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n a decision issued on April 20, Judge Arthur Schwab of the Western District of Pennsylvania makes it clear that every potential defendant who was sent one of the Carlson Lynch firm’s ADA Internet demand letters will end up in his court, and will have little choice but to settle. Since Carlson Lynch apparently sent hundreds of letters, Judge Schwab has effectively seized control of hundreds of cases that have not yet been filed. Sipe v. Am. Casino & Entm’t Properties, LLC, 2016 WL 1580349 (W.D. Pa. Apr. 20, 2016). More
ADA Internet
DOJ rolls out new website to provide no help whatever to businesses concerned with internet access
I wish that this were one of those satires found The Onion and similar publications. On April 25 at 3:00 a.m. Central Time the Department of Justice announced a new “Accessible Technology” section in the DOJ’s ADA website (http://www.ada.gov/access-technology/index.html). The new web page is supposed to:
“assist covered entities and people with disabilities to understand how the ADA applies to certain technologies, such as Web sites, electronic book readers, online courses, and point-of-sale devices.” More
Hot off the presses – ADA governs the internet, maybe.
On February 9 Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson issued a 45 page decision denying a Motion to Dismiss in National Association of the Deaf v. Harvard University, Case No. 3:15-cv-30023-MGM in the District of Massachusetts. This is not the place for a detailed analysis of the opinion, but for ordinary businesses there is quite a bit less to this than some sources suggest.
The first statute discussed in Magistrate Robertson’s opinion is Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. This statute applies to programs or activities receiving federal assistance. While federal assistance programs are pervasive, the vast majority of businesses are not subject to Section 504, and so the arguments concerning its application don’t apply at all. More
ADA and the web – they just don’t get it.
My colleague William Goren (see his blogs at www.williamgoren.com/blog) passed along a recent interview with Daniel Goldstein (http://www.bna.com/fighting-accessible-websites-n57982065991) that shows, I think, a serious disconnect is between the disabilities rights community and ordinary American businesses with respect to web accessibility.
I’ll start with what Mr. Goldstein said about making a web site accessible. He said: “It’s pretty easy to resolve most of these barriers [to access]” and “the expense is usually small.” His examples of common problems including things like failure to properly use the “H1 tag” or to write code that properly moves the “focus” of a web page. “Pretty easy” and “small expense” are words whose meaning depends on the business involved. This blog was set up by myself using a WordPress template. I didn’t write any code, and I couldn’t find an “H1 tag” to save my life. I do know, because a web programmer helped me look at it, that this single page is created by about 1000 lines of computer code. If that code is wrong, fixing it would not be “pretty easy” for me or any of the tens of thousands of small businesses that use WordPress or similar template based web design tools. More
An ADA storm is brewing – web access litigation in 2016
I hate scare mongering lawyers, but it looks like the risk that a business will be sued under the ADA based on web accessibility has dramatically increased over the last few months. Web access lawsuits may be one of the most important kinds of ADA litigation in 2016. This is not because of any change in the law, which remains largely unchanged and undeveloped. It is instead because of a change in plaintiff’s lawyers. Since this summer Carlson Lynch Sweet & Kipela, a Pennsylvania law firm with a very active ADA litigation practice, has filed at least eleven new lawsuits alleging ADA violations based on web accessibility. The defendants are primarily national retailers or restauranteurs: Footlocker, Sears, Toys-R-Us, Brooks Brothers, Pep Boys, and Hard Rock Cafe among others. Following these lawsuits Carlson Lynch has apparently sent dozens, if not hundreds of demand letters to retailers all over the country offering to settle supposed ADA web access claims. My clients in different states have received such letters, and I’m sure they are only a small sampling of the total sent. It remains to be seen how aggressively Carlson Lynch will follow up these demand letters, but they will certainly serve as an example to other law firms who represent ADA plaintiffs, so a wave of such demands and possibly lawsuits can be expected. More