ADA applies to web sites, federal court says.

According to a lawsuit filed against Target Corp., the company's Web site is inaccessible to the blind and therefore violates antidiscrimination laws. A federal district court in California ruled recently that the case can proceed. (Natl. Fedn. of the Blind v. Target Corp., 2006 WL 2578282 (slip op.) (N.D. Cal. Sept. 5, 2006).)

Joshua Konecky of San Francisco, co-counsel for the plaintiffs, said the case will have "sweeping impact, because it is the first federal decision--perhaps the first anywhere--to address head-on the issue of whether retailers have to make their Web sites accessible to people with disabilities."

John Pare Jr., director of public relations at the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), said the case "sets an important precedent."

The NFB, the federation's California affiliate, and blind college student Bruce Sexton filed a class action against Target on behalf of all blind Americans who are denied equal access to Target's goods and services through its Web site. In addition to online shopping, Target.com provides features such as a store locator, coupons, gift registries, and employment and investor information.

The plaintiffs argued that Targeccom violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California's Unruh Civil Rights Act and Disabled Persons Act. The ADA prohibits discrimination "on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation"--which Target said applies to physical spaces but not to Target.com.

The court disagreed. "The statute applies to the services of a place of public accommodation, not services in a place of public accommodation," Judge Marilyn Hall Patel wrote. "To limit the ADA to discrimination in the provision of services occurring on the premises of a public accommodation would contradict the plain language of the statute."

Patel noted, "Although the Ninth Circuit has determined that a place of public accommodation is a physical space, the court finds unconvincing defendant's attempt to bootstrap the definition of accessibility to this determination, effectively reading out of the ADA the broader provisions enacted by Congress."

Typically, blind people navigate Web sites by using a keyboard along with screen-reading software that vocalizes text and describes graphics. For a site to be accessible, it must contain coding that allows the screen-reader to read that information, explained Mazen Basrawi, who served as cocounsel for the plaintiffs when he was a fellow at Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley, California--and is blind himself. He added that many retail Web sites are not accessible.

The necessary coding is not prohibitively expensive or difficult to include, Pare noted. "Some people have the misconception that the company needs special software," but it does not, he said.

The plaintiffs argued that the changes are technologically simple. For example, Target.com lacks "alt-text," or alternative text, which screen-readers rely on. But alt-text tags "are not necessarily put there for blind people," Pare said. He explained that alt-text is embedded beneath graphics, and when a sighted person points the mouse at a picture on a Web site, a box containing the alt-text pops up.

Pare said some companies may simply be unaware of what they need to do to make their sites accessible, and they usually cooperate when confronted with the issue. He noted that when the NFB sued America Online, the company agreed to update its site, and the plaintiffs dropped the suit.

The NFB tried for nearly a year to get Target to modify its Web site before filing the lawsuit, Konecky said.

In 2004, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer reached a settlement with Ramada.com and Priceline.com, in which the companies agreed to implement accessibility standards.

The NFB plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction, but Patel denied it, saying that additional discovery would be required to determine whether the average blind person can use Target.com.

The court denied Target's motion to dismiss the part of the plaintiffs' claim that says the site's inaccessibility impedes full enjoyment of goods and services offered in stores. But it granted Target's motion to dismiss the part of the claim not connected to stores. Although the court did not specify what that includes, Basrawi noted that discovery will reveal whether any parts of the Web site are unconnected to Target stores.

Target also argued that the two California antidiscrimination laws apply only to physical spaces, but the court did not reach that issue.

State laws vary, but "the ADA sets the floor," Konecky said. "States have to be at least as protective as the ADA." The California laws are broader, he said: "California's Unruh Act quite plainly requires business establishments to make their services and accommodations accessible, without regard to physical space."

Basrawi said he hopes the decision will have a broad impact and that "thousands of businesses will begin to take accessibility into account in their Web development."

The case "sends a message to companies that they can't avoid civil rights laws," Konecky said.