Fuck Subscriptions

so you're cool with people with disabilities having to do more labor than you to get the same thing? go fuck yourself

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?!

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.

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.