That's why economic forces didn't do much to open up things for blacks in the south between the Civil War and the era of Federal civil rights law. If you have a "No Coloreds" policy, and the store down the road does not then yes, they'll get the black business you are giving up--but they are giving up to you the business of people who do not want to shop around black people. The latter is worth more to the bottom line than the former, so you'll actually likely come out ahead economically with a "No Coloreds" sign hanging out in front of your shop.
Then that business down the road decides they'd rather have half of the whites-who-don't-want-to-shop-around-blacks business rather than all of the black business, and out comes the "Whites Only" sign on their store. Yes, they have less total customers after the change, but the white customers are wealthier than the black customers and that makes up for the difference in quantity.
Now it gets interesting. The mathematics of this kind of discrimination turn out to be the same as the mathematics of a boycott of a small country by the rest of the world. (I don't remember where I saw this--it might have been in Posner's "Economic Analysis of Law"). Unless the small country is completely self-sufficient, it loses badly. The net result is the discrimination keeps the blacks poor, and so they don't as a group rise to the point where the stores gain by integrating.
Humans in small groups of approximately equal status and means where everyone knows everyone else simply do not behave the same as humans in very large groups of widely varying status and means where people only know a small part of the group. Libertarianism probably works great in the former case, but not in the latter.
Where there has been no supply (the small country example) blacks, for instance, often would band together and form businesses that served their community. This was inhibited by government regulations that would often deny them the "license" needed to operate that business... but it was not economics that kept those businesses from forming, it was regulation. (And where there wasn't regulation, the businesses would form.)
Perhaps, though the fact that states felt the need to enact Jim Crow laws lends some doubt to that claim.
The challenge is what to do about it? It would be VERY hard to regulate since the internet is so dispersed.
Could a non-profit offer to help?
Thanks, great point! :)
The Treasury data shows that public sector spending in England was 15% lower than that of Scotland last year.
England bends over backwards to do things for the Scots, but they still can't pull their weight.
Lately I've been wondering if a better approach would be to provide an API to functionality, and let the disabled or their advocates build interfaces for themselves. That way they'd get exactly what they need. Mouse-free versions, high-contrast versions, simplified text versions... All could be built ane everyone would be happy. Companies could even support these efforts with open source or donations or training.
What do you think? Could this work in practice?
For example: No restaurant will go bankrupt or even perceptibly lose money because blind people can’t read the menu on their website. There are too few of them.
Also: Getting accessibility right would be costly and complicated for those restaurants. The vast majority of restaurant owners knows nothing about accessibility in the web, they would have to hire someone who does.
Creating a successful product means more often than not picking the commonly used stuff and leaving everything else out. The same dynamic is at play here, the only difference is that the affected people have no choice.
The incentives are set up in a way to favor inaccessible websites. I don’t see how the market can solve this problem.
Customer: We want a menu on our website.
Developer: We can do that. The meter is running.
Customer: Crikey that meter goes up quickly. Just OCR it! That should be almost free!
Developer: We can do that. The meter is running.
Customer: There are all sorts of speling mistkes! Fix them!
Developer: We can do that. The meter is running.
Customer: Now all the text is right but it looks nothing like the menu! We're a freaking restaurant. We spent thousands of dollars to make the menu look good because it is the freaking menu. Make with that HTML and CSS... stuff!
Developer: We can do that. The meter is running.
Customer: Finally, we're getting somewhere! But the description of Chicken Genovese overlaps with the wine list when viewed on an obsolete browser or a Kindle! Make with the fixings!
Developer: We can do that. The meter is running.
Especially really large companies don’t want to have an attack surface called “They don’t care about disabled people!” (There are also other reasons why larger companies have more incentives to be accessible.)
Evidently, however, that’s not enough. It’s hard to create public outrage. It’s hard to organize. Hard enough that being hit by outrage or being swamped by phone calls is quite unlikely. It’s a simple numbers game.
People don’t want to organize shitstorms all the time. They have better things to do.
Old people often have money. They also tend to have eyesight issues and other physical limitations. At the moment, old people are underrepresented online. Give it a few years and that won't likely remain true. At some point, making it easier for people with eyesight issues to access your site may become a much bigger issue. Some businesses may not realize it is impacting them, but I strongly suspect it will seriously begin to impact them in the not too distant future.
The stars may align every once in a while and circumstances may create a situation where the same improvement also benefits a different and much larger group of people but you can’t take that for granted.
Peace.
Peace.
He's just saying that there's no economic incentive to accommodate for variations in people that there's no market incentive to accommodate for, and that may or may not be a problem. He seems honestly confused at why that's setting you off.
I've done my best to back out of the conversation as gracefully as possible without saying "yes, you're right, it's just a handful of blind people" because I don't think that is true. Give me a way to disengage that doesn't involve saying "yes, you're right, I'm just some twit who didn't know that and I'm simply overreacting" and I will happily take it. I am both baffled and, at this point, highly frustrated at how this whole thing has gone. The increasing attempts to characterize me negatively aren't making me feel any better about it. That's never a good thing.
