Tavares, FL March 11, 2019
Federal and Florida regulations on compliance with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) are causing excess costs and reduced public transparency over local government meeting videos, agendas, budgets and even annual financial reports (CAFR's).
Essentially, some scummy lawyers found that ADA requirements can be interpreted to require that any local government has to provide online information in a format that can be read by ADA software tools used by the disabled, such as vision limited or hearing limited. Apparently, the tools use screen "scanning" to find text or picture captions that can then be converted to audio so the disabled can "read" or "hear" the online information.
We wrote an earlier story about this in January 2019 HERE, after the Orlando Sentinel published a story about it. It contains more about the scummy lawsuits, so I did not repeat it here.
The Jan. 6, 2019 Orlando Sentinel story is here.
And very few local governments have the funds to revamp their websites and file systems to comply with the lawsuit demands.
Now, a city like Orlando could afford to get the software and modify all their files so they can be read by the ADA tools, but not small cities.
Thus public information is disappearing from local government websites until they can comply. Apparently, ADA has no waivers for SMALL cities, and expects them to spend as much as large cities to become ADA compliant.
Here in Lake County, FL for instance:
- The city of Lady Lake had to revamp their entire website.
- The City of Mt. Dora had to stop providing Facebook Live streams of City Council meetings because Facebook does not provide computer generated text captions of what is said in the meetings. (Note: YouTube DOES provide such captions so that using their Live video capabilities is an alternative).
- One local government representative said it is so bad, they have to go back and add text captions for every picture that can be read by the ADA tools. They can't SKIP captions, because otherwise, the ADA tool user would not know what the picture or graph was about.
- The Lake County Government stopped providing ANY agendas or staff packets for Planning & Zoning meetings because the meeting management software (I assume) they use is not ADA compliant. I am waiting for more details on this.
- The City of Tavares is involved in a "costly" upgrade to their website, but sections are blank, with a notice that the info cannot be posted until
- The Lake County Water Authority also stopped publishing some info due to ADA and not having a budget to fix it.
This needs to be fixed. Both Florida legislators and US Congress representatives need to reduce compliance requirements for smaller agencies like those in Lake County, or transparency will disappear.
One local city staffer said that Florida has more laws on transparency, so local agencies MUST put documents like the annual budget online.
One finance director says they now have to use new software to prepare budgets and CAFR reports, and may have to go back to convert older online copies. My guess is that some cities will just remove older copies and citizens will not be able to read them.
Conclusions:
- "Bureaucracy and lawyers run wild" could be my take on this. There has to be a cost benefit to this, and so far no one seems to address that. At what point do we keep adding regulations that in this case, run up government costs for 3% of the population, which results in NO documentation for 100% of them to use.
- Florida legislators and Florida Congressman need to act swiftly to establish some type of cost-benefit analysis for the issue of government websites being ADA compliant. Perhaps specify that agencies with less than $100-million budgets are given waivers.
- Something needs to be done about the scummy lawyers who are suing everyone to get cash settlements.
References:
The US Dept. of Labor and the US Dept of Justice (the DEEP STATE) is responsible for compliance and investigations related to ADA compliance. Here is an overview from one of their press releases on their website at https://www.ada.gov/ :
"Title II of the ADA bars discrimination against persons with disabilities by public entities, 42 U.S.C. § 12132, and establishes that “no qualified individual with a disability shall, because a public entity’s facilities are inaccessible to or unusable by individuals with disabilities, be excluded from participation in, or be denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by a public entity.” 28 C.F.R. § 35.149.
On their very first page, you can see Compliance Settlement agreements when someone complains about a city or organization not complying with ADA requirements. For instance, one city was investigated because they had an older building that wasn't compliant, probably lacking a wheelchair ramp, etc.
Here is a checklist for "agency website accessibility compliance": https://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5chklist.htm
HERE is a really bureaucratic, official ADA website compliance checklist. Read the quagmire of requirements to be ADA accessible. There is no mention of cost benefit analysis, such as predicting the number of affected users and how much it costs per user to implement ADA.
The CDC.gov website says about 3% of the population is legally blind or visually impaired.
"ADA Compliance Lawsuits" by scummy lawyers for minor issues to get cash settlements is a big problem, and Congress needs to solve it according to this website: https://alabamaretail.org/news/congress-can-stop-ada-lawsuit-abuse/
Research shows about 1.5% of the population is functionally deaf.
There is a Southeast ADA Compliance center in Atlanta, GA at http://www.adasoutheast.org/aboutus.php - it is unclear where their funding comes from, or if they are a front for getting leads for attorneys, but I called them and will add an update when they call back.
The Florida branch for them is below, and I left a message asking for information Mar. 11, 2019:
Florida (FL) State Affiliate
Boley Centers, Inc.
445 31st Street North
St. Petersburg,FL 33713
727-821-4819 (v/tty)
Fax: 727-822-6240
http://www.boleycenters.org
Contact: Jack Humburg, Florida Network Administrator
727-821-4819 ext. 5717 (v/tty)
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