CES Website Denies Access to Deaf, Violating ADA, Alleges Brooklyn Lawsuit
Jay Winegard, the legally deaf Queens, New York, resident responsible for filing dozens of Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuits against various enterprises since July 2019, is now targeting CTA in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn with his first known ADA complaint against a trade association. All of Winegard's suits allege inaccessibility to online content through lack of closed captioning or other assistive measures violates the ADA rights of those with hearing disabilities.
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CTA “excludes the deaf and hard of hearing” from “full and equal participation” in its CES website, CES.tech, in breach of the 1990 statute, said the Christmas Day complaint (in Pacer). Like all of Winegard’s lawsuits, it seeks class-action status on behalf of all people in the U.S. with hearing disabilities. “Without closed captioning deaf and hard-of-hearing people cannot enjoy video content” on CES.tech “while the general public can,” it said. CES.tech qualifies as a “place of public accommodation” that “denies equal access” to the deaf and hearing-impaired under the scope and meaning of the ADA, it said.
Winegard recently tried to access several videos on CES.tech, said the complaint, including the virtual news briefing CTA held Dec. 15 to preview the all-digital CES 2021 and the show's technology partnership with cloud services provider Microsoft (see 2012150047). He was unable to access the videos "due to their lack of closed captioning,” said the complaint.
CTA held the invitation-only briefing for accredited reporters, several of whom, including us, had trouble signing in due to problems the association later attributed to "human error." We queried Winegard’s attorney, Mitchell Segal, to ask if his client registered for the briefing and if so, under what media affiliation, but he didn’t respond. "Due to privacy we don’t share personal information of attendees of our events," emailed a CTA spokesperson Monday when we asked whether Winegard was invited to the briefing or if he registered or tried to participate. The association didn't comment about the complaint. CTA said the CES 2021 virtual event will be accessible in 16 languages, plus American Sign Language.
Winegard's suit seeks compensatory damages, statutory penalties and fines, plus “injunctive and declaratory relief” requiring CTA to “correct the barriers” that prevent access for people with hearing disabilities so they can enjoy the same CES.tech content “as non-deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals are able to do,” it said. Our Pacer search found Winegard listed as the plaintiff, and Segal as his lawyer, in at least 30 other lawsuits filed against media companies, e-commerce merchants, auction houses and business-to-business service providers.
All the complaints allege the companies' online content lacks the web access functionality required for the hearing-disabled under the ADA. None of the cases we searched had progressed to class-action status, as Winegard is seeking in all of them. Newsday, the first company Winegard sued for ADA violations in July 2019, appears to be mounting a vigorous defense, arguing for dismissal of the complaint for failure to state a claim under the ADA. Newsday isn't open to the public and "is not a place of public accommodation" under the ADA "simply because it also operates a website," said the newspaper.
CES.tech "is a place of public accommodation" under the ADA because it meets the statute's definition as a venue for "exhibition and entertainment," said Winegard's complaint. CTA's "offices, video studios, television studios, blog facilities, trade show and live event locations, internet and website businesses, studios and magazine publishing facilities with all of its various locations are also public accommodations," alleged Winegard. CTA runs CES for what it calls a qualified trade-only audience and publishes various periodicals for members that aren't distributed to the public. CTA, to our knowledge, owns no video or TV studios. CTA said Microsoft produced much of the content the association showed at the Dec. 15 briefing.
At least seven companies reached speedy settlements with Winegard, Pacer records show. He sued Christie's and Sotheby's auction houses the same day, May 9, and Sotheby's settled Aug. 19, Christie's Oct. 22. Winegard also reached settlements with Beaumont Etiquette, Conde Nast, Disney, Genesis Digital and Tegna. None of the settlement terms were disclosed in court papers.