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Court rules grocery store's inaccessible website isn't an ADA violation:
A federal appeals court struck a significant blow against disability rights this week when it ruled that a Florida grocery store's inaccessible website did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ruling contradicts a 2019 decision by a different appeals court holding that Domino's did violate the ADA when it failed to make its app accessible to blind people.
[...] Winn-Dixie is a grocery store chain with locations across the American South. Juan Carlos Gil is a blind Florida man who patronized Winn-Dixie stores in the Miami area for about 15 years.
A few years ago, Gil learned that the store offered customers the ability to fill prescriptions online. Ordering online saves customers time because prescriptions are ready when the customer arrives. Gill also preferred to order prescriptions online because it offered greater privacy. In court, he testified that ordering in person as a blind man made him "uncomfortable because he did not know who else was nearby listening" as he told the pharmacist his order.
Unfortunately, the Winn-Dixie website was incompatible with the screen-reading software Gil used to surf the web, rendering it effectively useless to him. Incensed, Gil stopped patronizing Winn-Dixie and filed a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Gil argued that the inaccessible design of the Winn-Dixie website discriminated against blind customers like him because it forced them to order prescriptions in person, a process that is slower and offers less privacy.
In his lawsuit, Gil also said he couldn't access two other features of the Winn-Dixie website: a store locator function and the ability to clip digital coupons and automatically apply them at the register with his loyalty card.
[...] The ruling runs directly contrary to a 2019 decision by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, which covers California and several other Western states. In 2019, the Ninth Circuit ruled that Domino's had violated the ADA by failing to make its online ordering system accessible to blind customers. Plaintiff Guillermo Robles claimed that this violated his rights under the ADA, and the Ninth Circuit agreed.
[...] Hence, while the website itself might not be a place of public accommodation, an inaccessible website impedes blind customers' access to the Domino's restaurant—which clearly is such a place.
This situation—where two different appeals courts take divergent positions on the same legal question—is known as a circuit split. For now, businesses in Western states will be required to follow the Ninth Circuit's broad interpretation of the ADA and make their websites accessible. Meanwhile, businesses in the three Eleventh Circuit states—Alabama, Georgia, and Florida—won't have to worry as much about making their websites ADA compliant.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday April 13 2021, @10:10PM
TFS completely lays out Gil's argument as if that exists in a total vacuum and then takes a detour through a foreign jurisdiction to discus Robles. What argument did Win Dixie put up? Obviously Win Dixie won, so it probably did more than file Dilbert cartoons as briefs and it is unlikely its attorneys played mine sweeper during oral arguments and just said "whatever dude" when their time came. We do get 12 words as part of a sentence regarding "public accommodations" in the Robles case, but what specifically does that term mean? Did Win Dixie even argue this? Is this why the court ruled in Win Dixie's favor? Was it some other basis, or a combination of them, that tipped the balance in favor of Win Dixie.
Maybe if we heard Win Dixie's argument or at least the court's explanation why it ruled in favor of Defendant, we might better understand this decision. Perhaps the court was balancing difficult competing interests. Perhaps it was a sold-out judge. Who knows though -- until someone digs up the decision and finishes T(woefully inadequate)FS, it is literally impossible to evaluate whether the outcome is logical or not.