On October 27, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it will hold public hearings about a potential revision of regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). The regulations at issue relate to disability discrimination in connection with accessibility to information on the Internet. These regulatory efforts would affect entities covered by ADA Title II, which prohibits disability discrimination by state and local government entities in their provision of services, programs, and activities; and Title III, which prohibits disability discrimination by and in the activities of places of public accommodation, such as restaurants.

In its its request for public comment in July, the DOJ pointed out that many websites created and maintained by state and local governments and other public entities often fail to incorporate or activate features that enable disabled users to access all of the site’s elements. For example, hearing impaired individuals are unable to access information in Internet videos and other multimedia presentations that do not have captions. Vision impaired individuals may be unable to read websites that do not allow the font size or the color contrast of the site’s page to be modified. Many websites provide information visually, without features to allow screen readers or other assistive technology to retrieve information on the site so it can be presented in an accessible manner. Individuals with limited manual dexterity who use assistive technology that enables them to interact with websites cannot access sites that do not support keyboard alternatives for mouse commands. These same individuals, along with those with intellectual and vision disabilities, often encounter difficulty using portions of websites that require timed responses from users but do not give users the ability to indicate that they need more time to respond.

The Internet has been governed by a variety of voluntary standards developed collaboratively by non-governmental organizations. Although generally supportive of these efforts, the DOJ stated that these voluntary efforts have not been successful in ensuring accessibility for those with disabilities. This problem is compounded by the rapid development of web technology, the number of websites that are created every day, and the difficulty of making some websites accessible without fundamentally altering what they do. Moreover, litigation in the area has created inconsistent standards for evaluating website accessibility under Titles II and III. The DOJ is considering whether to adopt standards to provide necessary guidance, improve accessibility of websites to those with disabilities, and reduce the need for litigation.

The DOJ first requested public input on the proposed regulatory changes in July 2010. Hearings will be held in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco in November, December and January, respectively.