Prone to error if you are Prince, Prince Charles, Freddie Prinze Jr. or any member of royalty in a line of ascension.

copyright violation != theft

Ha ha! Stole it! Wait... what? You still have it? Crap.

Which of the greatest works of architecture would be illegal?

Those are interesting questions.

When my son was first born, diagnosed, operated upon, and signed up for every service imaginable, I questioned whether or not his life was worth the drain not only upon the finances of the state but also upon the lives of those who would support him.

For the longest time, I did not see his survival as a decision that made any sense. It seemed to me it would have been better to let him expire naturally via aspiration (he is unable to swallow) than to perpetuate his imposition upon society.

Part of this was due to my belief at the time that his inability to fully function physically was an indicator that he would be similarly cognitively dysfunctional.

Over the years, that has proven to not be the case. He has, in fact, proven to be extremely intelligent, but getting to that point required his survival and the intervention of several people.

Let me add at this point that intervention is a key word. When a family accepts support from government, all illusions of privacy disappear. We have had night nurses in our home for eight years now to provide care in order that my wife and I might remain productive, tax generating members of society. I do not, however, believe the people are getting a fair deal in this. Neither my wife nor I generate enough monthly income to offset my son's collateral expenses.

So how much government compulsion is acceptable?

For the most part, the government's compulsion in regards to my son is financial. The government compels each working citizen to hand over some amount of money and distributes it to a variety of programs, including medical coverage and education. I am unable to, on my own, provide an educational setting with peer interaction, payment for occupational, physical, and speech therapists, equipment acquisition and maintenance costs, and attendant nurses while at school.

What I can and do provide are the things most parents do: food; shelter; support; transport; clothing; activities/experiences; love; guidance.

But why government? Why does government provide so much for my son? And what would I do without those provisions?

First, private insurance knows what the bottom line is: profitability. As such, they cover what they feel is adequate given a diagnosis, but they often provide less than minimum. For example, private insurance will pay for durable equipment (like a suction machine), but does not pay for the supplies required for its use, supplies that need to be refreshed every month. Our state government covers that as a result. Private insurance will not pay for nurses, but without them, he is not able to attend school. Again, state government (the taxpayers) pick up the tab.

I'm not thrilled with the situation at all. But, I'm also glad the option is there.

Second, government has put into place requirements for individual educational support for kids with "special needs" (a warm way of saying disabilities). It is through this system that the need for educational therapeutic support is determined and assigned (physical, occupation, and speech therapists). In my son's case, that support has resulted in his ability to communicate his own thoughts to us, so they are invaluable to me, but probably of little value to the majority of taxpayers.

In the things that I can provide, the government compulsion of facilities access has been key. Mandates for ramps, lifts, elevators, even bathroom stalls, have allowed my son to explore new places and new ideas, furthering his intellectual development (again, hard to quantify the dollar value for the state).

However, beyond access, I've never made a demand of an establishment or considered suing anyone. This is not true for all families with a disabled child. I know many who see litigation as a fast track to wealth.

Is there a limit to the level of compulsion? Aren't there in all things? The ADA is about giving people with disabilities the chance to try, but it needn't go to ridiculous extremes (and here I realize that "ridiculous" is purely a subjective measure). Should a person with a severe intellectual disability be able to wield the force of law to put them on a team of nuclear physicists? No. But should that same person be summarily excluded from a position that he/she could adequately fulfill based solely upon the fact they are disabled? The logical side of me says, "Sure, why not? It's up to the employer." The humanistic side of me says, "But then they might never find a sense of accomplishment or pride."

Though it isn't the role of government to make anyone proud.

Moral basis. That's a tough one.

I've inadvertently traded on the collective morality of others with my son since his birth. Their sense of right and wrong, compassion and redemption have built a system in which it is precious to save every child we can. The government pays families to take in disabled children in order to avoid the extra cost of having them be wards of the state. My own state pays towards private health insurance for children on medical assistance so that parents with private, employer provided insurance keep their kids on their policy. And there's no way to refuse the money aside from not cashing the check (I've tried).

I suppose we would need to look at the aggregate contributions of the ADA emboldened disabled citizenry to know whether or not government mandated sympathy has been effective. But perhaps it really is just a facet of the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. The inability to access what would otherwise be a majority of establishments could be considered an impediment to the pursuit of all three. Is the liberty of the restaurant owner to not install a ramp greater than the liberty of the patron to access the service? Is my son's happiness worth the unhappiness of taxpayers who might not find value in the expense of his continued existence?

To me it is. I get to spend time with him each day, encouraging him to learn and grow without worrying if he'll make it to the next day. In that respect, perhaps your "I got mine" is more apt than I first thought.

