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Comment by miki123211 | Hacker News Reader

This problem unfortunately applies to a lot of remote access software, particularly when the web browser is the client.

I know of one company that switched to Web VNC for accessing a specific piece of software. They had a lot of offices and the software was expensive (paid per machine). This way, they could switch to a much smaller number of licenses, letting any employee connect from anywhere and wait in line if necessary. A blind person has lost a job over this.

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> A blind person has lost a job over this.

IANAL, but in at least the US and Europe that sounds like the easiest lawsuit of their life

You're the third person on this thread to say that. Please check out the responses to the other two:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28027986

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28028116

I read those "just sue them" responses as coming from people who have never even talked to a lawyer except when going through the paperwork of buying a house, much less been a party to actual litigation.

Companies keep lawyers on retainer to fight suits like this.They have resources of time and money to easily bankrupt someone with a disability who has just lost a job, and typically it won't even cost the company anything above what their normal retainer fees run.

It is also extremely difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you were let go due to the disability, especially if there is only a single case in the company and not a track record to follow unless there is a blatant email along the lines of "they're blind, let's get rid of them."

This is a common misconception, proof beyond a reasonable doubt is only needed in criminal cases. In civil cases most often preponderance of the evidence (i.e. 'more likely that not') is enough

This is an indication of the need for more people to get actual legal advice before assuming anything legal.

True but that lower standard of proof is still not easy to meet.

Yes, I agree, but that's not what I was objecting to (pun intended).

I'm not from the US though so bankrupting private individuals through court costs is a science fiction for me

"I'm not from the US though so bankrupting private individuals through court costs is science fiction to me."

It's also science fiction to anyone in the US, where the term "court costs" generally does not mean attorneys fees.

Not to mention, suing a former employer can impact your future hirability.

Hello, yes, even if the EEOC and DFEH tell you "yes, you were illegally discriminated against on the basis of your gender in hiring and the company representative put that in writing" then no lawyer in the Bay Area will take the case lmao

> They have resources of time and money to easily bankrupt someone with a disability who has just lost a job

Is this an America thing or did I just get lucky? Here (UK) I sued a company for disability related discrimination and it barely even cost me time never mind money. The solicitor handled it all once I'd given all the information I had. They took payment out of the settlement

There are extremes when talking about the legal system. One is people telling others to sue for anything that offends them. The other is people like the above telling you that you can never win a lawsuit against a company because money is the only thing that matters.

The truth is complicated and it actually depends on the individual facts and merits of the case (duh). Blanket statements about a system as complex as a legal system are rarely ever true.

Is there a reason why comments on HN so quickly go to to " you said X but X is not always true" direction? Is there something inherent in the nature of HN readers making them gravitate towards seeing absolutism that was never there?

You've taken a bit of a throwaway question to its most absolute and painted the entirety of HN with it there

Maybe it is in the nature of HN readers :)

I'm not sure if remote access programs (web browser or not) even support screen readers on the client, especially since many of those render the entire desktop server-side and send it back to the client as an image or video. A possible option may be to run the screen reader on the remote desktop itself if that's possible.

> A possible option may be to run the screen reader on the remote desktop itself if that's possible.

For generic remote desktop access, that's what we have to do. But piping accessibility information (in its generic form, not pre-rendered as speech) to the client side in that case is much harder than it would be for this Chromium-based remote browser. (I know this from relevant experience during my time on the Windows accessibility team at Microsoft.)

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