Department of Justice to companies with inaccessible websites: We’re back!

Deconstructing the Rite Aid settlement agreement

Authors note: Because of Medium’s refusal to address its accessibility issues for both authors and readers, I’ve moved my last three years of blogs to Substack. Please sign up there for notices of all new articles. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

On November 1, 2021, the Department of Justice published a settlement agreement it entered into with the nationwide pharmacy chain Rite Aid specifically concerning the inability of people with disabilities to use both Rite Aid’s COVID vaccine service web pages and portal.

Here are my takeaways:

The Whitehouse and the DOJ consider the correct accessibility standard to be WCAG 2.1 Level AA

It doesn’t matter that Section 508 uses the almost-decade older WCAG 2.0. The Whitehouse and DOJ have adopted 2.1. Ignore this fact contained in clause 13(a) of the Rite Aid settlement agreement at your peril.

Rite Aid does have the option of choosing a different standard. However, Rite Aid carries the burden of demonstrating to the government that the standard they want to use instead of WCAG 2.1 Level…