Abstract:
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.