As a blind person...wow, what a pile.

First of all, Berkeley didn't have to take down their courses. They elected to, then threw a tantrum about it. And yes, they could have spent money making their videos accessible, but let's not forget that they spent money to get those videos made in the first place, and it isn't as if the requirements that this content be accessible are a huge shocker to a public university that should be no stranger to accommodating disabled students. This is why those of us in the accessibility profession tell clients to build in accessibility right from day one, and this continuing trope of "OMG I didn't realize we needed to make our content accessible! Woe, woe are we!" passed through the realm of disingenuous and into that of pure bullshit a long, long time ago.

"There's clearly a huge difference between having a building code and requiring people to design websites in a certain way. It doesn't matter what your opinion of wheelchair ramps is; the two situations aren't comparable." OK, so as a blind person, I'm supposed to do what? Drive my car to the store when a website won't let me access that store's services? Pay more than someone with their own car to take a Lyft or Uber, assuming either exists in my location? Arrive at said store and hope whatever I want is in stock, take extra time to find an employee to help me shop (which isn't always available...) Where is all this time supposed to come from, and who are you to deprioritize it against that of the large corporation building those accommodations? And BTW, my girlfriend is a wheelchair user, and it does feel to me that the situations are often comparable. She routinely takes extra time accessing a building or its facilities, sometimes can't at all, and let's not even discuss inaccessible bathrooms and the literal blood and tears spent trying to use them. So take it from someone who has experienced both, they are very comparable.

And let's not forget the websites that don't have a physical location associated with them. Just last week I saw a few startups advertising their services here, thought I might use them, went to apply/sign up, then found their sites were completely inaccessible. Their huge, obscure crime? Using div elements without ARIA attributes instead of the HTML markup that would have achieved the same thing. So in the past few weeks I've been denied the ability to apply for jobs, purchase products, or even launch interesting side projects that might build my skills or improve my resume, all because web developers can't be bothered, and let's not forget that when I am hired by someone, I either can't use tools like Basecamp and Slack effectively, or they're such pains that it's easier to self-host open source tools llike Rocket.chat and Wekan, both of which I've submitted accessibility patches to. And people wonder why I don't bother looking for work anymore.

"I am absolutely 100% against the government doing the equivalent of zoning law for privately owned websites." Then on behalf of disabled folks everywhere, stay the hell away from building websites. I for one am sick and tired of fighting with people like you whose anti-regulation stance happily throws me under the bus, and I haven't even scratched the surface regarding the ways that an inaccessible web has and continues to hinder me.

If I seem furious, well, here's a challenge. Fire up Orca, NVDA or VoiceOver, all free screen readers, and try to use api.ai with your eyes closed. Fail, then imagine you spent the last few hours reading up about how you might build a Google Assistant bot to provide real-time transit information, and that you now need to find an api.ai alternative that is accessible, assuming such a thing exists (wit.ai is also inaccessible, my accessibility issues apparently made the support staff's day to read about, but they're probably not resolved and probably never will be.) Multiply that by, say, 10 for a handful of other projects I named. I could call out more recent startups, but I'd probably start stepping on the toes of some folks reading this, and if you aren't building in accessibility from day one or paying me to advise you on fixing it, then I'd basically be volunteering for a full-time job's worth of work pointing out the ways in which a given complex service isn't accessible.