In a blog post from February of this year, we discussed the case of Robles v. Domino’s Pizza, in which a blind man sued Domino’s in 2016 for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) after he was unable to order food from the pizza chain’s website using screen reading technology because the website lacked sufficient software compatibility capabilities. Because the ADA guarantees people with a disability “full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services … of any place of public accommodations,” the plaintiff claimed that he had been the victim of unlawful disability discrimination. Domino’s, on the other hand, argued that while the ADA applies to its brick-and-mortar locations, it does not apply to its website because a website is not defined in the ADA as a place of public accommodation.
In its decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with the plaintiff, finding that the ADA protects not just restaurants, hotels, stores, and other physical “brick and mortar” locations, but also the “services of a public accommodation,” notably websites and apps. The Court then found that Domino’s violated Title III of the ADA because its website’s incompatibility with screen reader software impeded access to the goods and services of its physical pizza franchises. Notably, this decision was the first by any U.S. Court of Appeals Continue reading