Accessibility Arguments Apply to Web

This just in from Inc. magazine, via FoxNews.com

Some online retailers are rethinking their Web sites in light of a recent federal court ruling that says they must by more accessible to the blind.

In a class-action lawsuit filed in Berkeley, Calif., by the National Federation of the Blind, a federal district court judge ruled that the Target online shopping site, which has no audio component, violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and could be sued.

I've been thinking about Internet accessibility quite a bit these past few weeks. Last Thursday, I attended yet another one of those Internet and the Law conferences and spoke with an Internet attorney about how long it would take for the ADA to apply to the Internet.

He said it already does but only with respect to bricks-and-mortar stores with an online component. I believe it is only a matter of time before Congress either enacts an amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Children's Internet Protection Act, Patriot Act or the Telecommunications Act, etc., to extend the tenets of the ADA to the Internet or a court will publish an opinion that if the ADA applies to bricks-and-mortar entities then it should apply, by the same reasoning, to telecommunications entities as the entertainment product would not exist but for the first time broadcast on TV or in a physical movie theater, which is also subject to ADA requirements.

Now it is up for debate whether the laws of the United States will apply to foreigners who use the Internet... and I don't advocate regulating the Internet by means of mapping or other techno-suppressive technology.

Rather, I believe that if there's a real world component of online material (e.g. software, content, etc) that is subject to ADA requirements then the digital version should comply as well.