A RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY UNDER THE ADA: RESOLVING THE INTER-CIRCUIT CONFLICT POST-PANDEMIC

The federal circuit courts of appeals are in conflict over whether Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires public accommodations’ websites to be accessible to people with disabilities. Some courts consider websites themselves to be a covered “place of public accommodation.” Others conclude that websites are not covered at all. The predominant view is that a website must be accessible if it has a “nexus” to a physical public location. However, the “nexus” requirement has been problematic from the start and its weaknesses have been particularly exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic exposes a deep mismatch between the “nexus” requirement and how businesses approach their work. In this article, we present a novel reconceptualization of the website accessibility question which resolves the inter-circuit conflict and allows abandonment of the already unworkable nexus requirement