From AFB (4.23.10):
ALERT!--With Milestone Justice Department and Congressional Action,
ADA and Web Accessibility to Proudly Take Center Stage
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Tom Parez, confirmed late last week that the long-awaited refresh of the Justice Department’s Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations pertaining to state and local government and public accommodations will, when published soon, include provisions bringing greater clarity to the ADA’s applicability to e-commerce. The new rules are expected to favorably resolve, among other things, the question of whether retailers and other public accommodations doing business exclusively online must ensure the accessibility of their online premises to people with disabilities.
Advocates will recall that AFB coordinated the vision loss and disability community’s response to the Justice Department’s proposed ADA rules to call on the Department to address this critical issue and to promulgate rules with more meaningful impact on the wider availability of accessible electronic and information technologies used and offered by government and public accommodations. The call for such modernization of federal rules was most recently joined by the Federal Communications Commission’s own National Broadband Plan which specifically urges the Justice Department and other federal agencies to undertake these significant improvements.
The Assistant Attorney General’s announced commitment came simultaneously with an announcement by the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, to hold a hearing this Thursday, April 22 entitled Achieving the Promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the Digital Age: Current Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities. The hearing is intended to highlight the relevance of the ADA to technology and Internet accessibility generally and to further build the record for the expected Justice Department rulemaking.
Confirmed witnesses to testify at the hearing include Mark Richert, AFB Policy Director, Judy Brewer, Web Accessibility Initiative, and Dan Goldstein, Brown, Goldstein and Levy, counsel representing the National Federation of the Blind in its litigation against Target for failure to make Target.com accessible to people who are blind.
Advocates willing to share personal stories about the impact of Internet accessibility or inaccessibility in daily life and who are willing to have such short personal stories considered for inclusion in the official hearing record of AFB’s testimony are encouraged to email such content, no more than the equivalent of one-half printed page, to afbgov@afb.net.
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