Americans With Disabilities Act: For The Web?

It's a huge question: Should the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to online businesses as much as it should to brick-and-mortar stores? The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Turns out a federal judge, also in a U.S. District Court, ruled four years ago that the ADA only applies to physical spaces, not the Internet. Whoops. Usually, when two federal judges issue contradicting rulings, there's a half-decent shot it will head the Supreme Court's way. Either way, that makes this a really bad ruling.

In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies only to physical spaces, such as restaurants and movie theaters, and not to the Internet. "To expand the ADA to cover virtual' spaces would be to create new rights without well-defined standards," Seitz wrote in a 12-page opinion dismissing the case. "The plain and unambiguous language of the statute and relevant regulations does not include Internet Web sites."