When President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law in 1990, he declared that the ADA would “open up all aspects of American life to individuals with disabilities—employment opportunities, government services, public accommodations, transportation and telecommunications,” noting that the ADA is “comprehensive because the barriers faced by individuals with disabilities are wide-ranging” and that then-existing disability discrimination laws “have left broad areas of American life untouched or inadequately addressed,” Statement on Signing the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (July 26, 1990). When the ADA was enacted, the vast information infrastructure of the Internet that allows ready access to employment, health care, education, government services, goods and entertainment did not exist. As is not historically uncommon, technology and the law did not develop simultaneously. Despite the ubiquity of the Internet as an everyday tool for most Americans, federal courts of appeals have split on the issue of whether the protections of the ADA reach goods and services provided solely via the Internet, leaving people with disabilities without a well-settled right to equal access to the internet.

Title III of the ADA prohibits disability-based discrimination “in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation …” 42 U.S.C. Section 12182. The ADA includes 12 categories of entities affecting commerce in the definition of “public accommodation,” including hotels, restaurants, theaters, bakeries, banks, insurance offices, gas stations, pharmacies, and schools, as well as “other” service establishments, places of public gatherings, and places of entertainment, and places of recreation.