[nfbwatlk] FW: FW: [leadership] Article from Boston Globe Friday, June 22

[Kaye Kipp]

Well, I wonder where this will go.

Kaye
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Freeman" <k7uij at panix.com>
To: <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2012 4:56 PM
Subject: [nfbwatlk] FW: FW: [leadership] Article from Boston Globe 
Friday,June 22


IMO we’ll have to await the court decision to see whether the ADA truly 
applies to cyberspace but the below is encouraging.



Mike Freeman





From: wcb-l-bounces at wcbinfo.org [mailto:wcb-l-bounces at wcbinfo.org] On Behalf 
Of denise colley
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2012 4:42 PM
To: wcb-l at wcbinfo.org
Cc: cccb-l at cccbinfo.org
Subject: [Wcb-l] FW: [leadership] Article from Boston Globe Friday, June 22







From: leadership-bounces at acb.org [mailto:leadership-bounces at acb.org] On 
Behalf Of Kim.Charlson at Perkins.org
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2012 4:56 PM
To: leadership at acb.org
Subject: [leadership] Article from Boston Globe Friday, June 22



US judge rules Netflix subject to disability act By Hiawatha Bray Globe 
Staff June 22, 2012 A federal judge in Springfield has ruled that Netflix 
and other online providers that serve the public are subject to federal 
disabilities laws, a decision that could require TV shows and movies 
streamed over the Internet to include captions for the deaf or other 
accommodations. On Tuesday, US District Judge Michael Ponsor rejected 
Netflix's argument that it is exempt from the Americans with Disabilities 
Act, or ADA. He declined to dismiss an ADA lawsuit against Netflix for 
failing to provide captions on much of the content it streams to 
subscribers. Web-based businesses did not exist when the disabilities act 
was enacted in 1990, the judge wrote, but the US Congress intended the law 
to adapt to changes in technology, and it should apply to websites. The 
complaint was filed by the National Association of the Deaf, the Western 
Massachusetts Association of the Deaf and Hearing Impaired, and Lee Nettles, 
a staffer at the Stavros Center for Independent Living in Springfield. 
Nettles said Netflix discriminates against the hearing-impaired, forcing 
them to to avoid its streaming service and pay for more expensive DVD 
rentals to ensure the movies and TV shows they rent are equipped with 
captions. It has to be equal accessibility to all people using it," he said. 
It has to be 100 percent equality. Ponsor's decision cleared the way for the 
lawsuit to proceed. In a society in which business is increasingly conducted 
online, excluding businesses that sell services through the Internet from 
the ADA would 'run afoul of the purposes of the ADA,' " he wrote. Online is 
a place," said Wendy Parmet, professor of law at Northeastern University and 
a specialist on disability law. Virtual spaces are spaces. Netflix said it 
would not comment on an ongoing legal matter. The company can appeal the 
ruling. Under Ponsor's reading of the law, all Internet businesses must add 
features that make their sites usable by people with disabilities, said 
Peter Blanck, professor of law at Syracuse University and a disability 
rights advocate. The law requires that there is full and equal enjoyment of 
services offered by a commercial entity," Blanck said. Ponsor did not rule 
on the merits of the case itself, which must now be argued in court. But in 
refusing to dismiss it, he backed the concept that Internet-based businesses 
must make themselves as accessible to people with disabilities as 
brick-and-mortar companies. The ADA is a designed to give equal rights to 
people with disabilities. It prompted wide-ranging changes in workplaces and 
public structures, from the construction of wheelchair-accessible ramps to a 
ban on employer discrimination against disabled workers. Arlene Mayerson, 
directing attorney of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, a 
California advocacy group that is working on the Netflix case, said the 
court ruling was "making sure the ADA stays relevant by moving it into the 
21st century. But the high cost of adding accessibility features to all 
online entertainment services could pose an undue burden on Internet 
companies and lead to reduced choices for consumers, said Walter Olson, 
senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. 
This forces Netflix to serve markets that it currently doesn't find 
profitable to serve," said Olson, and could prompt online video companies to 
refrain from stocking obscure and unusual films, to avoid the expense of 
adding subtitles to movies that few customers will want to see. The Caption 
Center at Boston public television station WGBH has subtitled thousands of 
films and TV shows, according to Larry Goldberg, WGBH's director of media 
access. Goldberg said it costs $400 to $800 to add captions to a movie from 
scratch. On the other hand, many movies shown on Netflix have already been 
captioned by the film studios. Adding captions to the Internet streaming 
version of a film or TV program could cost Netflix $200 or less, said 
Goldberg. But the implications of the judge's decision go beyond captioning. 
For example, WGBH also pioneered the concept of descriptive video - a 
supplemental soundtrack which is used to describe on-screen action for the 
sight-impaired and another example of the kind of feature websites could 
eventually be required to offer. The current case against Netflix does not 
mention descriptive video, but Steven Rothstein, president of the Perkins 
School for the Blind in Watertown, thinks that the law should mandate that 
online enterprises serve the blind as well as the deaf. They're under no 
obligation to provide movies to people who are blind today," said Rothstein. 
They should be. Syracuse professor Blanck said that making websites more 
accessible to people with disabilities will actually help businesses, by 
giving them access to millions of new customers. I think this is a matter of 
corporate survival," he said. But he said that Tuesday's ruling settles 
nothing. Different jurisdictions have taken a different approach to this 
question," he said, citing a California federal court ruling that the 
disabilities act applied only to online companies that also had physical 
locations. This case is almost certainly not the last word," said 
Northeastern's Wendy Parmet. I think it's likely at some point that this 
issue will get to the Supreme Court. Hiawatha Bray can be reached at 
bray at globe.com.




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