Accessible Web Podcast: William Lynch

Peter Jewett
All right, Welcome everybody to the accessible web podcast. This is episode six and today we are joined with Billy Lynch, so welcome Billy Thanks for, thanks for joining us today.

Billy Lynch
Hey, thanks for having me, Peter.

Peter Jewett
And we’ve got Paige, doing ASL interpretation for us today. George, as always, thanks for. Thanks for joining. So, George, why don’t you bust into this intro, who is this guy Billy Lynch is with us.

Billy Lynch
Well, a longtime colleague, I’m very excited that he was able to carve out some time for So Billy Lynch is a fair housing civil rights accessibility attorney since 2015, he served as the Assistant General Counsel for Fair Housing compliance with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Prior to that, he served as a trial attorney with the US Department of Justice, Disability Rights section where that’s when I met him for the past decade and a half, Billy has implemented in force, federal accessibility and other civil rights laws through investigations and litigation in federal and administrative courts. He’s focused much of his legal practice on ensuring accessible technology handling cases related to accessibility of public and private websites, applications, mobile services, equipment, assistive technology offering tools and devices under an American with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act is a senior executive fellow of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government received his law degree from Catholic University of America, and a degree in philosophy from the college basketball powerhouse Loyola universe University. That was hard because I’m from Villanova and St. Joe country but he lives in Washington DC with his wife, two daughters, and send to be joined by baby number three, all discussions is provided in his personal capacity, not on behalf of the US government. Welcome Billy I’m really excited that we’re here. The last time we saw each other in person was quite a while ago. I with colleagues bought a satellite truck into DC to link up with. Definitely, who we had on our other podcasts, to try to show an example of emergency management response. Providing interpreting services and he was able to bring a colleague who was deaf and signed and it was, it was a fantastic time best time I ever had in a parking lot in DC so it was exciting. So how is life bill in where, how do you feel about the legal landscape as it really relates to accessibility and assistive technology.

Well, well thanks it’s good to be with you, George and remember that fondly. One of the areas I spent time in was an emergency management, and accessibility as well of course there’s a significant overlap with accessible technology there so that was a fascinating experience and I’m glad to be back to join you again today. So with the legal landscape. You know, some people will say that it’s unclear, particularly with respect to Title Three of the ADA and the application of Title Three which prohibits discrimination by public accommodations in the web space. I’ve never thought it’s unclear, and I’ll be happy to talk through why. I think there’s a lot of folks out there who would like it to remain unclear, but really at the end of the day, I think businesses that that fit within the category of public accommodations really should just be working to make their goods and services accessible. There’s a lot of legal reasons for that and of course a lot of practical reasons and just good reasons to do so, you know, and, and some of that has been thrown into a little bit of question. There’s a case out of the 11th circuit. It’s down in Florida and Georgia area, involving Winn Dixie at the district court level. A blind plaintiff was successful in convincing the court that Winn Dixie was required and its online services which were fairly limited but still services that they were required to be accessible. Winn Dixie appealed that to the 11th circuit US Court of Appeals, and in a two to one decision circuit courts of appeals have three judges. Generally, when they, when they hear cases in a two to one decision, found that Winn Dixie was not responsible for complying with Title Three of the ADA. This is a case that’s in tension with a lot of other cases district court cases across the country. circuit court cases. And what that does, potentially, is set up what’s called a conflict in the courts, and when you have a conflict between different federal courts. It’s the type of thing that the US Supreme Court is interested in looking at and granting on now, there’s still a chance that the 11th circuit will hold what’s called an en banc hearing, which means that all the judges of the 11th circuit would get together and can reconsider that decision. And there was apparently a request to do that. There’s been some amicus briefs filed by some fairly large advocacy organizations, asking for that to occur. So it’s still possible that the 11th circuit doesn’t doesn’t hear that. And it’s also possible that they would change their decision. If they don’t change their decision, it makes it, you know, creates this conflict among courts. I’m not sure that that case is the case, you know, somebody would want to bring to the Supreme Court from the plaintiffs perspective. Winn Dixie may choose to bring it to the Supreme Court I don’t know if that occurs, there’s a high likelihood the court would want to hear it. A few years ago there was a case involving Dominos that did make it to the court and. So, you know, I think, ultimately, these things are going to have to get worked out for the courts, Congress, although there’s been some legislation in Congress to kind of deal with the some of the questions people have raised about businesses and their obligation to provide web access and other accessible technology under Title Three of the ADA hasn’t gone too far so it’s probably going to work its way through the courts but, you know, ultimately I’m confident that the courts will find that at least some parts of the web are covered by Title Three of the ADA.

