I think we can all understand and agree with wanting to help disabled people as well as possible, but there's no clear binding standard for what constitutes an accessible website. Two different experts can look at the same site and give 2 different opinions about what's accessible about the experience or not or how to best improve it.
Additionally, technology changes all of the time: new screen readers and new web APIs come out and and more. Best practices don't necessarily get perfected on day 1. Do you expect every website to get continuously rewritten just to keep up with the latest opinions on what's best? This is complex enough for large tech companies who can write a blank check for a large team of full-time developers who can work full time on nothing but accessibility, let alone a little corner cupcake store who managed to save up enough to build a custom cupcake website or something. Do we seriously expect every small non-technical business eking out a living with a small store to be experts on every facet of accessibility?
If we're going to cover websites under the ADA, I think there should a lot more leeway for "reasonable accommodations" that can be made. If a small business can't make an accessible order form for some reason, they should be able to take orders over email or the phone or something before getting sued for this.
Additionally, technology changes all of the time: new screen readers and new web APIs come out and and more. Best practices don't necessarily get perfected on day 1. Do you expect every website to get continuously rewritten just to keep up with the latest opinions on what's best? This is complex enough for large tech companies who can write a blank check for a large team of full-time developers who can work full time on nothing but accessibility, let alone a little corner cupcake store who managed to save up enough to build a custom cupcake website or something. Do we seriously expect every small non-technical business eking out a living with a small store to be experts on every facet of accessibility?
If we're going to cover websites under the ADA, I think there should a lot more leeway for "reasonable accommodations" that can be made. If a small business can't make an accessible order form for some reason, they should be able to take orders over email or the phone or something before getting sued for this.