>"Well, it was a great approach, but a very small group of people do not like that they need assistance to enter booths which able bodied don't need to ask for," Bauer wrote.
I wonder if that small group of people are pleased with the outcome.
All of them
This required a solution so creative and comprehensive that it took 32 months of many stakeholders and the best legal minds they could get.
If you can't add access for all, then add barriers for all.
Too bad the regulators didn't spell out plainly that the default under imperfect conditions is always more barriers not less. They should have made it obvious that the law primarily requires more barriers the whole time without having to waste almost 3 years to achieve clarity.
And the additional barriers have to be so effective even the most able-bodied can't overcome them.
It's the law.
I liked it better when there were more able-minded regulators.
Quadrupeds, ai vision, etc.
The reality is that many things are in fact not accessible in very real ways, and people like to pretend that the problem does not exist when their paycheck depends on them pretending it does not exist.
Sunsetting the law won’t rip out what exists already, it creates a gradual incentive to upgrade.
Temporary structures are often built without code compliance out of expediency, and this is that. Sucks to ignore the law and be called out. There's really no excuse to be surprised by wheelchair accessibility compliance in a public retail establishment in the US in 2026.
The ADA is a horribly-designed law precisely because it encourages this behavior. Reforming it is necessary, but doing so would be so politically toxic that it will probably never happen.
Temporary event and with an accommodation solution for the minority of disabled guests shouldn't have to inconvenience everyone just because a few people "feel" inconvenciend for having to ask for the accommodation. It's not like this is a subway station, public building, or some other kind of venue where a permanent access solution is needed.
I think some people who are disabled are just miserable people who go around trying to make everyone else miserable too. That's the only reason these lawsuits are filed.
The Philadelphia government could have budgeted for ADA compliance and it chose not to, just as Berkeley could have budgeted for captioning. Budgets reflect our priorities. It is clear from both examples that meeting the needs of people with disabilities is not a priority.
Expecting them to accommodate everyone for loss-making global educational philanthropy is a ridiculous overreach. It has made the world poorer and entrenched the disadvantage of everyone not in the US. Thanks, disability advocates.
But also, "really cheap" is only cheap when something is done for profit. When it's done as a charitable side gig then pretty much any expense is expensive.
“Hey intern/grad student, enjoy your new assignment”
You presume wrong. No college professor will waste the amount of time required to fully write out everything they will say in class in advance. Notes, yes. Detailed notes, not unlikely. Full script to be read verbatim, nope.
Whether or not we want to admit it, this stuff happens because people think and act like it is okay to disregard accessibility.
The ADA was written in an extremely non-specific way that allows unelected bureaucrats to reinterpret it every so often. To be honest, the US would probably have a more accessible society if the law was better written.
https://www.speechpad.com/blog/ada-compliant-captions-vs-aut...
If you have a risk of getting sued because someone notices a transcription error versus just not uploading videos, people will choose the latter.
A common compliance mistake (for any type of compliance, not just ADA) is:
* someone tells an SWE to implement [compliance measure]
* they implement poor quality [compliance measure] that doesn't actually meet the compliance requirement, close jira ticket
* they don't realize they didn't meet the compliance requirement because they don't use or need [compliance measure] and they are a SWE without any expertise with the law or the understanding of reason for the need for that requirement
Now if you are talking about the blind then sure thats different but the blind don't need captions.
What if they are hard of sight and can't read the whiteboard or blackboard, even if they might be able to read a captioned video?
Lord knows I remember barely being able to read some professors handwriting, even in person, or being able to understand what the hell a professor was saying in person.
How many people are there that can efficiently caption complex mathematical equations?