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https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/accessibility-the-future-and-why-dominos-matters/
The US Supreme Court last week formally declined to weigh in on an argument that the Americans with Disabilities Act should not apply to websites and digital storefronts, leaving intact a lower ruling finding that the ADA does, indeed, apply to digital space. Internet and Web users with disabilities, as well as advocates for accessible design, are breathing a sigh of relief.
[...] The case the Court declined to hear, Domino's v Robles, stemmed from a 2016 lawsuit. Guillermo Robles, a blind California resident who uses screen readers to access the Internet, tried to place an order through Domino's mobile app. Neither the app nor Domino's website proved usable by a screen reader, and Robles eventually sued the company, arguing the site's inaccessibility violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The section of the ADA at question is Title III, which says, in part, that you can't discriminate against an individual on the basis of disability "in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases, or operates a place of public accommodation."
[...] About 61 million US adults, roughly one in four, live with some kind of disability, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The point of the ADA is to prevent discrimination against a quarter of the population and to codify the need for reasonable accommodations.
[...] "Here's what's shocking about Domino's: like Target [in 2008], just fixing the problem costs a great deal less than suing. So they were suing for the right to discriminate," Quesenbery told Ars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @11:50PM
This is actually an interesting point. Why would one have such strictures? And what might the limits be?
The controlling concern is a stable, flourishing society. That is the goal of good public policy.
The concern is that of exclusion, or driving people to desparation. This is bad public policy, by the standards mentioned above.
By this logic, it makes sense to say that a business offering services to the public should be run in such a way as to be as available to the widest range of the public as reasonably possible. If it's not a public accommodation, something like a private club, then this doesn't apply.
The interesting case is then the question of what rights of refusal businesses do have. This is where we get to things like the masterpiece cake shop case, and the question of compelled speech.
It's not quite settled yet, but it has been observed that a set of laws and policies that de facto exclude, for example, the devoutly religious, is just as much exclusionary as any other such policy, and to push them out of commercial life on pain of being forced to violate their consciences and foreswear their faith is not likely to have quite the productive result one might otherwise hope.