In our last post, we discussed the rise of website accessibility lawsuits and what it means for you as a business owner. In this post, we dive deeper into the definition of equal access and how it can be achieved.
What is Equal Access?
It’s Unclear. For business owners and web designers there is a dearth of guidance or regulation on website accessibility. Businesses are navigating a body of laws enacted in 1990 when the Internet was not the omnipresent force it is today. In fact, the once-promised and much-anticipated guidance and regulation were recently withdrawn.
In 2010, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the federal agency responsible for administering and enforcing Title III of the ADA, started the rulemaking process for regulations applicable to websites of public accommodations. In January 2017, after years of waiting, the U.S. Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (the Access Board) announced a final rule requiring that websites of federal agencies conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Levels A and AA (WCAG 2.0 AA) within one year. Many considered it a foregone conclusion that the DOJ would similarly adopt WCAG 2.0 AA for public accommodations.
Despite promising regulation by mid-2018, in December 2017 the DOJ officially withdrew its intent to issue rules and guidelines. Keeping pace with the current administration’s de-regulation goals, the DOJ stated that it is “evaluating whether promulgating regulations about the accessibility of Web information and services is necessary and appropriate.”
The DOJ’s abandonment of technical guidance for website access is an unfortunate development for the disability community and covered businesses alike. The lack of clear rules means the disability community faces no continuity or consistency in the websites it visits, nor can it expect a baseline set of services or content on those websites that have sought to be compliant.
Instead of having clear rules to follow, businesses are left with following an often inconsistent and ever-changing patchwork of decisions coming out of the courts. Meanwhile, as businesses try to determine what equal access to their websites means and how to provide it, the threat of and number of website accessibility lawsuits increases.