Ensuring Digital Accessibility through Process and Policy

Chapter 5

U.S. laws and lawsuits

Introduction

An animating concept of all civil rights laws is to prevent the denial of equal opportunity for invidious and irrelevant reasons, such as race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. At the heart of disability civil rights laws is a commitment to provide an equal opportunity to access what society offers: equal access, not equality of result. The latter is a matter of personal achievement.

What distinguishes anti-discrimination laws addressing disability from other civil rights statutes is the nature of the barriers to equal opportunity. In the case of race or gender discrimination, the barriers are generally attitudinal. In the case of disability discrimination, the barriers may also be physical, ...