Court rules ADA access applies to digital storefronts
There’s another court ruling that reminds us once again that if you own a website, you need to make sure that it’s fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) – or risk being sued! The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month gave the go-ahead to a blind man to sue Domino’s Pizza, because he couldn’t order a customized pizza on its website or through its mobile app.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled earlier that the ADA’s “physical locations” accessibility requirement applies to Domino’s website despite the absence of any specific statutory guidelines for business to follow. Domino’s appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which let the Ninth Court of Appeals ruling stand, clearing the way for the lawsuit to proceed. So now a business’s digital storefront is just as susceptible to ADA litigation as its physical storefront is.
The case centers on Guillermo Robles, a blind man who is proficient in using JAWS, or “Job Access With Speech”, screen-reading software for Windows-based computers. To accommodate this screen-reading software, graphics and embedded hyperlinks on websites typically include alternative text (known as “alt text”) — a description of the image that appears when a cursor floats over it or screen-reading software detects it.
Given the proliferation of lawsuits, many businesses include alt text on their sites and follow other standards to ensure their websites and apps are accessible. However, the Domino’s website did not have alt-text at the time Robles tried to use it. At the same time, Robles also connects to the internet via his iPhone with the help of Apple’s Voice Over screen reading program. However, the unlabeled buttons on the Domino’s app did not conform to Apple’s iOS accessibility guidelines. Robles says he tried several times to order customized pizzas using Domino’s digital tools but was repeatedly stymied by their lack of accessibility features.
“With the proliferation of e-commerce, this truly is a new frontier in terms of the application of the ADA to the ability to navigate websites” said Sheila Fix, Partner at the Wood Smith Henning & Berman law firm’s Glendale, California office. She said she’s seen a dramatic rise in these actions which have taken businesses designing and implementing websites and mobile applications by surprise.
Domino’s had ample support for its position at the Supreme Court level, with support of the retail and restaurant industries which in their own court filings “stress the impossibility of guessing what accessibility means in the online environment,” said Fix.
LMA Newsletter of 10-21-19
