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The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law in 1990, long before the Internet was as omnipresent as it is today.
Title II of the ADA sets forth that the services, programs, and activities of state and local government entities must be accessible to all people with disabilities. And since state and local governments conduct a lot of their business online these days, courts have ruled that it is logical to conclude that the ADA applies to navigating the Internet.
Under the ADA, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is empowered to issue regulations for Title II. In April 2024, the DOJ issued a rule that spelled out how to make the Internet ADA-accessible. It contained compliance deadlines of April 26, 2026, for entities with populations of more than 50,000 and April 26, 2027, for those with populations under 50,000.
This was before the squatter currently occupying the White House moved in. On April 20 of this year, just six days before the first deadline was supposed to go into effect, the squatter’s DOJ extended both deadlines by a year.
In response, the American Association of People with Disabilities put out a statement expressing “unequivocal opposition” to the deadline extension, saying it “is unacceptable and undermines timely access to digital services for people with disabilities.”
The statement, endorsed by dozens of disability organizations, went on to say:
“Blind and deafblind [both deaf and blind] people are routinely excluded from essential election websites because government platforms remain incompatible with screen readers, which can output digital content via speech or Braille. Deaf individuals also miss critical healthcare and public safety information when governments fail to provide content in accessible formats.” It called these “only a few examples of how people with disabilities are excluded from essential government services when governments do not make their digital environments accessible.”
In May, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also delayed by a year the compliance deadline of regulations that the department issued in 2024 regarding online access according to Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits disability discrimination by recipients of federal funds.
In prompt response, the National Federation of the Blind filed a federal lawsuit against both HHS and DOJ. It asserts that the agencies’ actions violate the Administrative Procedures Act because they were done “with no advance notice or opportunity for public comment.”
The lawsuit lists some of the essential things that are commonly done online, such as registering to vote, making a vaccine appointment, seeing a doctor through telehealth, enrolling in unemployment benefits, accessing online academic course content, paying a parking ticket, and applying for a professional license or government job.
Designing an accessible Internet portal must be done as intentionally as designing accessible physical infrastructure; otherwise it will exclude some people just as effectively.
Perhaps that is the squatter’s intent.