In less than two months, four different federal judges have said “Yes” to website accessibility. These cases, from Florida, California, and New York, are a wake-up call to every business in the United States that serves the public:
If you have a website, make it accessible so everyone can use it, including disabled people.
Every business has a budget; every business watches how money is spent. These cases are but the most recent in a long-string of wake-up calls with a simple message: Spend your hard-earned dollars on accessibility, not on lawyers to fight it.
The four cases discussed in this post are these:
On June 13, in the first trial of its kind under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) a federal judge in Florida ruled that Winn Dixie had to make its website accessible. Two days later, a California judge rejected Hobby Lobby‘s arguments that a web accessibility case brought by a blind customer should be thrown out of court.
In July, court action on web accessibility shifted to New York. On July 21 a judge in the Southern District of New York (a federal court) ruled that a web accessibility case against Five Guys restaurant chain could continue in court.
And on August 1, in perhaps the strongest support for web accessibility in the past several years, a federal judge in New York issued a blistering and passionate defense of web accessibility in refusing to throw out a web accessibility case against Blick Art Materials.
Yes, other web access cases have (and will continue) to have different results. But taken together, the four cases discussed here are more than a trend. They are a strong statement that even with federal web regs on “inactive” status, the ADA protects the rights of disabled people to visit, interact with, and benefit from all the web has to offer.
Let’s take lawyers out of the web accessibility equation. Money is better spent on web developers, designers, user experience folks and others who can make the web (and mobile!) available to all.