We can get into other statutes and other types of entities, if you’re interested public entities, state, local governments, it’s a lot clearer there, that there’s an obligation but private businesses I think things are still a little bit open ended.

Peter Jewett
Yeah, we get a lot of, you know, inbound leads as you can imagine from people that run a small business and, you know, or even medium sized businesses and they’ve never heard of this they. And one of the big things I have to do is kind of the main salesperson is, is get them feeling a little better about this. Give it a positive spin maybe so that they don’t feel, you know there’s word to get thrown around like extortion, or, you know, You know these frauds Is this the same as these guys trolls so these accessibility trolls. So there’s certainly a ton of questions still out there in terms of what are the responsibilities of a business. Do I have to do this and any of the other tough thing is in absence of having that demand letter having received it and having, you know, being forced to deal with it. A lot of businesses just choose to roll the dice, you know, it’s, if they haven’t received it yet, they kind of feel like well, you know, this company is never gonna or these this law firm, these law firms, are never going to come after me. I’ve too small or I’m in an industry that doesn’t matter, you know I sell cars, for example, why does a blind person need to buy a car. So yeah, it’s a, it’s it’s pretty crazy with kind of the, you know, the gray area I guess I’d say that exists in the mind of most business owners but it sounds like to your mind, it’s, there’s no gray area at all it’s pretty clear and they just need to fulfill their obligations.

Billy Lynch
You know, I hear the concerns from, from business owners and I, you know, I recognize the challenges they face and they’ve got a lot of different things they need to deal with, they got to run a business that’s challenging enough. Doing so, particularly in the context of COVID that adds obviously another layer, A lot of state and local requirements that aren’t always obvious. And then you know you’ve, you’ve got these areas where I wish it were clearer to, and I mean I think. I think there’s some, you know, I guess what I would say to the small business owner and I’ve actually had a lot of these conversations, personally and professionally with folks is, you know, don’t you want people with disabilities as your, your, you know, coming to your business, I mean, you know, spend a little time educating yourself because this stuff actually isn’t that complicated, it seems pretty intimidating at first. Having known nothing about it and then, you know, educating myself about it, I think, you know, obviously, building an accessible website sometimes required to professional to do that. But as far as providing services that are in an accessible format and manner and and trying to reach out to people with disabilities, that’s, that’s not difficult. The other thing I would say is, this is the same argument that’s been made in the physical space all the time we don’t have people with disabilities in our building, it’s like, well, you don’t have an elevator, so how could they possibly be in your building and this is just the virtual, you know, manifestation of that, and so I hear that the concerns there I think you know the, to the extent that there’s private entities out there. Going after smaller mom and pop stores that that’s probably less common than larger organizations who have resources I mean, the other thing I would say is that the ADA has built into it, defenses like there’s undue burden in providing certain auxiliary aids and services and so it’s not just you have to do this or else. There’s actually a bit more to that. So, yeah, I mean, it would be much better if you know there were clear guidelines out there with respect to private businesses, unfortunately that’s not where we’re at at the same time, I wouldn’t sit around and wait because, you know, there’s money to be made, and people with disabilities want to use businesses and if you’re the one that’s accessible. The next one isn’t. And not even as a legal issue just as a practical issue.

Peter Jewett
So my understanding, my understanding of Dominos is that they were the ones that tried to escalate it to the Supreme Court, because they wanted to try to establish some clarity around this law is, is that the case.

