Posted by Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t on 10/04/07 15:57

> From: Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net>
> Poverty is not a disability covered by disability law.

This is an interesting point. IMO it's reasonable to require that
somebody wishing to purchase something have the money to pay for
it, and that somebody wishing to purchase some very expensive item
have a lot of money to pay for it. If people are unemployed because
of disability, and because of their unemployment they don't have
money to buy stuff, then it's reasonable that they be disallowed
from buying it, and it isn't the fault of the seller of goods that
the disabled person doesn't have enough money to buy stuff.

But what about employment itself? It shouldn't be necessary to have
lots of money before-the-fact to start a new job to earn money. If
an employer requires somebody to have lots of money already, as
qualification for a new job, then the employer *would* be partly
responsible for the person continuing not to have enough money, and
I think that would be wrong, and the courts might interpret that is
deliberate barring of already-poor disabled people from ever
escaping their poverty.

Making a shopping Web site inaccessible to poverty-level people
might be reasonable, because after all <hyperbole>if they can't
afford a brand new computer they probably also can't afford the
toothbrush they were trying to buy online</hyperbole>. But making
an employment Web site inaccessible to low-income people who can't
afford a brand-new computer would seem to me to fall within this
type of case. Why should ownership of a brand-new computer be a
requirement of applying for a job online? For work-at-home
contractors, of course the contractor is expected to provide his
own computer, but for regular employment if the new computer is
needed for the job then the employer is supposed to provide it,
right? What do the rest of you think?

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