Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by damon_c on Friday January 20, 2023 @03:29PM (#34459406)

Every website accessible to the public has some responsibility to accommodate the disabled.

https://www.ada.gov/resources/web-guidance/

There are a lot of opportunistic/good hearted compassionate lawyers making a good business of shaking down smaller website operators for ADA compliance.

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by joshxyz on Saturday January 21, 2023 @05:12AM (#34465330)

Damn patent trolls are missing out on this good lord.

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by wstuartcl on Friday January 20, 2023 @03:32PM (#34459461)

I believe just meta has encountered many dozens of ADA related lawsuits for everything from their use of disability information for ad targeting to web accessibility -- both government instantiated and civil cases.

I am fairly sure much of their accessibility work was instantiated by these lawsuits and settlements.

https://www.facebook.com/help/273947702950567

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by JustSomeNobody on Friday January 20, 2023 @03:24PM (#34459323)

When is a good time to start holding them accountable?

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by wstuartcl on Friday January 20, 2023 @03:35PM (#34459522)

It would be mind blowing to me and completely unexpected if twitter was not already under many active settlements related to accessibility lawsuits each with their own ongoing obligations.

There are very few large entities that have not been impacted by ADA lawsuits at this point -- even ones that had accessibility as a core value before the lawsuits.

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by nhtsamera on Friday January 20, 2023 @03:58PM (#34459837)

Not really social media, but Netflix lost (settled) an ADA suit because they weren't providing subtitles consistently:

https://dredf.org/legal-advocacy/nad-v-netflix/

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by reaperducer on Friday January 20, 2023 @03:58PM (#34459839)

Has a social media site ever been forced to accommodate blind people?

Social media? Not to my knowledge.

But not having a website that's usable by the blind cost Target $6 million: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/target-settl...

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by prvc on Friday January 20, 2023 @04:38PM (#34460315)

Youtube to this day allows uploaders to disable automatic captions for some reason.

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by monkeywork on Friday January 20, 2023 @04:48PM (#34460435)

Because sometimes the automatic captions brutally butcher the text and can change the presenters meaning.

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by geoelectric on Friday January 20, 2023 @04:57PM (#34460566)

I think a recent court decision in CA determined that unless the website is a front for a brick & mortar real world place, they're not subject to the CA version of those laws (Unruh). How that would play with the ADA rules, I don't know, but this article mentions both. I'm not sure this issue is at all settled nationwide, but my take is bringing that lawsuit in CA won't get you very far.

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/california-court-appeal...

Kind of a shame, because it was my first thought too--losing the accessibility team and then removing all the accessible clients definitely won't make Musk many friends among disability advocates.

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Re:Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 by geoelectric on Friday January 20, 2023 @07:43PM (#34462448)

I do wonder, as a late afterthought, though, whether the legal principle behind making your accessibility worse via negligence or deprioritization (the internal team) or lack of due diligence (these apps) could be different than whether the government could require you to include it in the first place.

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