Billy Lynch
So they did. So they took it from the Ninth Circuit, and they, they asked the supreme court to grant, what’s called certiorari or cert. Oftentimes you’ll hear there’s two phases in the Supreme Court, there’s the, the court needs to decide whether they’re going to actually hear a case, and then they decide the case on the merits, they never get to the merits if they decide not to hear it, and what Dominos tried to do was to create tension between the dominoes decision at the district court level with other insurance cases that have determined that in the early 90s That there, there wasn’t coverage of insurance so it’s sort of like apples and oranges with the web, but they tried to set this up and you’ll see this a lot in the literature that there’s this tension between federal courts because some say it applies to the web, particularly where there’s a nexus to a brick and mortar facility, but there’s these insurance cases, although there’s some conflict among those, and they tried to set it up and say to the court, you need to resolve this because there’s tension among the courts, but if you look deeper, there’s not really there wasn’t until this Winn Dixie case, a lot of tension among the circuit courts, and the main reason that the US Supreme Court will want to hear a case is if there’s a conflict in circuits, like I was talking about before, because what you have is some parts of the country saying, you know, you need to do this and the other parts of the country saying you need to do something else. Now, that’s a little bit odd. With the internet. Since it’s everywhere. It, you know, There, there’s a whole area of legal jurisprudence on that topic. And, and so it’ll be, it’ll be interesting to see what happens in this Winn Dixie case, and I’m confident though that if you really look at the the statute and what Congress intended with covering businesses, you know I think it’s, it’s possible the Supreme Court might ultimately in the right case, say something like, you know, we’re not sure about web only businesses. But when it comes to your pizza place or your, you know, retailer, things that are clearly within the scope of Title Three, and they have multiple ways of doing business, you can, you can call them which is terrible, right, you can go there which is becoming less common all the time, or you can go to their website and the way that title three the ADA is structured, it applies to all the goods services privileges facilities, advantages and accommodations that the public entity provides, it’s really hard to say, particularly as the years go on with the expanse of the internet and all the things you can do and with COVID that it shouldn’t be covered, I just, I don’t see that happening. When, when the court really gets into it. I think the analyses that, that some of the courts have applied. It’s really, it’s hard to follow, and just, you know, they’re just not rational, if you look at the statutory language.

George Heake
Now I mean.

Peter Jewett
Go ahead, George.

Billy Lynch
In terms of clarity. Do you think the ADA, the, the ABA will encompass web accessibility, and also with the migration hopefully Web Content Accessibility Guidelines hopefully being part of ADA, eventually, do you think there’ll be clarity in Ada we’ll have enough how power to kind of drive people in businesses that have accessible web, information technology. Yeah, so

that’s an interesting question George I mean, I’m and I’m just speaking as a private citizen, not as a government employee and not based on any government information that I may have been exposed to over time. So, what I would put to you is that the title three of the ADA in particular because the other parts is very clear like title two, you have to do it in the employment context, you have to do it. You know the Rehabilitation Act, it’s it’s very clear that if you receive funds, you have to do it five a week, you have to do it, and of course the standards are very clear they’re in the context of Title Three though. The analysis is a little bit different. The way that I would break it down as a lawyer, I would look first is do we have a public accommodation, right, one that fits within the 12 categories. So, banks, retailers, you know, movie theaters, traditional public accommodations, then the next place I would look is in their provision of goods, services, facilities etc, are they providing full and equal enjoyment of those things to people with disabilities. It can be in a slightly different manner than it’s provided to people without disabilities, but is it full and equal enjoyment, so that’d be the first stop I would apply in it, so I think that standard is already there. If you can use the website of one of the public accommodations, and you without a disability, then you don’t have full and equal enjoyment if it’s inaccessible. If you have a disability, so that’s the first thing I would look at the second thing I would look at is there’s a in the, The structure of the ADA there’s a auxilary aids and services and effective communication regime and basically what what the ADA says is that you have to take appropriate steps to ensure effective communication with individuals with disabilities. And one way of doing that is through the provision of auxiliary aids and services. If you look closely at the DOJ 2010 revision of the ADA regulations for Title Three. Accessibility is built into that, and technology and websites, and it’s discussed. Now, they didn’t go so far as to add, you know, wicked 2.0 and course 2.1 didn’t exist at that point or even 1.0, but what they said is you have to take appropriate steps to ensure effective communication through the through the use of appropriate auxiliary aids and services. Those are providing captioning as interpretation like we have here. Through alternate formats, things that have existed for four decades in the, the non web the non virtual space, But then there are some expansion that occurs there. So what I would suggest is that the framework is already there. And if that’s the legal analysis that’s being provided to a particular entity. There’s no question in my mind that they’re obligated, when they provide, let’s say, service to deliver food to your house, for example, that’s clearly a public accommodation, you have to have full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, etc. And then they need to take appropriate steps to ensure effective communication so if they have how to videos, ensuring that there’s alternate methods for that. If there are photographs of various items the goods that they’re, they’re selling or the, maybe the restaurants that that people can pick things up from. Those are the types of things that should be provided in a non visual format, etc. So I think that frameworks there now to answer your question, do I think that the DOJ will ever apply WIC Ag in as a regulatory matter. I don’t know the answer to that, I think that’s a, it’s a challenging question, because the concern will be, is this going to suppress any business activity by applying the same standard rather than this more flexible auxiliary aids and services non discrimination standard. What I can say as as a remedial measure and I know because I was involved in settling a lot of these cases and bringing these lawsuits when I was there, is that wicked 2.0 Double A was a remedial

