ADA Rights Defense in Florida

Fighting for our Clients' rights throughout Palm Beach, Broward & Miami-Dade Counties

As an individual with a disability, you are entitled to be free from discrimination in a variety of situations. At NK Legal Group, our ADA lawyers have handled hundreds of cases where businesses or individuals fail to provide equal treatment to those with disabilities. Your rights are important to us, and we are here to fight for them.

Schedule your free consultation today by calling (877) 745-0090 or contacting our firm online.

Employment Law & ADA Rights

Equal rights for individuals with disabilities have come a long way in recent decades. Employees deserve fairness from their employer, and that includes providing reasonable accommodations to do their job. For example, a person in a wheelchair should be able to easily get to their desk and do their job, meaning there must be wheelchair ramps, elevators, and other accommodations as necessary. As another example, if a job that usually requires standing can just as easily be done from a seated position, that must be allowed for an employee who cannot stand due to a disability.

Mandatory Premises Accommodations

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that “places of public accommodation” make reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities, including compliance with very specific architectural requirements. The most common accommodations include installation of disabled parking spaces, restaurant seating, accessible bathrooms, ramps, and other such features needed to integrate the disabled.

The term “place of public accommodation” applies to a very wide variety of businesses, including:

• Inns, hotels, motels, and other places of lodging
• Restaurants, bars, and other food/drink establishments
• Auditoriums, convention centers, lecture halls, and other places of public gathering
• Gymnasiums, spas, bowling alleys, golf courses, and other place of exercise or recreation
• Theaters, concert halls, stadiums, and other place of exhibition or entertainment
• Bakeries, grocery stores, clothing stores, shopping centers, and other sales establishments

The law also applies equally to landlords and tenants, making each jointly liable for ADA violations that are present on the property. Tenants may be sued even though alleged violations are on property controlled by the landlord (for example, a parking lot), and landlords may be sued for alleged violations in a tenant space (for example, inaccessible restaurant seating). As a result, the business owner, and its landlord (the property owner) are almost always sued together in these cases.

ADA Website Lawsuits

The ADA states that “no individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation . . .” This includes websites.

In recent years, a wave of ADA lawsuits have been filed against businesses that conduct commerce online where their website is not accessible to the visually impaired. Blind and visually impaired internet users who are disabled under the ADA have a number of options for “reading” their computer screens and using online commerce features.

The most widely accepted website technical standards for compatibility with screen reading software is Version 2.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, commonly known as WCAG 2.0. When implemented on a website, these guidelines make the website usable by individuals with visual impairments, and the guidelines have been adopted on the websites of many (if not most) major online retailers.

Hotel Reservation Websites

Hotels must ensure that individuals with disabilities can make reservations for accessible guest rooms during the same hours and in the same manner as people who do not need accessible rooms. These regulations require that any means by which hotels take reservations must “[i]dentify and describe accessible features in the hotels and guest rooms [. . .] in enough detail to reasonably permit individuals with disabilities to assess independently whether a given hotel or guest room meets his or her accessibility needs.”

What to Do Next

Call the lawyers at NK Legal Group for a free legal consultation to discuss your case and the next steps to move forward.

Schedule your free consultation today by calling (877) 745-0090.