I just heard through an indirect channel that the government has given programmers a WHOLE NEW YEAR to fulfill the arbitrary ADA requirements.
= = = = = START OFFICIAL QUOTE:
By this Interim Final Rule (“IFR”), the Department of Justice (“Department”) is revising the regulations implementing title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) to extend the compliance dates for the requirements for web content and mobile application (“app”) accessibility that were adopted on April 24, 2024. The compliance date for State and local government entities with a total population of 50,000 or more is extended from April 24, 2026, to April 26, 2027. The compliance date for public entities with a total population of less than 50,000, or any special district government, is extended from April 26, 2027, to April 26, 2028.
= = = = = END OFFICIAL QUOTE.
Now I can do it right**, starting from scratch and taking advantage of many new platform features (HTML5, etc) that weren’t available when I laid out the code in 2014. The existing JS was already full of kludges and special cases to compensate for browsers that disappeared many years ago, and to work with the former publisher’s proprietary LMS system. After adding more kludges and special cases for ADA, it’s sort of working but flaky as hell.
In the meantime I’ll cinch up the existing cobbled-up mess which is ready for flaky “mostly-compliant” usage. It unquestionably works BETTER for actual blind students, whether it meets the arbitrary fucking rules or not.
Quality defends the soul against bureaucratic warmaking idiots. When I put my name on a product I want to feel proud. This mess doesn’t meet the standard.
= = = = =
It would be interesting to hear an unvarnished account of the bureaucratic moves that caused the sudden clampdown last year and the sudden release this year. Remembering what happened with the TSA torture chamber from 2020 to 2022, I suspect the initial clampdown was expressing “resistance” to Trump. Possibly the release happened because too many important Democrats OUTSIDE the bureaucracy threatened to stop donating. The tech billionaires are mostly Democrat. College admins are 100% Democrat and control vast endowments.
Later after reading more, it was the college admins, not the tech billionaires.
= = = = =
Relevant sidenote: I heard about both the clampdown and the release indirectly. News of the clampdown was late, giving me only 8 months to get the task done. Why isn’t there a direct channel to people who are affected by a government decision? We get updates and notifications from THOUSANDS OF UTTERLY MEANINGLESS EVENTS whether we registered for the updates or not. We don’t hear about events that genuinely affect our work and income.
In the days of newspapers, Legal Notices were part of a well-formed information channel. If you were directly affected by a court decision or a will, the lawyers had to make a good faith effort to notify you. The newspaper was mainly for the ‘leftovers’ who couldn’t be reached.
= = = = =
Biggest point, as fucking always:
The SOLE INTENDED PURPOSE of “Rights” is to enrich the rich and ruin everyone else.
Before “disability rights”, lots of disabled people were doing lots of jobs, with assistance provided informally where needed. After the area was fenced in with compliance and testing and massive litigation, MANY employers found ways to avoid the issue entirely. Something similar is happening with this regulation. Many colleges and profs are simply taking down all online content, and many goverment agencies are taking down archives of information because it’s just too much damn trouble and expense. If the material isn’t online you’re safe from litigation. Net result, as fucking always, and as fucking intended, is LESS information available to EVERYONE including the blind people who were supposed to benefit.
= = = = =
**Update a week later: Well, I did it right, using HTML5 and newer CSS, and eliminating the heavy ‘Twitter Bootstrap’ crap. It works faster, doesn’t throw any errors or warnings, and looks the same. The switchover took one week, not one year. But the one week was possible because I spent the last few months in frantic experimentation and learning. After I understood the problems deeply, the correct path snapped into place.
Now I can put my name on the product.
Polistra's Mill 