remedy to dealing with the, the discrimination. The lack of equal access the failure to provide appropriate auxiliary aids and services. And so, If there are organizations out there who are looking like what am I supposed to do here. Using that as the standard and following, you know what’s in those, those settlement agreements and those consent decrees regarding, you know how to comply. That’s the roadmap to get there.

Peter Jewett
These auxiliary aids and services is this how, like, excessive B and these overlay companies are trying to kind of get around, non. I know you’re talking as a yourself and not for the government but is this a good free to not answer this question, I guess, but, um, is this one of the stances that they’re most likely taken when they’re saying they can make websites, ADA compliant but all these people with disabilities are saying it’s not, it’s not sufficient and, you know, when we look at a website using these overlay tools they’re most certainly not achieving WCAG double A conformance.

Billy Lynch
Well I guess what I would say I have not studied some of the overlays I’ve heard of these over the years, and I read about the one that you mentioned. I have not done independent study of how these work but what I would say is, if a public accommodation or frankly any entity that is covered by a federal or state or local law that requires accessibility in this space is using an overlay, and the overlay does not provide effective communication or it does not provide full and equal enjoyment of the good services, etc. I would say that the public accommodation is going to have some issues from a legal perspective.

Peter Jewett
Yeah, you just kind of piqued my interest with the, the statements made on like business flexibility, because there’s also, you know, there was a guy a few years back couple years back that was starting to create his own web accessibility standard because he didn’t believe WCAG was sufficient and you know the the WCAG people kind of, you know, I guess the industry as a whole kind of laughed him out of the room a little bit like what are you doing thinking you’re creating another standard we already have one that works and then, you know, certainly as there’s been money flowing into this area as these lawsuits have picked up and it’s become clear to any website owner without their head in the sand that they need to do something. There’s certainly a lot of half measures that have maybe popped up, and you know it lets a website owner, maybe be lulled into a sense of false security for monthly subscription and then, you know, they haven’t really made their website accessible they’ve just kind of created a veneer of accessibility that lets them wash your hands of it and, you know, go on to the next task. Interesting.

Billy Lynch
What Why even try at that point, right.

Peter Jewett
Yeah I mean it’s, I mean, a lot of it’s the sales people and a lot of it’s a an educated, you know, customer base that people don’t know where to start, they don’t, you know, they don’t have any clarity around the law. So they just kind of, you know, do a Google search on the first company they see a website that looks very authoritative and they listen to the sales guy and think they’ve think they’ve done it correctly so it’s certainly an uphill battle as we try to kind of sell against that because it’s, it’s sold is just an all in one simple solution, and, and that doesn’t seem to be the reality.