I got my kid. And we can go anywhere I can take him. And millions of other people have the same opportunities. To do so, we draw from the collective in the form of government support. For what? For human life. For the ability to not be fully excluded just because of a disability.

Where does it end? It ends with opportunity. Government should support our opportunity to succeed, to participate. It should not guarantee what happens once the opportunity presents itself.

There is no guarantee that my son will have a fulfilling life, but there's no need to stop him at the curb before he gets a chance to find out.

Wow, that was an awful translation.

I don't like my subsidy at all, really. I would ideally like to be entirely self-sufficient and provide everything my child needs to survive and thrive. The truth of the matter is that such is not possible.

Whenever I can, I find ways to handle his needs outside the system in order to reduce our dependence (for example, buying a $500 netbook out of pocket instead of having medical assistance buy the $8000 "medically approved" assistive communication device).

But I can't afford to install a wheelchair lift in a public school, so I'm glad the ADA makes that happen. I can't afford or compel a concert hall to provide wheelchair accessible seating, so I'm glad the ADA does that so my kid can see a performance. I can't make Slashdot comments be accessible, but maybe, one day, the ADA will help do that so my son can come in here and call you a dipshit himself.

And yet, those conversations can yield some important findings. I oversaw Section 508 compliance in the redesign of my company's website and showed them that on several pages they were using the logos of our various products alone in a form of navigation. They were flags with different combinations of colors, but if you filtered the flags for red, two of them were identical with no other indicator as to which represented what product.

Simple solution: Include the product names in ALT or plain text below the images.

You can still use red wherever you want. The guidelines simply state that you shouldn't rely ONLY on color to communicate important information. That's why forms will often show notices in red and include the * to denote required data.

As a veteran web designer, you should spend some more time actually reading both 508 and WAI and seeing that the requirements aren't that outrageous, especially given the option to present information in a separate but accessible form.

And there have been ongoing efforts to improve the accessibility of AJAX, so there's no need to give that up, either. See WCAG 2.0 for more info.

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/future.shtml

Excellent idea!

First, we have to go to the real estate office to buy some land. Hope there's a ramp to get in there.

Second, we have to go visit an architect to draw up the plans. Hope there's a ramp to get in there.

Third, we have visit with suppliers, distributors, decorators, and the like to kit out our space. Hope they all have ramps.

Fourth, we have to take all our money and run it to the bank. Geez, we sure hope there's a ramp for that. We don't want to put $20K in the ATM or through the drive-thru window.

If recourse to do so is granted by law (in this case, the ADA), isn't that technically a right to do so?

After linking to Google, did you bother actually looking at all the pages in the results? Many of them have nothing to do with business being forced out of business due to ADA requirements.

Except that both 508 and WAI consider a transcript of the audio to be an acceptable means of accessing the content for the deaf. And that same transcript can be screen read by the blind.

Sharp looking sites with complex layouts can be achieved by moving elements around in CSS while maintaining a logical (readable) source content order. As long as a screen reader can get to it, so can just about anyone else.

Flash and HTML5, we'll see. But there are specific guidelines for building accessible tables, so I'm not sure why you think they'd go away. Many tools these days build accessible tables automatically.

So far, I'm not seeing a very hefty price paid by the non-handicapped.

Not these days, but it would make sense to require that they provide access to an electronic copy that could then be run through whatever reader hardware/software a person might require to access that content.

The proposal is relating to the websites of public accommodations. There is mentioned quite far in about debate regarding whether or not a business that has an online only presence can reasonably be considered a public accommodations.

It would seem that hasn't yet been decided. Better get your comments in now!

If you read the linked documents, you'll see that they bring up the point of alternative means of access to goods/services/info. In your restaurant scenario, that means that fulfilling the accessibility obligation can include having somebody read the menu to you, provide you a braille menu, bring a sampler tray and let you nod at what you want.

Section 508 standards have long had a provision for alternative presentations of information. An accessible website can be achieved by presenting otherwise media rich content in a plain text page as an alternative. There's no reason to think that would change.

Look at the history of the implementation of the ADA to see how this will likely work. We didn't rip up every sidewalk in the nation to add curb cuts. No, the way these projects were handled was that accessibility improvements were tied to new construction or to significant reconstruction of a road, building, et cetera.

If handled the same way, web sites will need to start rolling in ADA improvements with new releases of the site or even individual pages (depending on architecture). If you design a site with ADA/508 in mind, the cost isn't all that great.

First, it's DMCA. Second, the DoJ doesn't often initiate actions against ADA offenders. That's usually left to individual plaintiffs. For example, http://jimthatcher.com/law-target.htm