Professors Bradley Allan Areheart and Michael Ashley Stein
83 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 449
This Article argues that the paradigmatic right of people with disabilities
“to live in the world” naturally encompasses the right “to live in the Internet.”
It further argues that the Internet is rightly understood as a place of public
accommodation under antidiscrimination law. Because public accommodations
are indispensable to integration, civil rights advocates have long argued
that marginalized groups must have equal access to the physical institutions
that enable one to learn, socialize, transact business, find jobs, and attend
school. The Web now provides all of these opportunities and more, but people
with disabilities are unable to traverse vast stretches of its interface. This
virtual embargo is indefensible, especially when one recalls that the entire Web
was constructed over the last twenty-five years and is further constructed every
day. Exclusion from the Internet will cast an even wider shadow as an aging
U.S. population with visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive impairments increasingly
faces barriers to access. Unless immediate attention is given, the
virtual exclusion of people with disabilities—and others, such as elders and
non-native English speakers—will quickly overshadow the ADA’s previous
achievements in the physical sphere.
Accordingly, this Article develops the claim that the Internet is a place of
public accommodation, which must be integrated, by showing that the same
concerns that motivated access for African Americans under the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 now compel Web accessibility for people with disabilities under
the Americans with Disabilities Act. The issue is, however, even more pressing
because the Internet is broad enough to encompass all of the traditional
categories of public accommodations—as well as social arenas like education
and work. In this way, access to the Internet provides an unprecedented opportunity
to overcome attitudinal barriers, because almost all people now interact
frequently through the Web. Moreover, because disabilities are not
apparent online, the Internet facilitates the social engagement of people who
might not otherwise interact. Finally, Internet accessibility provokes reconsideration
of the constitutional rights of individuals with disabilities. Integrating
the Internet will advance—instead of infringe upon—their rights to democratic
self-governance, personal autonomy, and self-expression.
