Could companies that require their customers to come into their
physical stores be guilty of discrimination? A human rights
adjudicator seems to think so.
In Mills v Bell Mobility Inc, Canadian
Human Rights Tribunal member Edward Lustig awarded $10,000
plus interest in compensation for Ms. Mills' pain and suffering
as a result of being required to attend at a Bell store. The
Tribunal found that a phone activation policy that required
customers to physically present themselves in the company's
stores, thereby endangering the health of some disabled persons,
amounted to discrimination based on disability, in contravention of
the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Bell, one of the many companies that has such a policy, could not
justify why disabled persons could not be accommodated through
other methods of communication, such as Skype or Facetime.
