One visually-impaired Daytona Beach man is responsible for the litigation tidal wave inundating towns, cities, counties and businesses across the state – including several in Brevard County – with allegations of not complying with certain provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Over the past 16 months, Joel Price has filed 56 lawsuits in U.S. District Court, many of which take aim at municipal websites, including Brevard County, Indian Harbour Beach, Melbourne and Cocoa. He claims that many of the websites do not provide complete access for the visually impaired and those who use site readers.
Both Brevard County and Indian Harbour Beach reached a settlement in their cases. But litigation filed in the last two months against Melbourne and Cocoa is still pending.
Expressing a sense of urgency about the case, Indian Harbour Beach City Attorney Karl Bohne on April 9 successfully urged the Indian Harbour Beach City Council to approve a $15,000 settlement sooner rather than later for fear of additional legal costs.
“To be blunt, it was the best thing to do from a financial perspective. Litigation of this sort can cost in excess of $100,000 and we could also be liable for the petitioners’ fees as well. So, in the long run it does save the taxpayers and it also provides finality and not years of litigation,’’ he said.
As lawyers presumably sift through websites looking for infringements, officials from towns and cities across the county are keeping a close eye on this issue, with many working overtime to ensure their sites are ADA compliant. For many, that means removing a vast quantity of older documents. There is no requirement that certain documents, including some scanned images and historical ordinances be made available on a website – but many towns have provided this content for years. Now it must be made ADA-compliant or removed.
Indialantic Mayor Dave Berkman said the town is currently in the process of updating its website.
“One of things the website people are doing is to assure the website meets all interpretations of the ADA,” Berkman said.
In Melbourne Beach, Town Clerk Nancy Wilson said their website was created by a company that builds ADA compliance into their sites, referred to as the back end. The front end of the site is where users, typically town employees, can load documents onto the site, and Wilson said that is where many of the documents may not be complaint.
“Our site had ordinances and resolutions dating all the way back to the ’70s which have now been unpublished. Same with our minutes and agendas,” Wilson said. “Once the process is completed, the website will be scaled back to what people are really looking at, which is more current information.”
If older information is needed, Wilson said a good old-fashioned public records request can be made.
The process to update the website, which involves making all the information posted accessible to those with visual or hearing disabilities, is laborious, and interpretation of the laws and rules surrounding it are currently the subject of much debate, so Wilson said she is reading, learning and taking one step at a time.
Her task includes making sure that screen readers can translate files on the site to audio so that it is understandable for the visually impaired. It also means adjusting the audio files, so they can be understood by those with hearing disabilities.
“Right now, I’m still gathering and trying to interpret all the information available on compliance,” Wilson said. “Actually, putting that knowledge to use will be an arduous task especially since we don’t have spare staff to work on such things.”
Certain items like agenda packets, which are larger files, are more difficult to make compliant because Wilson said there are various types of file types compiled to make them, such as scanned files, which are image files and, therefore, not readable. And all images must be tagged to identify what they are.
“Under news, on our website, when we post an event there are pictures included. Each picture needs to be tagged with a short description, so the screen reader can say what it is,” Wilson said. “Another problem is that there are many different screen readers and they don’t all work the same way, so some information may not be readable which is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
Satellite Beach City Clerk Gwen Peirce said the staff there is being trained on how to format documents that are ADA-compliant. Some training has already occurred, but more will be upcoming.
“This issue of ADA website/online document compliance is a relatively new one, and all cities in Florida seem to be grappling with how to best handle it,” Peirce said. “It’s not only the website, it impacts every document that’s posted to the website, as well as videos, etc. The regulations are complex and we’re all learning a new way of formatting our city documents to make them accessible to everyone. It’s a time-intensive process, but we hope to be completed by the end of May.”
Staff Writer George White also contributed to the story.