Billy Lynch
You’re raising it. Oh, I’m sorry. No, go ahead. Yeah, I was just gonna say you raise an interesting thing, when, when I was settling cases involving a public, public accommodations title three entities. One thing that became very clear to me in having a sustainable web access or accessible technology practice within the entity and of all sizes, You know, smaller entities nonprofits, massive corporations that spanned the globe. Was he couldn’t just have automated testing. You couldn’t just have expert testing, you really had to embed it within the organization. Otherwise, it’s just not going to work, and, you know, I think I would. This isn’t legal advice but I would, I would highly recommend against selecting an organization that you know, it’s sort of transactional, rather than educational, as far as how to make content really accessible, it’s worth the investment. And once you get there, people with disabilities, love it, right, and they’re going to come to that business, if, if there are businesses out there just using these like these overlays and just sort of like putting a certification on their website even suggesting that they’re accessible and not really knowing it. I mean, I think back to, you know, 50 years ago, and even in further back of like what, what message is that telling the people with disabilities about your organization, if that’s the extent you’re going to your invest in.

Yeah. And what, what, what we’ve been putting a lot of effort to is community outreach, but not just community outreach, but developing UX testing by people with disabilities who we have employees on board doing that. And we’re finding that businesses are very interested in having that part of the testing. also, and I did a big advocate of how can we develop developers make it part of the business process, as opposed to going back and re, re engineering. Once we can bake it into the process, you know, that’s going to have a long term effect in terms of accessibility, and technology, how we were talking about this before, the podcast. How important do you think accessibility was in terms of education and outreach Doron COVID Well,

you know, I was reading recently, the amicus brief that Brown, Goldstein levy filed in the Winn Dixie case. Greg care and I think he PIL authored that amicus brief on behalf of a number of organizations, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot to just how acute. The COVID pandemic has made the need for accessible technology. I mean, I, so just a little bit of a personal background I, my dad has quadriplegia, and I got into the accessibility world because, you know, of the barriers that we faced as a family, and barriers with, you know, just things in the home with transportation, employment, you know, you name it and everybody has these stories, who has worked in accessibility, of course, and I just think about like how acute, the pandemic has been on accessing goods and services. The technology has the, the ability to open up all kinds of spaces for people with disabilities, and can actually be life changing. I mean I think of, you know, as a kid, my dad and I couldn’t play a lot of video games together, but my daughter’s get to play video games with them now which is amazing. And they get to an end just like FaceTime and, you know other, you know, web, web conferencing, and now he can access virtually everything in his, his, his condo, because of mobile apps, and of course if those things aren’t accessible for people who are blind, it’s going to create a lot of problems. If we don’t have devices in homes that, you know, are have alternate format so to speak so they be visual alarms for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, then there’s going to be a lot of difficulty in accessing the built environment and really engaging. And so, you know, I spent a lot of time over the past year and a half thinking of like, we’ve got all these web platforms, How much of an investment or some of these tech companies putting into accessibility, being able to you know bring in the relay service. When, when necessary, you know, thinking ahead of ensuring that you know when you have an interpreter that you can see the full interpreter, you know, interpreting for people who need that. And, and we’re not, as we all know, I mean that the world has changed all these tech companies are mandating, you know that they’re just going from a work home from home environment. A lot of employers, you know, the federal government still trying to figure that out, and I suspect we’re going to hear pretty soon about what that looks like. But we’re going to be spending a lot of time in a lot of different places, and if tech is not accessible, instead of having that ability to really transform people’s ability to engage in the workforce, and to bring their talents and their skills into, you know, different jobs. It’s going to exclude them and I’m actually very concerned about how fast technology is getting rolled out how quickly, different, you know, updates are being made in the background, people don’t even know about these updates to, you know, video conferencing platforms, and are there people really thinking about is this excluding people who are blind people who are deaf people with physical disabilities who may use alternative methods then a keyboard and a mouse to be able to access the video conferencing platform so I’m very hopeful. I, I, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about because I think there’s a lot of real. There’s a lot there that can really be transformative but I’m as concerned about it.

Peter Jewett
So we looked at the Winn Dixie case and kind of thought, Oh God, this is awful news but it sounds like it might not be the worst thing because now we’ve created that tension. Now that exists in the courts is that gonna, and it sounds like that might force it up to the Supreme Court. So, so let’s just say it gets to the Supreme Court, and they decide that, you know Title Three does apply to websites with physical accommodations. What’s next, Like what level do they then go to Congress, or the DOJ and say you have to make a law you have to put the regulations and the teeth into this, or, or are we just going to continue to be in the same spot where it’s a legal requirement but people don’t know about it and there’s no clearly defined requirements or penalties or timelines.

