Public Accommodation of ADA – AccessiBe Explains How It Defines Website Accessibility
The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed by the Federal Assembly on July 26, 1990. This is a broader civil rights law against discrimination toward people with disabilities. The law mandates effective modes of information sharing to protect individuals with disabilities. When we fast forward the implications of this law in 2022, there is a significant add-on to this law to define web accessibility for people with disabilities.
As we know, it is impossible to imagine life without the internet or smartphones at our fingertips. During the time of the passing of the ADA back in 1990, the internet was not available publicly. The ague language in ADA had been interpreted and misinterpreted many times while considering the lawsuits regarding it over all these years. However, it is specific that the internet and websites come under the Title III public accommodation clause of ADA, which defines the requirements of the rapidly changing technologies to be compliant with the accessibility needs.
An overview of ADA Title III by AccessiBe
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act covers all the commercial facilities, public accommodations, and private entities for public usage. It specifies that all public accommodation places, including hotels, restaurants, shopping centers, theaters, doctors’ offices, libraries, museums, kids’ play areas, etc., should meet the accessibility needs. AccessiBe points out that, under the regulations of ADA, all public accommodation entities need to ensure auxiliary aids and essential services to cater to the needs of people with disabilities.
Title III in web accessibility
Over the last few decades, and increasingly over the last couple of years, many court rulings have supported web and internet accessibility specifications. Let us explore a couple of case studies below.
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2001 law suite of Martin vs. MARTA: In this case, there was a court ruling in favor of listing bus schedules online to be compliant with the accessibility regulations.
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2006 law suite of NFB vs. Target: The provider was ruled to make their e-com portal to be accessible to the blind.
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2011 case of NFB vs. PSU: Penn State had agreed that they would make their campus IT initiatives accessible for the blind based on the court ruling.
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2012 case of NAD vs. Netflix: As per this ruling, Netflix had agreed to provide captions to all their movies to cater to the needs of people with disabilities.
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2013 Time Warner vs. CNN: It was also the same as in the case of Netflix, that their online videos had no captions, which they agreed to bring in.
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2015 lawsuit of NAD vs. MIT Harvard: This case was filed for missing accurate video captioning in their online courses, which was corrected by the judiciary.
Even though there was confusion in terms of interpreting the Title III of public accommodation in the Americans with Disabilities Act, all these rulings mandate the need for accessibility of web entities. Providers like AccessiBe offer consultation and different tools for websites to achieve accessibility goals, which help ensure compliance with the law and set open more opportunities by reaching more audiences.
