Websites and the Americans With Disabilities Act: What Franchisors and Franchisees Need to Know
During the past few years, there has been a virtual explosion in the number of lawsuits being filed asserting that a business’ website violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In the first nine months of 2018 alone, more than 1,000 such cases were filed. Absent intervention by the Department of Justice (DOJ) or Congress, the number of these cases will continue to increase. While nearly all of them are being filed in just three states—California, Florida and New York—companies doing business throughout the United States, and in a wide variety of industries (including hotels, banks, clothing and other retailers, supermarkets and restaurants), are being targeted. These lawsuits are typically brought by a visually impaired plaintiff who uses screen reader software to access and “read” the content of websites. The complaints allege that the plaintiff visited the defendant’s website but was prevented from accessing all of the pages, features and content on the site that non-disabled individuals can access and enjoy, because the website was not coded or otherwise set up to work with such software.
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“Websites and the Americans With Disabilities Act: What Franchisors and Franchisees Need to Know,” by Charles S. Marion was published in the Winter 2019 edition of The Franchise Lawyer (Vol. 22, No. 1), a publication of the American Bar Association Forum on Franchising. Reprinted with permission.