Billy Lynch
That’s a, that’s a tough one, Peter. I you know, I wish I had the crystal ball, sure, as I’m sure everybody does. I think we could gain that out in a couple of different ways. My guess is, who knows what the court will actually do with this issue when it gets it. Generally when they do make a decision, it’s a pretty narrow decision. And it’s not going to solve all of the questions. So, you know, I know there was a lot of anxiety around the Domino’s case and whether that was going to mean the end of accessibility in the web context. When I looked pretty closely at it. Number one, I was convinced that it was not going to be the cert was not going to be branded in that case. Secondly, I also think that if there was a decision, it would be a very narrow decision. And so there’s going to be a lot of questions that are still out there. You can see that in virtually every case the Supreme Court decides it’s not the end of the story. You know things, things are constantly being raised and I know that disability if it, if it were going in a negative direction, the disability community is going to be going to Congress, they’re going to be going to, you know, agencies that that implement regs, one thing that often happens when federal law doesn’t sort of like fill the spear is about to start going to states, and we’ve seen a little bit of that there are a number of states out there that are regulating this activity. And so, it’s not the end of the story. And so, I would, if you’re looking at the, the Winn Dixie case, as you know maybe this is the case that’s going to once and for all besides us, I wouldn’t look at it that way. There’s going to be more to that story after the fact.

Peter Jewett
Interesting.

George Heake
Now, in terms of technology in our future. In terms of we talked about this earlier, where people are not getting technology knocking broadband, which affects education and and everything else. What’s been done. Now, if anything, to kind of level the playing field of getting broadband to where it needs because we saw some of the stuff advertised going mainstream of what different companies were doing to get technology people that needed but as a whole country is anything happening at the federal level that might impact that and make that happen, or are we going in that direction.

Billy Lynch
You know it’s not really my area and, of course I’m only speaking as a private citizen and not in my capacity as a government official. I know that it’s, I’ve heard in the media that it’s, it’s on the radar of many people. I think it’s a big problem, I, I saw a map recently. I think it was shared by my council member in DC. Regarding broadband access overlaid with racial segregation in DC, and the, it’s, it’s stark. It’s, it’s, it’s scary. And if you look at the, the, the concentration of disability overlaid with minority concentration overlaid with the lack of broadband access in people’s homes, or being, you know, limited to mobile access that maybe is over a sell signal that’s pretty weak. It’s pretty scary. And if, if we don’t do something about it. I think there’s going to be further digital divide there that going back to the COVID situation, I know, just as a member of my community was very concerned as to kids being able to get into the classroom, and I’m really really concerned about, kids with disabilities who are just totally haven’t had the support, you know the supports were never enough in the first place I mean let’s be honest. In most cases, and, you know, then they’re, you know, in their homes, we’re working from an Android phone that, you know, test spotty Wi Fi, and from 12 different apps that are confusing. And, and, I mean the past year and a half, like what does that do for them. So I’m really concerned about this issue and I hope that others are concerned too i I’ve seen quite a bit of, you know, like I said in the media about it and I’m hoping awareness has raised about it because we have to do something about it I mean it. In my personal opinion I, I’ve always thought of it as the equivalent of, you know, a utility. And without it, people are going to be more and more just excluded from mainstream society.

Peter Jewett
Yeah, I’d love to see it start to get regulated like a utility and, you know, Vermont, we have a very, I mean it’s it’s same same but different but they’re, they’re struggling here with just the rural communities and getting everyone online. And you know, how do we how do we first and foremost get everyone on the internet and kind of stop this digital divide and then you know once everyone’s online or probably in parallel to getting everyone online, how do we make sure that everyone’s got the tools to actually, I guess leverage the Internet to make their lives better and, yeah, that it certainly goes hand in hand with the inequality issues that are occurring in this country for sure. What, um, we’ve talked a lot about like federal law, is there anything interesting going on at HUD or around housing laws and accessibility.

