Website issues

[maple flats]

It has been brought to my attention, thru the NYS maple producers association that there have been lawsuits against farm websites (class action suits) if a site is not ADA compliant. (Our friends north of the border may not have this issue).
It seems some courts have ruled against wineries, cideries and farm scale breweries and other similar farm websites because the site can not be fully used by the vision impaired. I have not heard about this YET for maple, but it could well come.
My son is a full time I.T. guy, working full time for Morrisville Auxiliary Corp. (works at Morrisville college). He has been working on this for some websites they have (and on my website) trying to figure this out. He has been studying this, unfortunately there are no guidelines, literature nor apps on accomplishing it. He has worked on my site for several hours towards being ADA compliant and has concentrated on it for over 2 months at work on their sites. He thinks in all of that time, I may finally be about 20% compliant.
He told me last night that if I was to hire a web developer who worked on this full time, it would likely come at a price of about $100/ hour and would likely take a few weeks to finish. I asked if he thought I should take my site down until it can be made fully ADA compliant and he thought not.
At this point he is trying to get any pictures to work ADA compliant. It seems there are programs that can help a visually impaired person understand what a picture is, but it has major issues describing colors that do not have lots of contrast from other colors in the picture. That is just one of the many issues.
Law firms, once the first class action suit was successful are now following the money to more such suits.

[johnallin]

That's utterly insane and a perfect example of frivolous...

Any court that would make such a ruling should have their head examined, and voted off the bench in the next election.

There are far more important issues and injustices to be dealt with!

[sugarman3]

I think we should get rid of every laywer and all the free loaders looking to make money by sueing somebody,did have my web person ck mine and i was good to go

[buckeye gold]

My son-in-law is a senior web developer and has contracts with major world wide corporations. I will ask him about this. He helped me set up a web page for a non profit and never mentioned it. I may post a question to support for my web hosting service and see what they say.

[maple flats]

This is a link I got today from the New York State association: https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/.
Maybe that can help. I sent it to my son too. but he is at work now. Maybe it will help him, it's over my pay scale (and education level).

[mudr]

I forwarded this thread to a friend of mine who does web development and hosting as part of his business. He has NEVER heard of this requirement or anyone ever getting sued. I will leave it at that, this is outside my wheelhouse.

[wheelguy54]

About this-
We have a winery and have been told buy the Wine and Grape Foundation that this is infact true. Some of the bigger wineries have been hit with the suit.
It' the NYWGF and Farm Bureau that it only applies to the shopping cart on the web sit if you have one.
If all you have is a display site with nothing but information you will not be bothered.
But- if infact you do commerce on your site then you are exposed to the suit.
Hope this helps

[maple flats]

Regardless of the issue of too many lawyers, such a suit was filed and won with BIG $ payouts. We are not here to debate the lawyers or judges, just the warning that you want to be ADA compliant. For those who don't know ADA is Americans With Disabilities Act. My take is that the law was written too broad, the lawyers are cashing in on it and the judges are just passing judgement based on the laws.

[wheelguy54]

To put a period on this subject-
We make maple products to sell in our tasting room. With that being said we don't offer it online through our website shopping cart.
We only offer our wine products on our website so that is the only exposure we had. Farm Bureau is working on this problem as it is bigger than just Ag products.
Some have gone to using the display and pricing on the web and then giving a phone # with hours to call and taking the order in person. We found that more people like talking to someone to place an order and answer questions than we ever thought![sometimes the smartphone just ain't that smart!]
If you are a member of Farm Bureau[ in any state] talk to your county president and express your thoughts on this.
Hope this helps-Rick