Real Safety AI Foundation / Research

Disability, Accessibility, and Civil Rights

Phantom Consent: Formation Failure, Inaccessible Interfaces, and the Collapse of the Clickwrap Shield

Publisher: Real Safety AI Foundation

Working paper. Not peer reviewed.

Written
June 2026
Version
v0.3
Pages
28
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Abstract

Every consumer platform on the internet sits behind the same front door: a wall of terms presented through an interface engineered to be clicked rather than read, followed by an Accept button. Courts enforce what happens at that door under an objective theory of assent that asks whether a reasonably prudent offeree would have noticed the terms and understood the click to mean agreement. This Article identifies the population for whom that question has never honestly been asked. For users with cognitive, psychiatric, and neurodevelopmental disabilities, the assent ritual fails its own doctrinal predicates: there is no meeting of the minds, no inquiry notice that survives contact with an interface designed to defeat inquiry, and frequently no capacity to act on whatever notice exists. The Article names the resulting phenomenon phantom consent: the population-scale operation of platforms under apparent contracts that were never formed as to a definable class of disabled users. It then makes three moves. First, it shows that contract doctrine already contains everything needed to reach this conclusion, and that the First Circuit has already applied it, holding in National Federation of the Blind v. Container Store that no agreement to arbitrate forms where terms are presented through an interface the offeree cannot perceive. The extension from interfaces that defeat perception to interfaces that defeat processing is an extension of reasoning, not a leap. Second, it relocates the problem from contract law, where the inaccessible interface is only a shield raised case by case, to disability law, where the same interface is an independent statutory violation remediable by injunction: the consent gate is the first service of any place of public accommodation, and an inaccessible gate denies the full and equal enjoyment that Title III commands. Third, it traces what falls when the consent is phantom: the arbitration clause, the class action waiver, the data license, the liability cap,

Keywords

  • contract formation
  • clickwrap
  • mutual assent
  • arbitration
  • Federal Arbitration Act
  • ADA Title III
  • cognitive accessibility
  • dark patterns
  • class actions
  • unconscionability

Plain language slides

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Suggested citation

Gilly, Travis. "Phantom Consent: Formation Failure, Inaccessible Interfaces, and the Collapse of the Clickwrap Shield." Real Safety AI Foundation Working Paper, June 2026. https://realsafetyai.org/research/7xgtyq/

Other versions

This paper is also posted on SSRN.

SSRN version

References (53)

This paper cites its sources in footnotes. Each authority is listed once, where it is first cited, with its footnote number.

