Forum - View topicNEWS: Funimation Sued in Class-Action Lawsuit for Allegations of Violating Americans with Disabiliti
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2344 |
|
|||||
These seem like surprisingly minimal demands of Funimation. I guess without ensuring alt text / title attributes / any other distinguishing metadata are in fact distinct and meaningful, a website would quickly become pretty difficult to use for a blind individual. Probably "NonVisual Desktop Access" and similar software relies on this kind of nicely pre-structured-for-parsing metadata to determine what content to present to its users? I wonder if there were any additional concrete requirements listed, or what the usual list of such requirements might look like in an example? I've run into ADA requirements in the past, and always wondered what exactly they tend to consist of for most websites. In any event, this seems more than reasonable to expect of even a tiny mom-and-pop shop like Funi. Probably won't make their player/show-browsing site features any more usable, though. May take a minor ragnarok to fix the rest of its problems, heh. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
meruru
Posts: 472 |
|
|||||
|
I've worked in web development, so I can speak with some experience to this issue. It's super common that web developers and the companies they work for don't bother even thinking about how to make their websites compliant and completely skip it or do a really lazy job of it, when a good developer should consider accessibility in their design from the start. Many aren't even aware it's a legal requirement. Even though the word "lawsuit" sounds dramatic, I have the impression that these types of lawsuits are super common due this culture among developers of just being lazy. There are also people who seem to look out for websites and sue over and over. I wouldn't be surprised if it's because they get really sick of this continuing to happen over and over and over even though it's a legal requirement, like companies and web developers just never learn, and so they feel like they have a bone to pick because that kind of laziness just makes everything harder for them, and they experience it constantly. Also, if they're severely disabled, they could probably really use the money anyways.
|
||||||
|
||||||
Lanisatu
 Posts: 65 Location: Vaughan, Ontario, Canada |
|
|||||
|
[quote="NeverConvex"]
They specifically mentioned WCAG. Which, if you want to read it, is here: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/ It's a standard list of accessibility guidelines, typically mentioned in legislation related to enforcing accessibility on websites. Depending on the jurisdiction and type of business, different levels may be mandated. I know it looks long, but the vast majority of the requirements are actually good coding practice. The rest are good not only for accessibility for various disabilities but can improve usability for a wide range of site visitors. As a bonus, some of them also improve SEO. When I'm designing and coding websites, I use tools like a colour blindness simulator and tota11y to do a basic check of accessibility. There's no perfect checker yet, unfortunately. Mostly the checkers I've tried throw false warnings on contrast if text is on top of an image or you have layered elements with different background properties. I think one of the things people seem to be glossing over with this case is that she's literally asking for the bare minimum so she can actually use the website. From what I've heard elsewhere, it sounds like there's inconsistent (if any) enforcement of the ADA in the US for this type of issue without doing it this way -- which seems broken. In my province we have a phone number where we can report AODA violations and then the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario/ provincial government can follow up with fines and notices to comply. If there's still no compliance, it's apparently possible to sue. Threatening to report a business is sometimes all it takes to get them to comply and adjust their policies though, so it varies. |
||||||
|
||||||
KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1878 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
|
|||||
|
In my view, the whole thing comes off as a classic case of honest ignorance. Even if FUNimation's staff might had been aware of the blind watching anime, they didn't think it was relevant enough to develop a website that needed to be accomodating to the blind as they presumed that the vast majority of its consumers are visually able and also presumed that blind people wouldn't bother with the website at all, legal binding or not.
The need for a lawsuit and a trial by jury comes off as too excessive, though. If anything, the matter will be greenlit to the point that the FUNimation web development staff will simply update the website with additional ADA compliance labels and features, thus settling the matter out of court. |
||||||
|
||||||
Vanadise
 Posts: 505 |
|
|||||
I've worked on enough web sites and seen behind the scenes at enough business that I can absolutely guarantee that there isn't any honest ignorance here. Funimation is big enough that they've definitely gotten complaints about their site's inaccessibility and chose to ignore them. That's why lawsuits exist, and this is a good thing -- now they have to address the issue. There's also a 0% chance of this actually going to a trial, because their legal team will tell them that this is an open-and-shut case, and they'll get railed if they try to fight it. They'll pay the litigant an undisclosed sum, fix their web site, and now (almost) everybody will be happy. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Psionicdan
Posts: 2 |
|
|||||
|
I'm usually willing to give benefit of doubt to all parties, but as someone with disabilities who has studied disabilities, this is a significant problem. I see people either hoping Funimation improves its UI for their sake or complaining how a blind person has no business complaining about visual based media being inaccessible. I believe everyone has the right to enjoy media in whatever format that can best accommodate for their needs. I know people can't just bend backwards, but from the sounds of it, Funimation hasn't seemed to provide any accommodation for this whatsoever. Efforts can and should be made, because people like this are real and shouldn't be ignored. I'm not just talking about people with disabilities, I'm talking about people with disabilities who are dismissed out of hand, if that makes sense.