Billy Lynch
Well I can’t talk too much about HUD itself. That would be a separate conversation. And I could have that in a separate. You know podcast. Yep, I’m in the housing context. I have seen some interesting things develop with respect to, you know there’s a lot of technology that’s going into homes, of course, appliances, we’ve been living with smart thermostats for a long time, smart plugs and all of the mobile apps and, you know, apps that go along with that stuff. And I think. And I know that there have been some cases out there, involving things like touchscreen directories and information kiosks. So, You know I think it would behoove people to start thinking about accessibility in that context I know some people are, but to really spend some time on the front end and in design of how we can ensure that a blind person who comes to visit their friend at a building can do so that, you know, somebody who spends time in their house and, you know, maybe they’re wheelchair user and they can’t reach a high thermostat or something like that that they can access it through a mobile app, and be able to live independently. I mean these are the types of things that I think we see in all the different contexts, education, transportation, going to a hotel. I go into a courthouse these days I mean virtually everything touchscreens everywhere. And so it’s certainly concerning that if, if folks are not thinking about accessibility on the front end what that looks like on the back ends now we’re going to be good. As we know, so I think there’s some really interesting things developing there I mean, with everything becoming smarter all the time. I suspect that there’s going to be a lot to really consider about accessibility in the home.

Peter Jewett
It’s come up a couple of times, When people mentioned just as every device went digital that you lost a lot of the tactile, you know, the thermostat, you can, you can kind of feel the range and put yourself where you want to be in that range, or, you know, I don’t know, an old television you’ve got knobs and you can feel yourself flipping the channels, and how, with everything going digital, you know kitchen range you can turn the burner off, you can feel that button clicking on your dishwasher and with everything going digital, we’ve, we’ve really kind of lost that but I guess, hopefully we’re, we’re in kind of a transitional period maybe call it and as you know, things go beyond digital and become web enabled that, you know hopefully there’s some at these manufacturers are thinking about this, like you’re saying and, and building it into a web application so that people can control it from the device of their choosing whether it’s their computer or their, their phone or, you know, a tablet or something managing the whole house.

Billy Lynch
I think one of the biggest challenges with things like the Americans with Disabilities Act and maybe less so with the Rehabilitation Act, and particularly sections 5015 Wait, is that it doesn’t directly apply to manufacturers, and so we have a lot of people coming up with great ideas that a covered entity like a state or local government or a private business that tries to implement and use that thing in the marketplace, creates problems for itself. And I think, you know, it’s, it’s really unfortunate I mean, that’s kind of how civil rights laws develop over time they’re even though the ADA is comprehensive and deals with a lot of different situations, it doesn’t get at the front end and I think there’s been a lot of. Usually what happens we saw this in the built environment. 20 3040 years ago, where things like gas pumps fit within the architectural standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Other you know controls and operating mechanisms and shelving and, you know, microwaves in a retail facility that’s like a gas station or something like that or, um, you know the the various things that you might access in a hotel that the ADA applied to those things and then manufacturers started to take note of that and say wait a second, We need to build that into our stuff. And then when they started doing that, I think, they became, they sort of cornered the market when they were doing that and I think what we really need and this isn’t even really a legal point it’s more of a sort of philosophical perspective on accessibility. We need more people going into organizations and evangelizing accessibility in all kinds of different ways. One thing that I’m particularly concerned about that’s emerging is the use of algorithms and machine learning, And what that’s going to do not just based on disability on the basis of many different protected characteristics. Machines are going to be learning from a data set that is flawed. To begin with, and it’s going to the outputs are going to be problematic, and people are going to make decisions based on those and they’re gonna think that, well the machine made this decision, or gave me this information so it must be correct. And I’m concerned that I’m not exactly sure how that all plays out but I think it’s coming. And I think it’s going to be problematic in a variety of different ways, employment, you know, calling through 1000s of resumes of people, particularly as we’re all working from all over the place. And you know trying to decide who, who should get a job. How do we deal with the fact that people with disabilities have historically not been able to get jobs, and what it, what is the machine do with that. And how do we build in that variable, I mean that there’s a lot of concerning things that are out there, but also a lot of opportunity to think about fixes to them.

