Does the ADA really apply and enforced at all publicly available businesses? Does every Chinese restaurant in Chinatown have a Braille menu? If we really start enforcing this, only larger businesses will survive.
They actively encourage customers to order online, pick up in person and do carry out. Most locations have minimal seating and minimal staff. Some don't even bother to have bathrooms for their customers.
Their business model actively tries to reduce the amount of overhead for the business by promoting online ordering and carryout service. So, no, ordering by phone isn't the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
At least in California, any business with eat-in food services is required (by law) to provide restrooms. If a Domino's franchise does not offer eat-in service, it's entirely reasonable (and legal) they don't have public restrooms.
But I've done a fair amount of traveling and Domino's seems to position themselves as basically a carryout window. You can call and you can order in person, but most locations seem to do the vast majority of their business via the online ordering system.
They print off labels, slap them on the appropriate boxes and begin making the food. Some locations do a brisk business while only having one or two employees on site, plus one or more delivery drivers.
The employees sometimes clearly find it to be a hardship to take orders by phone or in person. It interrupts their workflow and they are frequently very busy just trying to fill orders coming in off the website.
(Especially new requirements for which customers are financially incentivised to file suits, and for it's trivially simple to code up automated scanning to find businesses you can target.)
I've been in situations where I had privilege and I've been in situations where I couldn't get adequate accommodation for my handicap. Having privilege usually beats the tar out of having handicap accommodation.
If there are any genuinely blind people managing to supposedly "game the system" in the manner you describe, more power to them. Because trying to play it straight and do the right thing and earn my way and blah blah blah mostly seems to get me absolutely crapped all over.
If they argue that the website doesn't need to be accessible because blind people can call, that's what all their online only coupons are.
Domino's has a phone number, and every capability the company offers over the web it offers over the phone. In fact, since this business in particular was built on telephone-based ordering, the the phone option is actually the first-class experience, with the web offering only a fraction of the options otherwise available.
So at least in this case, ordering pizza over the phone instead of web is precisely as suitable a substitute as speaking to a waiter instead of reading your Chinese menu in braille.
The plaintiff will argue that regardless of the fact that no business services are actually unavailable, it is the website itself that is being denied. And falling back to a compatible communication medium is inherently unsuitable regardless of whether the fallback is sufficiently functional.
And if that's the case, then it's functionally equivalent to say that failing to provide accessible menus in a restaurant, and falling back to having the menu spoken aloud, is a denial of rights.
I'm not going to say whether it's right or wrong, but it is certainly different than how the law had been interpreted in the past.
And there might be trouble with some of Domino's coupons being online-only.
Basically what seems to have happened is this:
1. Robles sued Dominoes alleging their website violated the ADA.
2. The district court dismissed the suit, saying the DOJ needs to provide guidance on the standards that websites must meet, if the court is to hold them to the ADA. They don't examine the question of the phone.
3. The appeals court steps in and says that no, the district court was wrong to dismiss it for that reasons, and sends it back to the district court.
4. Dominoes appeals to SCOTUS, saying "help, the appeals court got it wrong, please step in!" SCOTUS declines to get involved, so the case will go back to the district court, which may still find that the phone access provided is an adequate accommodation.
> However, the district court did not reach whether a genuine issue of material fact existed as to the telephone hotline’s compliance with the ADA, including whether the hotline guaranteed full and equal enjoyment and "protect[ed] the privacy and independence of the individual with a disability." ... We believe that the mere presence of the phone number, without discovery on its effectiveness, is insufficient to grant summary judgment in favor of Domino’s.
I'm handicapped and also a freelancer and I have six years of college and I worked for a Fortune 500 company at one time. I feel I'm better positioned than a lot of individuals to figure out what I need to do without an accountant and a legal team and yadda, but I have my moments when I would like to go hide under a bed and cry and try to figure out how to kill myself because our highly regulated world sometimes seems like it is actively designed to make it impossible for people to make their lives work (without being part of a megacorp -- and what if that doesn't work for you?).
I thought that everybody being part of megacorps was the intended outcome of a lot of regulations. Isn't that why there are no clear guidelines and limits to a lot of regulation? It's particularly ironic that the government themselves can't even seem to keep up with a lot of regulations (reminds me of GDPR and how the EU commission's websites didn't follow them).
"Ninety percent of everything is crap."
"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
People tend to make rules that reflect the kind of environment that is typical for them. Federal government is large, bureaucratic, etc. It's no surprise that rules coming out of it implicitly assume that everyone works in a similar environment.
Another contributing problem is that people need to justify their paycheck. Writing more rules is how politicians look productive.
I don't know what the solution is. But assuming malice rather than trying to understand the problem space in more neutral terms is not a constructive path forward.
I haven't read into what the exact ruling covered I'm just pointing out it doesn't have to be black and white to the point it runs all guy large places out of business.
Edit: apparently my phone typing speed is no match for the interest in this topic :)