> Show me where the ADA says that software developers must think about assistive access to content, and that not doing so is illegal.
The ADA is not software specific, but specifies that you must provide access. Courts have been increasingly interpreting that to include websites. See the recent Domino's case where the circuit court ruled the website must be accessible (the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so it is technically only binding precedent within the 9th circuit - western states, including California) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-dominos-pizza/u...
> EDIT: Also, would you care to explain how the ADA has any impact on anyone's behavior outside of the United States?
> Europe has explicitly adopted WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards
This is precisely how we get closer to the achievable goal of assistive accessibility becoming a non-concern in software. The WCAG is nowhere near the same thing as the ADA. In fact, as a person with one of the things that qualifies me as a person with a "disability" I consider the ADA an offensively non-viable and absurdly non-enforceable "law."
I'm curious in what way. Because I have friends who are very active in the local community ensuring compliance with the ADA, so if there's a blind spot they should know about, I would like to pass it on to them.
The blind spot is in using legal violence to coerce people into being "considerate" of people with disabilities. Assistive accessibility is a god damned gold mine for whichever company solves the problem in each industry. Flash's use on the web led to far more good things than bad, and this one bad thing is really just being heightened because the media places falsely high emphasis on being worried about people with disabilities.
The fact is that we have many, MANY advocates who are all a lot nicer, more helpful, and more effective than Washington, DC.
... which is why we have laws to force people to do the right thing even when they don't have the right emotions behind it. I think we're coming at this from two different directions; the people I work with have come to learn that if you don't beat the drum more or less continuously, things don't get better.
Not nearly enough folks are inclined to be considerate; consideration without force of law just isn't good enough.
The law says "reasonable accommodations". Spending 30% more on IT is not "reasonable" in my book. Spending millions to help a handful of people is not "reasonable".
Of course, it is situational. Your main product or service should be accessible, but ancillary and blue-moon information is too expensive to keep compliant.
One org provided statistical reports to the public. But the format was not ADA-friendly, and reworking hundreds of reports would cost tens of millions. So they stopped providing the reports.
The ADA is not software specific, but specifies that you must provide access. Courts have been increasingly interpreting that to include websites. See the recent Domino's case where the circuit court ruled the website must be accessible (the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so it is technically only binding precedent within the 9th circuit - western states, including California) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-dominos-pizza/u...
> EDIT: Also, would you care to explain how the ADA has any impact on anyone's behavior outside of the United States?
It isn't the ADA, but Europe has explicitly adopted WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards: https://www.w3.org/blog/2018/09/wcag-2-1-adoption-in-europe/