P.S: I don't know what Funimation's streaming service is like, because I'm cheap and only got Crunchyroll and Hulu right now. Been meaning to invest in Funimation subscription, but after this, I have even more reservations. Now how am I going to watch the MHA Dub? |
||||||
|
||||||
|
kevincalif
Posts: 3 |
|
|||||
I can only speak to my experience on Roku. Basic functions like stopping an episode and resuming later dont work because the video restarts at the beginning each time you restart. Attempting to fast forward using the arrow buttons rather than the >> button causes the subtitles and audio track to go out of sync. The newly added list is in a constant state of chaos with episodes more than 2 years old randomly appearing in the list of current episodes. There are options in their recently added and all episode lists to filter by language (dub/sub) but the options dont work and dubbed shows are shown with subtitled shows in one list. I filed trouble tickets with funimation about these issues and wound up getting banned from submitting any more tickets "We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (help) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group." |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Idgal
Posts: 169 |
|
|||||
Considering the shop only ships within the US and license for US only, it doesn't matter. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1233 Location: Minnesota, USA |
|
|||||
https://twitter.com/FUNimation/status/1279079734991863808 https://twitter.com/FUNimation/status/1176467339640000512 |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18252 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
|
|||||
As someone who uses Funimation's site and player on a nearly daily basis, and I can attest that the bolded statement has been common of late and rather irritating. I have not had the described problems with the player, and while it still has its quirks, it has actually been improved within the last year or so; until relatively recently, episodes were hard-subbed (i.e., you couldn't turn the subtitles off when watching subtitled), which was seriously annoying for taking screenshots. |
||||||
|
||||||
Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
|
|||||
|
Alright, get the website ADA compliant by having text to speech able to read whatever is there and then give the person a lifetime sub to Funimation streaming content and call it a day. No court needed.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
OtherSideofSky
|
|
|||||
There's no way that first part is true. The CS program I was in was almost entirely focused on back-end stuff, and the one web programming class I took still covered accessibility requirements. There's no excuse for a professional web designer to not know about some of the specific issues cited here. Likewise, there's no excuse for the operators of a large business, especially a primarily web-based business like Funimation, not to know that requirements exist and hire developers and designers capable of meeting them. For your second point, there's absolutely zero chance that no one has tried to alert them to this issue before now. No corporation fixes a longstanding issue like this one because someone asked them nicely. It simply does not happen. The whole point of filing a lawsuit like this is probably to force them to make the website compliant because they wouldn't commit resources to fixing the problem without the threat of legal expenses hanging over them. |
||||||
|
KabaKabaFruit
Posts: 1878 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
|
|||||
You're talking about a company that deals with anime, a medium of entertainment that commands appreciation for it in BOTH visual and audial form. You're talking about a company like Funimation needing to provide accessibility requirements for a website that deals with a medium that can only be fully enjoyed by those who don't have need for those requirements. To do so would be seen as unusual from a business standpoint on Funimation's end, legal requirements or not. Sure, it's NOT an excuse, but, at the same time, it IS! It's an unfortunate business paradox for a company like Funimation, especially considering the circumstances over how the company operates. Funimation wasn't about to waste company resources, labour and money to accomodate a demographic that realistically represents a tiny fraction of their total consumer base. I hate to admit it, but any of us would have made the exact business decision if we were in Gen Fukunaga's shoes.
Also, I'm not entirely siding with Funimation here. They've already made their bed with their reputation to their fans back in '06 with the whole Dragon Ball Z release fiasco. But in this particular case, they would have looked at these disability accomodations as outside trolling due to the general standing of how anime is consumed by the average viewer. I never even seen people with blindness admit to enjoying anime before until now. Now that I do, I can reiterate that it is honest ignorance. Last edited by KabaKabaFruit on Sat Feb 13, 2021 3:54 pm; edited 2 times in total |
||||||
|
||||||
|
blahmoomoo
Posts: 475 |
|
|||||
There was a bit of attention put on ADA lawsuits against websites in 2019 when Domino's lost one of them due to the Supreme Court declining to review the decision made by the federal court of appeals, in favor of the blind man who filed the suit. It looks like several thousand similar ADA lawsuits against websites are filed each year, and the Domino's one was notable for almost going all the way to the Supreme Court. But, considering all the other things happening in recent years, it was easy to miss this. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
TheTJ87
Posts: 3 |
|
|||||
|
I'm actually a totally blind anime fan. I've reached out to Funi about access issues with the Funimation Now app in past and gotten no response, so I'm certain this isn't the first they've heard about access issues. Unfortunately the ADA does not allow for any other enforcement methods aside from the judicial route. As has been said before these sort of cases usually settle out of court with a small sum to the party in question and a commitment to improve access with in a set time period. If companies would actually take this sort of thing seriously I doubt we'd need to resort to legal advocacy but out of sight out of mind seems to be the general aditude toward disabled persons. Someone braught up audio description and I'd certainly love to see that for sure.
|
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group