DALLAS-Just as Congress is poised to ease the proliferation of lawsuits over ATM fee disclosures, a new kind of legal peril is facing CUs over the Americans With Disabilities Act and its newly effective requirement to make all ATMs accessible to the blind.
A blind Texas women has sued 19 CUs and banks over their alleged failure to comply with the provisions of the law, which include making ATMs voice accessible.
The plaintiff in the cases, Victoria Gilkerson, who has teamed with the Delaware-based Blind Ambitions Group on the suits, says she had a valid ATM card when her driver took her to the various machines to test them for accessibility to the blind after the March 15 effective date for the new rules. In her suits, Gilkerson asks for class action status, meaning it could cost the credit unions to both upgrade their ATMs expeditiously and to pay damages to numerous plaintiffs.
Officials at several plaintiff CUs declined to comment. But one lawyer involved in the credit union cases worried that new ADA suits like these pose an emerging legal peril for credit unions. "This is the new wave," he said.
