Yaroslav Suris, a deaf American has sued Pornhub under the Americans With Disabilties Act, 1990 for disability discrimination claiming that its videos do not have subtitles even though he purchased a premium subscription. He has filed a class-action lawsuit against the international porn site claiming the lack of subtitles as a denial of access.
Court documents state that Suris believes a lack of closed captioning violates his rights under the Disabilities Act. The discontented porn seeker also said that he and others purchased the premium subscription in lieu of doing away with the issue of subtitles. He is now suing the website for an undisclosed amount.
The Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990 (ADA) is the most important legislation in the United States governing disability requirements for private businesses. Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination based on disability in “places of public accommodation,” which encompasses private businesses that are accessible to the general public such as retail stores and restaurants.
However, online websites do not have a physical address which creates an ambiguity of whether the law would be applicable to people with disabilities. But, the court in numerous cases has raised concern regarding this issue and upheld the spirit of law, finding that online retailers must comply with ADA as if shoppers were visiting them in person.
Corey Price, Vice President of Pornhub, said, “We understand that Yaroslav Suris is suing Pornhub for claiming we've denied the deaf and hearing impaired, access to our videos. While we do not generally comment on active lawsuits, we'd like to take this opportunity to point out that we do have a closed captions category.”
Among other similar websites like RedTube, YouPorn and Brazzers, it was found that only the latter had an actual 'closed caption' section - but with only 12 videos. RedTube had 1226 that were searchable under closed caption while YouPorn also allowed for closed caption videos to be searched. Pornhub's website contains a little more than 400 videos in the 'closed captioning' section.
Author: Nandini Gandhi
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