amazon frown_edited-1The major news outlets seem to have overlooked the most interesting aspect (to me) of Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods; that is, Amazon’s leap into the world of serial ADA filers and controversy over internet accessibility. Amazon has experimented with physical stores, but soon it will have hundreds of them in the U.S., and every one of them has some kind of ADA accessibility issue. That isn’t an accusation, but an assumption based on the highly technical requirements in the 2010 ADA Standards and the proven inability of even the most sophisticated organizations to control the hundreds or thousands of people whose jobs are not primarily related to accessibility to do what is required. Somebody’s going to stack boxes in a hallway, block a checkout counter, take too long to repair a vandalized accessible parking sign, or fail to notice a 10% slope where 8.3% is the maximum. Whole Foods has already been sued many times based on accessibility failures in its stores. More


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