Peace.
My opinion is that it's always worth it to be inclusive when it comes to coding. ugh seems to be implying that extramarket forces should be brought to bear to encourage(or force) accessibility if that is a goal that we want to achieve. If you're fighting with us, what are we fighting about?
See, this is where I feel I am being negatively characterized: I don't think I'm fighting with anyone. Again, if there is a fight, why is it people seem to think I am the only one fighting? It takes two to fight. At this point, I strongly suspect the issue is that I publicly admitted I have a serious handicap and people are basically dismissing me as someone being emotional and irrational, which is one of the reasons people often try to hide their handicaps: It's socially stigmatizing and gets them taken less seriously.
I will try to say this one last time and then attempt to shut up (assuming no one jumps up with any new negative characterizations of me as an individual): I believe that in the future, as the current generation of web-savvy folks age, there will be more incentive to work on this issue and be more accommodating of the typically poor eyesight of older people. Right now, there may be seemingly little incentive to do so. No, that doesn't mean it will be perfect. But we aren't talking about "a handful of blind people".
Peace and have a good evening.
Thank you for your concern about the welfare of the forum but blaming one side in a misunderstanding is usually not the way to build a more civilized atmosphere. It usually just perpetuates the problem.
Peace.
Let me just recap the point I was trying to make: If there are situations where something is not accessible to a small group of people (for whatever reason) and making it accessible would be a lot of effort (for whatever reason) then market mechanisms alone are likely not sufficient to make that something accessible.
I was not advocating alternatives to market mechanisms (I was trying to not advocate anything), I was trying to make no value judgments about that situation.
I now have a full-time paid job for the first time in my life and I have found that when I talk to people long enough, everyone at work has some issue or other. I have had conversations with someone at work who a) had previously told me they have a medical condition (diabetes) which can be significantly impacted by diet and then b) later essentially expressed pity for me that I must limit my diet as it was something they could not relate to because they "could eat anything". Yeah, they could -- and take drugs to deal with the consequences. Or, with a different mental model, they could be pickier about their diet and take less medication. They aren't as different from me as they think they are, they simply frame their own issue differently from mine and deal with their problem differently from my approach -- and then they frame themselves in their own mind as "normal, healthy" and me as "handicapped" when in reality we are both dealing in part with the exact same issue as we both have blood sugar problems. I have also seen parents admit they have some of the same traits as their kids but they swear they don't have Asperger's while labeling their child as "having Asperger's". Why? Because it's stigmatizing and would hurt their career to self-identify as a "handicapped" person worthy of a label. Such parents are typically pretty hostile towards me and my attempts to say "so if you and your child are not so very different, why does the child deserve a stigmatizing label but you do not?" I have two kids who both fit the profile for ASD. I do not say they "have Asperger's". For one thing, that makes as much sense to me as saying "they have male" or "they have Caucasian". No, they are male and they are Caucasian and they fit the profile for certain traits that some people would give the label "Asperger's Syndrome". Not labeling them or stigmatizing them has been a significant part of how I have helped them learn to play to their strengths and accommodate their weaknesses without winding up mentally and logistically trapped into being "the pathetic handicapped person".
Personal limitations are very widespread. We all have them. As we grow older, we tend to acquire more of them. Making things more generally usable is not really about jumping through hoops to make big accommodations for a small number of people. And when people finally wrap their brain around that and do something about it, it begins bringing down barriers in a way which allows "handicapped" people to live more normally without anyone focusing on their handicap. Yes, some handicaps, like being blind, won't be as easily remedied or readily supported as others. But vision problems are more widespread than people seem to think. And making things visually accessible tends to also benefit "normal" people who don't particularly think of themselves as "handicapped".
Thanks for asking. I hope that is clearer to you but I really don't understand what the disconnect is so I am not confident it is.
Peace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maguire_v_SOCOG_2000 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HREOCA/2000/31.html http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HREOCA/2000/49.html
Luckily most can also be used with a mechanical key.
Electric automatic doors are also a problem for hotels and hospitals (most other places would not be visited on the Sabbath anyway).
A Jew can leave lights on, or set things on timers before the Sabbath, but can not do anything with electricity on the Sabbath.
There are other considerations as well that apply to battery devices, but the main thing is fire.
Just like, as a vegetarian, I can't get much to eat at Ruth's Chris or The Outback or whatever. I just take my business elsewhere — it's a voluntary restriction on my diet. I should live with the consequences.
Not allowing blacks/jews/gays is about admittance policies that don't cost, unless they require some sort of infrastructure to be created for them.
It would be good to hear from a UK web designer as to opportunity cost, as accessibility is a legal requirement for .uk sites, if I recall correctly. I imagine if everyone's doing it, it's cheaper from the outset as the pool of web talent is trained in the issue.