P!
If the government mandates accessibility on the web, most websites will have to be rebuilt.
As a web developer, I stand to reap the windfall.
Didn’t the DOJ take action against Amazon’s kindle because, while it was capable of reading the book for the blind, it still requires a sighted person to start it up?
Look for electronics to become more expensive and more complicated.
Heaven forbid somebody provide a market solution for the blind.
George: I tell ya, I am hooked on these books on tape.
Blind Man: Oh, tell me about it. These things have ruined me for Braille.
Oh. Okay. Well, if it's not a political issue, let's have the politicians step aside and agree not to pass any laws or use any taxpayer funds to enforce equal outcomes and win political favors.
Isn’t there, by now, an after-market, crude, speech-to-text converter and text-to-speech converter that will suffice to give someone at least a rudimentary idea of what is going on on any particular page? Hell, even Bablefish gives you some idea of what is going on on a foreign language page, enough to decide if it’s worth staying for more.
Is Bob Dole still alive??
I’d like to thank the OR (Original Rino) for the ADA, which gives the cover of precedent to nonsense such as this....
I’m still mystified by braille on the drive-up ATM machines.
YouTube had a Beta of a voice to CC converter in their players. Given the generally awful quality of audio in YouTube clips, and given the immense processing power required for untrained speech to text converters, it was unsurprisingly bad.
If every YouTube clip has to be closed captioned, it will be the end of the service. It is nigh on impossible to CC that many clips to the standards the ADA requires.
“inclusion”... the new civil rights argument.
I have seen public school classrooms turned upside down (and not in a good way) by the mandated inclusion of students who have no business in public school classrooms - in the name of “inclusion”.
Why is it that everyone else has to pay for “inclusion”?
Back in the older days of civil rights, it was about giving people of all races some kind of “equality”, which then developed into quotas and affirmative action which was simply a way to penalize the majority for the benefit of the minority.
So other groups have jumped on that cash-wagon.
The Americans With Disabilities Act is another example of taking common sense steps and creating a monster.
What’s next? A demand for automobiles that can be driven by blind people? And mandate that all vehicles include such technology, no matter the cost or inconvenience to everyone else? I can see it now - braille stop signs and speed limit signs!!!
Many cell phones still have buttons that one can feel and memorize the pattern of quite quickly (I got pretty good at not only dialing my old smartphone, but even sending text messages (though I can imagine it hard to read them without looking!).
I can pick up, dial, and use my home phone without ever looking at it.
What this bill intends to do is eliminate any technology that cannot be used by the lowest common denominator among us.
Legislation to make complex electronics more simple because it discriminates against stupid people?
Legislation to reduce the use of ‘big words’ in books because it discriminates against the barely literate?
Legislation against music because it discriminates against the deaf?
It’s going to be fun to watch the requirement for wheelchair accessible and braille labeled airplane cockpits and controls. Can’t discriminate against blind pilots, doncha know.
And it’s going to be a real riot watching those NASCAR cars required to be wheelchair and blind accessible.
Maybe NASA should be completely reworked so that the space station and all space craft/shuttles be required to be wheelchair, blind and deaf accessible. And get rid of those pesky physical requirements for astronauts while you’re at it. Can’t have discrimination against the alternate-abled.
I know I just can’t wait to see the first blind airline or space shuttle pilot.
And what’s with this thing with NO deaf audio engineers/sound mixers? Grossly discriminatory!!
Why does it always have to be high technology that is stifled with unreasonable demands by bureaucrats?
Quite a few people are deathly allergic to peanuts. Why not shut down the entire peanut industry until they can develop a peanut that never makes anybody allergic?
Get the d@mn govt out of R&D and the emerging products in all markets. We’ll pick the winners, thank you very much, and the googles of the world will invent the tech needed to help the disabled. Not the bureaucrats demands.