ADA doesn’t extend to the Internet

In a ruling released today, the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld (PDF) the decision of a lower court which established that web sites do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The court dismissed the appeal on largely procedural grounds, finding that the plaintiffs changed tack on their appeal to the Circuit Court:

by Eric Bangeman

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040927-4238.html

(Thanks to Alexandra Volkerts of the Montana Advocacy Program http://mtadv.org/ for passing this along- Russ)

However, we are unable to reach the merits of the plaintiffs’ claim because, simply put, they have presented this Court with a case that is wholly different from the one they brought to the district court. As we see it, the plaintiffs have abandoned the claim and argument they made before the district court, and in its place raised an entirely new theory on appeal — one never presented to or considered by the trial court.

The suit was originally filed by Access Now, an advocacy group for the disabled, and a blind man named Robert Gumson over the web site of Southwest Airlines. They claimed that Southwest’s website violated the ADA because it was not easily accessible to the blind. Mr. Gumson relies on a screen reader and voice synthesizer to navigate the Internet, but the layout of Southwest’s site was such that purchasing tickets was nearly impossible. The plaintiffs were looking for an order requiring Southwest to redesign their site to make it easier for the blind to navigate. Since the suit was originally filed, Southwest has redesigned the site to be more easily navigable for the blind.

Access Now vs. Southwest is the first lawsuit to directly address whether the ADA should apply to the Internet, although the Seventh Circuit suggested in 1999 that the ADA could cover web sites that have no physical counterpart. As written, the ADA lists 12 specific "places of public accommodation" that must provide access to the disabled, and advocacy groups have recently lobbied Congress to expand the act to cover the Internet. Truth be told, making a site accessible to the blind is relatively straightforward, and one would hope that the benefits to businesses of making their sites more widely accessible would be self-evident enough to motivate them to do so.