Peter Jewett
If there’s no elevator, there’s no people that are blind in the building, and, you know, it’s it’s the same thing that you brought up earlier, like they’re not going to be in that data set, because we’ve excluded them from the initial build and so, yeah, that’s really interesting. And yeah, to come back to your manufacturer point, that’s one of the things that’s really apparent to us as web designers, web developers is. It’s one thing to ask, you know, every Shopify merchant to make their website accessible and Shopify has done a good job of creating a framework now that if you use that platform as a starting point, it’s accessible as a starting point and you just need to maintain that accessibility so at least it’s possible, but in the web world the manufacturers are the, you know they’re the content management systems, or the platforms and so until they start forcing accessibility or at least providing, you know, more, more, maybe strong suggestions on stuff like you know when you add an image, add an alt tag or don’t upload a video without closed captioning, until they start to really kind of guide, maybe even force their users to create accessible websites, it’s just not going to happen. They’re, they’re the same as the manufacturers, they’re kind of the ones that need to fall into place to actually make this happen at scale

Billy Lynch
100% I had this really interesting case. When I was at DOJ, and there’s a settlement agreement involving this organization, where they produced as a nonprofit, and they were a MOOC, massive open online course provider. And so they had a platform where professors would generate, you know, coursework that people could could take and. And I, what was so fascinating about working on this case and I’ve had similar experiences with other organizations, is we really, we got we started working together of like, what’s the best possible scenario for accessibility for this entity. And we built into the infrastructure of this MOOC system, you would have to provide alt text for images, you wouldn’t have to upload a transcript for, which is not difficult to do with automation and people on the back end fixing some of the captioning, but embed that in there. That, um, you know, accessibility was baked into the, the infrastructure and some of these organizations like you’re talking about that, you know, maybe they are a massive organization where people can sell and buy things and, you know, have them delivered to their house name on unknown. If they really spent a lot of time focused on accessibility and forcing those organizations to do easy things right. Like it’s not. I mean, just the simple thing of adding all tags to images, it increases their, their web presence. If anything, right, like, it’s not, it’s not just for accessibility, there’s a lot of benefits that they can use that data to sort things, and to find, you know, it’s a data point that the organization can use so there’s a lot of other benefits that that often work from a business case. But yeah I mean I think there are some, some, some good, you know actors out there, I mean, obviously I’ve always been impressed with Apple’s work in this area and particularly in forcing accessibility and mobile applications, to a degree, I think there’s, there’s a lot that can be done by those sort of like content management folks that that can really force things in a good way and I hope that continues.

Peter Jewett
Cool. All right, well we’re just about at time here. Um, so let me, Uh, we got a t shirt to give away let me pull up my, my slack. So for anyone watching we are giving away free T shirts every podcast to someone following us on LinkedIn. Today, it is Riley seIf hopefully I’m pronouncing C, right. So Riley get in touch if you’re watching, and if not we’ll track you down and mail you a t shirt for anyone out there wants to follow us we’re pretty easy to find just go on LinkedIn and look up accessible web and we’re also pretty active on Facebook and Twitter. And yeah, Billy thanks for joining us today. This has been, it’s been really informative, um, it’s kind of put the Winn Dixie case in perspective, quite a bit for me. Um, and in the dominoes case I guess I’m, I’m by no means a lawyer. So, you know, even talking in non legal terms necessarily it’s it’s really helpful and yeah just generally thanks for taking the time today.

Billy Lynch
Well I just play a lawyer on TV so I appreciate you having me and it was good it was fun talking shop with you and it’s, it’s exciting to get to talk to folks who work in this area, and there’s a lot to be done, but it’s all great stuff. So, really appreciate it and hope we can stay in touch.

George Heake
Yeah, I, I just want to thank you to believe that, you know I’ve been evangelists in this area as long with you for a very long time and you always been there when I’ve reached out with bigger crazy ideas and whether it’s a satellite track or anything else. You’ve been supportive than. That’s why I’m so excited about being accessible web, I’m finally doing it full time. So thank you very much and yeah we’ll definitely stay in touch.

Peter Jewett
Cool. Well, thank you page as well. And for anyone watching tune in to our Facebook page and we’ve, we’ve got more exciting Podcast coming up so looking forward to doing doing more of these and subscribe and we’ll be back next week. All right, later all.

Billy Lynch
Take care. Thanks Billy. Thanks. Cool.