Internet and the ADA

Is the internet a human right?

The United Nations think so. This article from Wired details a 2011 United Nations report that asserts that governmental restriction or disconnection of internet is “a human rights violation and against international law.”

While this report remains controversial five years after its publication, the internet is inarguably a staple of twenty-first century functionality in the United States. In 2000, slightly over 50% of Americans used the internet regularly; in 2015 that number had risen to 84%. In younger generations, pretty much 100% of Americans are online. We use the internet for finding work, finding a movie, finding a date, and everything in between. We are an internet-savvy and internet-dependent culture whose connection to the world wide web grows stronger by the minute. We laud the internet for making almost everything more accessible — but what about those for whom the internet itself is inaccessible?

The internet is plagued by inaccessibility for people with disabilities. Visual media, such as photos and movies, are rarely accessible to the blind and visually impaired who navigate the web through screen readers. Pop-ups and other unexpected graphics can make the internet a minefield for people living with epilepsy. Even the Youtube automatic captioning from this video about lessons from the Amish knows there’s a problem:

The laws that regulate and ensure equal access to Americans with disabilities are compiled in a document known as the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA. Originally passed in 1990 and modified a few times since then, the ADA is a complex collection of laws and regulations that can be hard to follow, but here’s how ADA.gov, the official government website for the ADA, describes it:

“The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) prohibits discrimination and ensures equal opportunity for persons with disabilities in employment, State and local government services, public accommodations, commercial facilities, and transportation.”

Since its adoption the ADA has been both celebrated and criticized by abled and disabled Americans alike. One of the centers of debate on both sides of the argument is the somewhat ambiguous phrase “public accommodation” — any place that is considered a public accommodation is legally barred from discriminating against a person with a disability. Title III of the ADA describes a place of public accommodation as “businesses that are generally open to the public and that fall into one of 12 categories listed in the ADA, such as restaurants, movie theaters, schools, day care facilities, recreation facilities, and doctors’ offices…as well as commercial facilities (privately owned, nonresidential facilities such as factories, warehouses, or office buildings)”.

So… does that include the internet?

That’s a question that is making its way through the Supreme Court as more and more cases regarding the accessibility of online businesses and the internet itself show up on the docket. I am not a lawyer and would absolutely butcher a summary of the arguments by both the plaintiffs and the defenses, so here’s a great article by the president of The National Association of Attorneys with Disabilities, William D. Goren, that succinctly and thoroughly explains both perspectives.

While I am not qualified to speak on the intricacies of the laws that comprise the ADA, I do feel qualified to speak on the ramifications of internet inaccessibility from the perspective of someone whose entire generation is online.

Our culture as young Americans is internet based. The internet is how we share information and stay connected to one another. It’s where we get our news, our entertainment. Increasingly our jobs and even schoolwork are online. 2016 young adult culture is Twitter, and Facebook, and Buzzfeed, and Reddit, and Youtube, and Medium, and thousands of other online resources. Being barred from those sites because of inaccessibility is being disinvited to participate in the zeitgeist. While it may sound petty to those who grew up in a pre-Zuckerburg era, being unable to join the conversation about a viral video or a popular clickbait article means separates me from my peers. It creates a second class of citizens in the same way being restricted from public buildings creates an inherent inequity.

In a multitude of ways the Internet and internet culture are growing faster than the legal system can hope to keep up. But in the age of the internet, our laws need to reflect equal rights both on and off the screen.