On July 26, 1990, I sat on the White House lawn and watched President George H.W. Bush sign the Americans with Disabilities Act. Throughout that glorious summer day, I couldn’t help but fantasize about all the unbelievable things that might happen in the future as a result of this new law.
But I never would have guessed that in 2023, because of the ADA, there would be a federal lawsuit entitled Rasheta Bunting v. Housing Works Cannabis. That’s because I never was imaginative enough to conceive that soon there would be a ubiquitous, virtual marketplace located on this thing called the Internet. And among the goods and services being legally sold in this marketplace would be cannabis. And the entities selling the cannabis would be dispensaries licensed by state governments.
But that’s exactly where we are right now. New York State legalized the regulated sale of cannabis for recreational use in 2021, and the first dispensary in New York City opened on December 29. It’s operated by Housing Works, a non-profit organization that serves people with HIV/AIDS.
Think about all the information we all obtain every day from the Internet. Now imagine what a disadvantage it would be to not be able see the things on the Internet that we take in visually.
Then along came Bunting, who asserts in her lawsuit that she visited the dispensary’s website in January. She filed the lawsuit on January 17 because, as she further asserts, she is legally blind and thus cannot read everything on the website because it is not compatible with the technology blind people use to peruse websites, which violates the ADA.
The lawsuit says that the website has “thousands of access barriers” that make it “impossible for blind and visually-impaired users to even complete a transaction on the website.”
The first lesson to glean from all of this is that some disabled people like to indulge in cannabis, too. The lawsuit says Bunting “likes the wide selection of cannabis products offered” on the website and she plans to return once the website is made accessible.
We’ll see if the ADA protects the right to get stoned. But there’s more than that at stake. As someone who uses a wheelchair, I can pretty much count on things that have been built since the ADA was signed, like buildings and public transportation stations, being accessible. I’ve been to my local cannabis dispensary a few times, and it is very accessible to me.
But inaccessible websites shut out blind people as much as inaccessible buildings shut me out. Think about all the information we all obtain every day from the Internet. Now imagine what a disadvantage it would be to not be able see the things on the Internet that we take in visually.
There’s no excuse for making anything new that’s inaccessible. That includes websites. The lawsuit says, “There are readily available, well-established guidelines on the Internet for making websites accessible to the blind and visually-impaired. These guidelines have been followed by other business entities in making their websites accessible . . .”
Not making a website accessible to all is likely not a matter of lack of ability but lack of will.