Accessibility is mandatory, even on the internet.(?)
It's being litigated right now, heading to the SCOTUS:
https://www.cnet.com/news/why-the-fa...izza-lawsuit/#
Quote:
Many websites still aren't designed and coded so that people with disabilities, ranging from visual to auditory to cognitive, can use them. Americans with disabilities are nearly three times as likely to never go online. They're also around 20% less likely to have home broadband and own a computer, smartphone or tablet, according to Pew Research Center.
The issue is coming to a head thanks to a potential Supreme Court case involving a blind customer and an unlikely defendant: Domino's Pizza.
Guillermo Robles sued the restaurant in 2016 after he wasn't able to order a custom pizza from its website and app, even while using screen-reading technology. The appeals court in the Ninth Circuit sided with Robles, ruling the ADA does in fact apply to websites and apps of businesses with physical locations. Now, the company is asking the Supreme Court to review the case. It'll decide whether to do so in the fall.
"The internet, without reservation, is the world's largest infrastructure," said former Rep. Tony Coelho of California, who authored the ADA. "That, in effect, means that [Domino's is] covered by the ADA. The courts have ruled that."
|
Quote:
One reason many businesses lag behind when it comes to accessibility is a lack of enforcement, Coelho said. In 2010, the Justice Department said it was going to put out web accessibility regulations, but it ultimately ditched that plan in 2017. Courts have ruled the ADA applies online, but that hasn't been enough to convince businesses across the board to implement accessibility initiatives.
People are getting fed up. Last year, the number of website accessibility lawsuits nearly tripled compared with 2017, according to an accessibility blog by law firm Seyfarth Shaw. One of the biggest challenges to making sites accessible is that unlike physical spaces, the digital world is constantly changing. That can make keeping up with regulations difficult, said Minh Vu, an attorney at Seyfarth Shaw.
|
More at the source, which is part of a series:
https://www.cnet.com/tech-enabled/
The heart of this dispute is the "reasonable accomodation" clause. In this case, whether requiring the disabled to use the phone instead of the website (buy a different product, effectively) is a reasonable answer to ADA requirements. In this particular case, domino's has web only deals they will *not* honor by phone. This is not uncommon.
The appeal has a variety of possible outcomes:
- SCOTUS could refuse the case and let the Appeals court ruling stand
- SCOTUS could overturn the ruling totally (possible, since the 9th Circuit is the most overturned court) and say ADA doesn't appeal online since the web didn't exist when tbe law was passed.
- SCOTUS could overturn the law saying ADA doesn't apply online but that not honoring online deals by phone is discriminatory and that all channels must honor the same deals.(Which would affect everybody with multiple storefronts, online, phone, fax, and B&M.)
The last is least likely, the first most likely.
We'll see soon enough.
Either way, lots of lawsuits are incoming...