Card Verification Help
Instructions on verifying age on your AIM account using a credit card
Credit Card Required To View 'M' Rated Information
The following is a quote from Zipper:
"The main reason SOCOM 3 verifies accounts through a credit card is to encourage unique accounts and fair play (no cheating or exploits) in ranked games and clan challenges. It is important to note that supplying a credit card is not necessary to play online."
The idea is that by using a credit card you are no longer anonymous (mostly... there are ways around it), and therefore less likely to do thing that violate the TOS. I suspect that another motivation is that since this is an M for Mature game and credit cards have generally been the accepted way to verify age/parental persission (i.e. online pron, Activision's Age Gate), this is a way for Zipper to CYA just in case someone tries to go after then for "corrrupting our youth".
Don't blame Zipper. The credit card verification policy is an added cost to an already free online game, so I am sure Zipper would have perfered not to do it. Blame the people that made Zipper implement a policy like this in the first place.
Science isn't excluding God out of spite. Many scientists do believe in God. It is just that the practice of science excludes God because he/she/it is not scientifically observable.
There is a difference between an idea and a scientifc theory; just as there is a difference between how something came into existance and how it exists today. The ID camp needs separate the two and either start practicing real science or create a new thing that isn't science to classify their work.
I think it is you that is smoking something. I said "Perhaps someday they will sell a product geared towards gaming with a latency SLA". I said nothing about adding an SLA to standard broadband offerings. I would expect that a product geared towards gamers (instead of business) with a latency SLA would be more expensive than standard broadband, but less than business broadband.
Incorrect. I work for a Tier 1 provider and we provide latency, availability, and packet loss SLA's on our DSL products. There are other providers which provide DSL SLA's as well. I know this because we are constantly tweaking our SLA's to remain competitive.
It depends on your definition of fast. Most people equate fast to the amount of bandwidth they have. The fact is, most online games will not saturate your typical broadband connection. When it comes to online gaming, you really need low latency. It doesn't matter if you have 10Mb down and 1.5Mb up if you have 500ms latency!
The problem is that residential broadband service providers crank up the bandwidth but do not guarantee latency. Perhaps someday they will sell a product geared towards gaming with a latency SLA.
Because customers don't want to "install" anything. They just want to use a web site. This is why technologies like Ajax are taking off.
.exe is bad and web based ActiveX is good!
In the eyes of John Q. Public,
I'm glad you pointed this out. I know several overweight people that get an injury and then immediately throw up their hands stating, "I can't work out now! I have a bad (back|knee|elbow|cankle)".
I've lost 30 pounds and my goal is to lose 20 more. Did I ever get a sore or injured (back|knee|elbow|cankle) while working out? Yes I did. The difference was, I continued with workouts that burnt calories without aggravating the areas that were hurt and healing. It just takes willpower; something that most overweight people are in short supply of.
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