In Court: Accessibility
ADA May Apply to Web Sites, Too

BY MARIWYN EVANS

Failing to make your real estate brokerage’s Web site accessible to those with disabilities can land you in hot water. A recent ruling by a federal court determined that a lawsuit brought against Target Corp. for failing to make its site accessible to blind visitors could be classified as a class action suit.

In the case, the National Federation of the Blind charged Target with violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act requirement to make places of public accommodation, such as retail stores, libraries, and real estate sales offices, accessible to the disabled.

By failing to include code on its Web site that could be read by screen reader software for the blind, Target allegedly made it impossible for legally blind individuals to locate and enjoy its retail stores.

In its ruling, the court found that legally blind individuals in the United States who had attempted to access the Web site constituted a class for the purposes of the suit.

The court also determined that the NFB had standing to bring a class action suit since it had sufficiently demonstrated that the Web site’s inaccessibility posed a possible level of harm to its members and that protecting the interest of those members was part of the NFB’s mission. Classifying the case as a class action suit is significant because it increases the potential fines a plaintiff might face.

Although the court has not yet decided the underlying merit of the NFB’s allegations, ruling on a motion to dismiss had stated that ADA violations could occur on a Web site if the site interfered with a disabled person’s ability to enjoy and access facilities of public accommodation.


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