  1. Footnote 1.Uri Benoliel & Shmuel I. Becher, The Duty to Read the Unreadable, 60 B.C. L. Rev. 2255 (2019)
  2. Footnote 1.Omri Ben-Shahar & Carl E. Schneider, More Than You Wanted to Know: The Failure of Mandated Disclosure (2014).
  3. Footnote 2.Daniel J. Solove, Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Dilemma, 126 Harv. L. Rev. 1880 (2013)
  4. Footnote 2.Neil Richards & Woodrow Hartzog, The Pathologies of Digital Consent, 96 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1461 (2019)
  5. Footnote 2.Daniel J. Solove, Murky Consent: An Approach to the Fictions of Consent in Privacy Law, 104 B.U. L. Rev. 593 (2024).
  6. Footnote 3.Nat’l Fed’n of the Blind v. Container Store, Inc., 904 F.3d 70 (1st Cir. 2018).
  7. Footnote 5.42 U.S.C. § 12182(a)
  8. Footnote 5.Robles v. Domino’s Pizza, LLC, 913 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2019).
  9. Footnote 9.Fed. Trade Comm’n, Bringing Dark Patterns to Light (Sept. 2022), https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P214800%20Dark%20Patterns%20Report%209.14.2022%20-%20FINAL.pdf (staff report cataloguing design practices that “trick or manipulate consumers” into choices they would not otherwise make).
  10. Footnote 10.Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.140(h).
  11. Footnote 11.Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.140(l).
  12. Footnote 11.Cal. Code Regs. tit. 11, §§ 7003(a), 7004(a).
  13. Footnote 12.Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention, Disability Impacts All of Us (last updated July 15, 2024), https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/articles-documents/disability-impacts-all-of-us-infographic.html.
  14. Footnote 13.Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 7 (Am. L. Inst. 1981).
  15. Footnote 14.Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 163 (Am. L. Inst. 1981).
  16. Footnote 15.Cal. Fam. Code § 2251.
  17. Footnote 17.Restatement (Second) of Contracts §§ 17, 19 (Am. L. Inst. 1981).
  18. Footnote 18.Berman v. Freedom Fin. Network, LLC, 30 F.4th 849 (9th Cir. 2022).
  19. Footnote 19.Specht v. Netscape Commc’ns Corp., 306 F.3d 17 (2d Cir. 2002) (Sotomayor, J.).
  20. Footnote 20.Nguyen v. Barnes & Noble Inc., 763 F.3d 1171 (9th Cir. 2014).
  21. Footnote 21.Meyer v. Uber Techs., Inc., 868 F.3d 66 (2d Cir. 2017).
  22. Footnote 22.Berman, 30 F.4th 849.
  23. Footnote 22.Norcia v. Samsung Telecomms. Am., LLC, 845 F.3d 1279 (9th Cir. 2017) (an offeree’s silence or inaction does not manifest assent absent a duty to speak).
  24. Footnote 23.42 U.S.C. § 12101(b)(1).
  25. Footnote 25.Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, Fortnite Video Game Maker Epic Games to Pay More Than Half a Billion Dollars over FTC Allegations of Privacy Violations and Unwanted Charges (Dec. 19, 2022), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations.
  26. Footnote 26.Am. Psychiatric Ass’n, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed. 2013) (diagnostic criteria for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder).
  27. Footnote 30.Granite Rock Co. v. Int’l Bhd. of Teamsters, 561 U.S. 287, 296 (2010)
  28. Footnote 30.Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna, 546 U.S. 440, 444 n.1 (2006).
  29. Footnote 31.Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 15(1)(a)–(b).
  30. Footnote 32.Ortelere v. Teachers’ Ret. Bd., 25 N.Y.2d 196, 250 N.E.2d 460 (1969).
  31. Footnote 33.Rent-A-Ctr., W., Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U.S. 63 (2010)
  32. Footnote 33.Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., 586 U.S. 63 (2019).
  33. Footnote 34.Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 208.
  34. Footnote 36.Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 13 (Am. L. Inst. 1981).
  35. Footnote 37.Container Store, 904 F.3d 70.
  36. Footnote 40.42 U.S.C. § 12182(b)(2)(A)(ii)–(iii)
  37. Footnote 40.28 C.F.R. §§ 36.302(a), 36.303.
  38. Footnote 41.Robles, 913 F.3d 898.
  39. Footnote 41.Nat’l Ass’n of the Deaf v. Netflix, Inc., 869 F. Supp. 2d 196 (D. Mass. 2012).
  40. Footnote 42.28 C.F.R. § 36.303(c).
  41. Footnote 43.42 U.S.C. § 12103(1)(C)–(D).
  42. Footnote 44.W3C, Making Content Usable for People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities (W3C Working Group Note, Apr. 29, 2021), https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/.
  43. Footnote 46.42 U.S.C. § 12188(a) (Title III remedies)
  44. Footnote 47.Tex. Est. Code Ann. § 1357.002(3).
  45. Footnote 48.9 U.S.C. § 2.
  46. Footnote 49.AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011)
  47. Footnote 49.Epic Sys. Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U.S. 497 (2018).
  48. Footnote 49.Morgan v. Sundance, Inc., 596 U.S. 411 (2022), confirms the through-line: courts may not invent arbitration-specific procedural variants, in either direction
  49. Footnote 51.Rent-A-Ctr., 561 U.S. 63.
  50. Footnote 52.42 U.S.C. § 12102(1)(A), (2)(A).
  51. Footnote 55.Specht, 306 F.3d 17
  52. Footnote 55.Nguyen, 763 F.3d 1171
  53. Footnote 55.Meyer, 868 F.3d 66

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