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2013 BYU L. Rev. 651 (2013)
Wheelchair Ramps in Cyberspace: Bringing the Americans with Disabilities Act into the 21st Century

handle is hein.journals/byulr2013 and id is 684 raw text is: Wheelchair Ramps in Cyberspace: Bringing the Americans with Disabilities Act into the 21st Century I. INTRODUCTION In 1990, Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act1 to protect disabled individuals from discrimination in a variety of forms. The Act was designed to provide disabled individuals the same opportunities that individuals without disabilities enjoy. Modifications designed to fulfill the Act's goal of equal access, such as wheelchair ramps, have become common since the Act was signed into law; however, many disabled individuals do not have equal access to the World Wide Web. Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act provides that No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or 2 operates a place of public accommodation. Some circuit courts interpret place of public accommodation broadly to include nonphysical places, while other circuit courts interpret this provision narrowly to require a physical tangible facility-putting virtual places like websites outside of Title III coverage. This unresolved circuit split culminated in the summer of 2012 when two nearly identical cases regarding website accessibility were decided by two different district courts with completely different outcomes. The issue in both cases was whether the lack of video subtitles in Netflix's online streaming library was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The district court located in the Ninth Circuit held that the Americans with Disabilities Act did not apply to Netflix's website because the website was not a place of public accommodation,3 while the district court located in the First Circuit held that Netflix's website was a place of public 1. 42 U.S.C. 5 12101 (2006). 2. 42 U.S.C. 5 12182(a) (emphasis added). 3. Cullen v. Netflix, Inc., 880 F. Supp. 2d 1017 (N.D. Cal. 2012). 651

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