If it were a paid account yeah, it’d be extremely shitty. But seeing as it’s a free account, it’s their prerogative to try and get people to pay for the service. Besides, I don’t get this entitlement that spotify has to provide music for free. They’re a (admittedly greedy) middle-man that wants to get paid. If one wants free music and everything, well, time to self-host.
it’s their prerogative to try and get people to pay for the service.
Except that this attempt could easily be shown to largely land on folks with accessibility needs. That’s a big no-no under many laws.
An interesting comparison is pay-to-ride elevators. For most folks an elevator is a nice convenience they would not mind occasionally paying for.
But for some folks, the elevator is completely essential. This dynamic resulted in making pay-to-ride elevators illegal in most places, today.
You don’t need lyrics to listen to music however. If she’s deaf and can’t hear the music then I don’t know why she needs Spotify.
Much like many disabilities, deafness isn’t a hard binary between hearing Vs deaf, but a spectrum dependent on many factors. For example, someone may have hearing loss in a particular frequency range, which may affect their ability to hear lyrics. I would also expect that someone’s relationship to music may be impacted by whether they were born deaf or acquired deafness later in life.
The point that other are making about this as an accessibility problem is that a lot of disability or anti-discrimination has provisions for rules or policies that are, in and of themselves, neutral, but affect disabled people (or other groups protected under equality legislation) to a greater degree than people without that trait. In the UK, for example, it might be considered “indirect discrimination”.
You might not need lyrics to listen to music, but someone who is deaf or hard of hearing is likely going to experience and enjoy music differently to you, so it may well be necessary for them.
You don’t need lyrics to listen to music however.
I also don’t need an elevator to move between floors of a building that has stairs, while some people do.
Due to the uniquely fucked up way music licensing works, it’s likely they license the lyrics through a separate company than the music and probably don’t even directly license it themselves (Tidal for example uses Musicmatch’s lyric library and api). There’s a cost associated with this that is likely outside their control. It’s shitty, but it is plalusibly reasonable they implemented this as a cost savings measure.
That’s a good point. That might actually make the case for “undue burden”.
A court case about it could be a way for Spotify to pass the problem to their licensors, in theory.
But for some folks, the elevator is completely essential. This dynamic resulted in making pay-to-ride elevators illegal in most places, today.
So this is absolutely fucking hilarious and shows your surface level knowledge (or just googling something and having zero knowledge…) they are only illegal if they are the only means of transportation, every single one of the buildings with one these will also have regular elevators, so they meet the code.
All the law did was prevent single elevator buildings from being able to discriminate. If a non-abled body person has another conveyance method, they can charge whatever they want. This is how amusement rides are able to charge AND have non ada accessible rides. And incase you didn’t know, elevator codes do cover amusement rides in most jurisdictions as well…
hiding accessibility features behind a pay wall is disgusting, because only people with disabilities have to pay for it. *edit if you’re downvoting, just let me know so I can block all of the ableists running around this community. **edit 2 - c’mon guys, why are you afraid to name yourselves?
Just because a building has a glass elevator with a view doesn’t mean all the other elevators are making an ADA violation……….
Some places have better features, unless ADA mandates something, they’re just doing something better, fuck them eh…?
nobody’s talking about the bare minimum of federal law dude. this is a discussion about how humans are supposed to treat each other. if the way you walk around life is “well, it’s legal to be an asshole in this situation so I’ll do it” then there’s no point in having this conversation because do not have the time to make you a better person
also your example absolutely wild. the purpose of an elevator is to get you from here to there. the purpose of Spotify is to help you listen to music. people with hearing issues are required to pay extra or do extra work to get the same experience as a perfectly abled person.
so you’re cool with people with disabilities having to do more labor than you to get the same thing? go fuck yourself
But seeing as it’s a free account, it’s their prerogative
Oh, so not charging money magically exempts companies from meeting ADA accessibility requirements for their public accommodations?
Edit: what I’m taking issue with is the notion that being on the free tier of service changes anything. Maybe Spotifiy has an obligation or maybe it doesn’t, but either way, it’s the same regardless of how much or little the customer pays. Being a second-class customer does not make you a second-class citizen who doesn’t get equal protection under the law!
The fact possibility that they’re unable to provide lyrics gives radio stations a free pass on this, under ADA (and most similar laws).
Edit: Correction, per correction below - options for providing radio captions do exist.
Edit 2: For anyone reading along to learn - a radio station without captioning technology is unlikely to be required to add captioning under any accessibility law I’m aware of. But a station that provides captioning is unlikely to be able to charge extra for that captioning under current accessibility laws.
Businesses are typically accountable to provide equitable accommodations at no additional charge.
A comparison that may help: a storefront with no dedicated parking whatsoever is typically not required to provide the usual required percentage of reserved accessible parking. Or rather, their zero reserved spaces meets the required percentage automatically, at it’s whatever percentage of zero total spaces.
Some do. It’s pretty rare, but stations that are more talk-show or interview style shows might have transcripts on their site afterwards. (The Final Straw Radio, my beloved)
Music stations? Probably not. At least I’m not aware of any that do. But I also don’t like hearing the disk jockey chat between music so I don’t listen to that type of radio ever.
ADA accessibility requirements for their public accommodations
Source that providing lyrics to songs is a requirement?
I never said it was. I said that the requirement is the same whether it’s a free account or a paid one. It’s either always required or it’s never required, but it sure as Hell is not “their prerogative” based on how much they get paid.
Think about it for a second: what the parent commenter is suggesting is that it’s somehow okay for a company to use compliance with legal requirements as an upselling opportunity! You do see the problem with that line of thinking, right?!
Providing a substantially inferior outcome to someone with an ADA need absolutely violates ADA rules.
When stuff like this has gone to court it hasn’t been pretty for the offending organization.
There’s a bigger question about how much of what Spotify currently provides falls under ADA. Web services used to get a free pass. They largely don’t anymore.
Source: some of this stuff is my problem, professionally. And no, I’m not going to look up a primary source for anyone. That’s Spotify’s lawyers job.
