Jon Bomberger Explains New ADA Requirements for Websites to the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly

New standards will soon extend accessibility requirements under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) to many business websites, a story that's been 20 years in the making, Jon Bomberger of Faegre Baker Daniels told Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly.

"At the beginning [of ADA], all of the focus with regards to the things that commonly come to mind has been the removal of architectural barriers, making the physical world accessible to the disabled," said Bomberger. A recent lawsuit against Netflix determined that the ADA rules should be extended to all Internet commerce under ADA Title III. As a result, new standards are expected in March that will likely require companies to embed text in images so screen readers can interpret them for individuals who are visually impaired, among other changes.

"We've done such a good job of moving so many things online, so we don't have to go wait in line somewhere," Bomberger told Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly. "Put yourself in a wheelchair, or with some other disability, not to mention all our veterans returning from foreign wars. We have an obligation, really, to think about that." However, Bomberger noted that "the ADA is prone to abuse." He described situations in which law firms hire an individual with a disability and visit many public accommodations to find a shortcoming somewhere, known as a "drive-by" complaint. "Come with me into the future, and you can see where the same thing would happen [with the Internet rules], only we would call those 'surf-by' lawsuits."

The Department of Justice is expected to adopt the 2.0 version of the World Wide Web Consortium standards. As in 1990 when ADA was passed, businesses may be allowed "to remove barriers on the Internet when they are readily achievable," Bomberger said. "That certainly would be consistent with the way the ADA has sort of developed over the years. It also would eliminate the immediate surf-by lawsuits...and that would be very beneficial to the business community if it came out that way."

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