As announced in the Federal Register, this is actually a proposed rule which is open for public comments.

Here is the DOJ page about the hearings and the official notice in the Federal Register.

We already talked about this. The Chicago session mentioned in the summary already happened. I tried to tell you about it.

The Librarian of Congress has announced the classes of works subject to the exemption from the prohibition against circumvention

I was going to mention this, so thanks for beating me to it!

It is offensive for you to characterize my civil rights as "political propaganda". I do not expect to change your mind, but please think about the fact that the same arguments were made about slavery and suffrage.

Sorry, but the Americans with Disabilities Act is clearly civil rights legislation. I agree that it is not as fundamental as slavery or voting, but it is a difference of scale, not kind. People's right to discriminate is limited, especially if they are business owners. Frankly, your example of being offended is exactly why this kind of legislation is needed.

So discriminating against a minority is okay if the minority is small enough? I guess I am less libertarian than you, but I think this is exactly the sort of thing I want and expect from government. Your freedom of expression ends at my civil rights. I agree that individuals have the free speech right to post uncaptioned videos and images with alt tags. I respectfully disagree that first-world business owners should have this same freedom.

That's two different groups, with vastly different demographics. Yes, there are a minor few who try to exploit ADA for ill gain. It is legitimate to be upset by such abuse. Then you have the vast majority of people who are blind that routinely have trouble navigating the web, even though they have the right software and the best practices techniques for accessible web development are pretty straightforward and reasonable. It is this second large group that are finally getting some attention, after this question was raised and answered (to the affirmative) almost fifteen years ago.

That must have been from local jurisdiction requirements. The Federal ADA requirements are actually pretty flexible when it comes to small businesses. Not that makes your acquaintances feel any better.

I think that's it. Companies might want to do the right thing, but unless everyone has to do it, the short term cost savings view wins the day.

That's fine if it is truly by choice. But would you like to go back to a system where, for example, black could only work for blacks?

Go ahead and try to break Amazon's DRM to help blind people -- the government has your back (see point (6)).

The cost of doing business, once you are not very small, is that no one gets to discriminate. What would be truly unfair is to not have that expectation for all medium/large companies.