RTOHQ: The Magazine, Summer 2018

In addition to outfitting your store and parking lot to be ADA compliant you also need to get your website updated because it too needs to be accessible to people with disabilities Summer 2018 47 Y ou have already reconfigured your bathrooms in the store You have widened your front door You have adjusted the height of your counters You or your landlord have installed handicapped parking spaces and signs near the front door You may have had to cut ramps into the sidewalk All in the name of the Americans with Disabilities Act a federal law enacted in 1990 that was intended to make life easier for people with certain kinds of disabilities including visual auditory physical speech cognition language learning and neurological problems You havent really minded You want to be supportive of those with disabilities and you are It has cost a little money but overall it has been well worth it Now know that there is more yet to be done In addition to outfitting your store and parking lot to be ADA compliant you also need to get your website updated because it too needs to be accessible to people with disabilities The ADA was enacted before the internet was in widespread use in the United States Its provisions to address discrimination against citizens with disabilities was aimed in particular at places of public accommodation At the time that meant brick and mortar stores and other places where people physically went e g restaurants malls and the like The law did not concern itself with the Internet because that was not where people went and so today there is considerable confusion over the interplay between the ADA and commercial websites In 2010 the Department of Justice DOJ announced its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in which the DOJ announced its intent to promulgate regulations interpreting the ADA to ensure that it would also apply to commercial websites However in late December 2017 the DOJ announced that it was withdrawing its proposed rule and noted that it intended to continue to monitor the issue of website accessibility Then in February of this year Congress enacted the ADA Education and Reform Act that brought more balance into the Act intending to cut down on lawsuits brought against businesses for alleged violations There had arisen an entire subset of the plaintiffs bar that went around with a test subject in a wheel chair from business to business to check for compliance with the ADA and to threaten litigation for alleged violations It was not unusual for these lawyers to have several hundred demand letters and lawsuits outstanding at any one time Even without the DOJ regulations in place the plaintiffs bar continues to be active pursuing ADA claims against businesses and has lately been adding claims involving business websites In 2017 by one estimate there were over 800 lawsuits filed alleging that business websites violated some aspect of the ADA not a few of which suits were class actions The Winn Dixie grocery store chain was the defendant in one of the more publicized of those suits and had to cough up 250000 to cure the flaws in its website which the court ruled was not an undue burden for the company According to 2017 Website Accessibility Lawsuit Recap A Tough Year for Businesses published by Seyfarth ADA Title III News Insights Blog other companies that have been sued over website accessibility issues lately include Sears Hobby Lobby Netflix H R Block and EBay to name some of the larger ones So you are not one of the big guys and considering the odds several hundred lawsuits compared with millions of commercial websites maybe you decide to do nothing However you do not want to pluck the black bean and for relatively little money you can first test your website to see how out of whack with the ADA it is and then with a few software tweaks and updates here and there you can sleep the sleep of