A California judge has ruled for the first time that the Americans with Disabilities Act may prohibit barriers to Internet access, but stopped well short of ordering a retailer to make its Web site accessible to the blind.

Advocates for the blind who sued Target Corp. got part of what they wanted from their proposed class action as U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel found the plaintiffs had pleaded a viable claim and refused to exclude Target.com from the reach of the ADA simply because the site itself is not a physical place.

“This ruling is a great victory for blind people throughout the country,” said the president of the National Federation of the Blind, which filed the case in February.

However, Patel denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that “there are sufficient questions raised with respect to whether the average blind person is able to access Target’s website.”

Both Title III of the ADA and California's Unruh Act guarantee equal access for the disabled to a "public accommodation" offering products and services. In 2002, a Florida judge held that an airline's Web site was “neither a physical, public accommodation itself as defined by the ADA, nor a means to accessing a concrete space.” Access Now v. Southwest Airlines, 227 F.Supp.2d 1312.

In denying Target's motion to dismiss, Patel broke new legal ground by ruling that Target.com is a “means to gain access” to the retailer's brick-and-mortar stores.

“[C]ourts have held that a plaintiff must allege that there is a 'nexus' between the challenged service and the place of public accommodation,” she noted in her decision, and

in the present action, plaintiffs have alleged that the inaccessibility of Target.com denies the blind the ability to enjoy the services of Target stores.

Target may have a decent shot at appellate reversal, particularly as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes California, has ruled that “a bookstore cannot discriminate against disabled people in granting access, but need not assure that the books are available in Braille as well as print.” Weyer v. Twentieth Century Fox, 198 F.3d 1104 (2000).

As far as ordering Target to modify its Web site, Patel said the plaintiffs had not shown that “the relevant facts clearly favor a finding that Target.com is inaccessible to the blind,” and “Additional discovery is required before the trier of fact can adequately make this determination.”

By Matthew Heller
9/11/06