Published in Louisville Bar Association Bar Briefs
When businesses evaluate whether they are in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), they typically consider whether they have made appropriate accommodations at their brick and mortar locations, such as wheelchair ramps, bathroom handrails or acceptance of service animals. However, these same companies often fail to ask whether their websites accommodate disabled persons through use of speech recognition software, closed captioning or other assistive technologies that help make websites more accessible to the hearing and vision impaired. Although online shopping has become ubiquitous, businesses do not apply the same level of scrutiny to their virtual storefronts as they do to their physical locations.
