Real Safety AI Foundation / Research

Disability, Accessibility, and Civil Rights

Code at the Door: Authenticated Delivery and the Reasonable Modification Requirement Under ADA Title III

Publisher: Real Safety AI Foundation

Working draft. Not peer reviewed.

Written
June 2026
Version
v0.4
Pages
14
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Abstract

A consumer with a disability orders goods online, pays in full, and then cannot receive them. For orders above a value threshold, the seller conditions delivery on an in person authentication: the customer must be physically present, answer the door to an unfamiliar person on the driver’s schedule, and read a one time code aloud to the driver, with no remote, written, or accessible alternative accepted. This article argues that the authenticated delivery handoff is itself a place of public accommodation, a staffed physical commercial transaction at a fixed location that is covered under Title III even in the circuits that require a connection to a physical place, so the argument needs no reform of the nexus doctrine. It then argues that conditioning the completion of a paid sale on an authentication the customer’s disability makes impossible, while refusing any accessible alternative, is a failure to make a reasonable modification under 42 U.S.C. §12182(b)(2)(A)(ii) and a denial of full and equal enjoyment of goods already purchased under §12182(a). It identifies two distinct classes for whom the requirement is a wall: those whose disability is centered on control of the in person encounter, for whom the requirement reconstructs the barrier the digital channel removed, and those, including deaf, blind, and speech disabled customers, for whom the oral, in person code exchange is itself an inaccessible method of communication. Finally, it anticipates the seller’s fraud prevention defense and shows that secure and accessible alternatives exist, so that the refusal to offer any of them, not the existence of a security measure, is the violation.

Keywords

  • ADA Title III
  • reasonable modification
  • PGA Tour v. Martin
  • place of public accommodation
  • delivery
  • possession transfer
  • effective communication
  • disability access

Plain language slides

First slide of the plain language summary of Code at the Door: Authenticated Delivery and the Reasonable Modification Requirement Under ADA Title IIIOpen the 15-slide summary (PDF)

Suggested citation

Gilly, Travis. "Code at the Door: Authenticated Delivery and the Reasonable Modification Requirement Under ADA Title III." Real Safety AI Foundation Working Draft, June 2026. https://realsafetyai.org/research/mnwcj7/

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This paper is also posted on SSRN.

SSRN version

References (20)

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

  1. Footnote 1.Secure Delivery with a One-Time Password, Amazon Customer Service, https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GXHYX22CS752PLE3 (last visited June 29, 2026).
  2. Footnote 2.42 U.S.C. §12182(b)(2)(A)(ii).
  3. Footnote 3.42 U.S.C. §12182(a).
  4. Footnote 4.42 U.S.C. §12181(7)(E), (F).
  5. Footnote 5.Magee v. Coca-Cola Refreshments USA, Inc., 833 F.3d 530 (5th Cir. 2016).
  6. Footnote 6.Robles v. Domino’s Pizza, LLC, 913 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2019).
  7. Footnote 7.U.C.C. §2-301 (Am. L. Inst. & Unif. L. Comm’n 1977).
  8. Footnote 8.U.C.C. §2-503(1).
  9. Footnote 9.U.C.C. §§2-711 to 2-713.
  10. Footnote 12.PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin, 532 U.S. 661 (2001).
  11. Footnote 13.Massachusetts v. E*Trade Access, Inc., 464 F. Supp. 2d 52 (D. Mass. 2006).
  12. Footnote 14.Habibeh Barzegar et al., A Descriptive Study of Agoraphobic Situations and Correlates on Panic Disorder, 28 Middle E. Current Psychiatry art. 47 (2021)
  13. Footnote 14.Am. Psychiatric Ass’n, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., text rev. 2022) [hereinafter DSM-5-TR] (criteria for agoraphobia).
  14. Footnote 15.Daniel Freeman et al., Virtual Reality in the Treatment of Persecutory Delusions, 209 Brit. J. Psychiatry 62 (2016).
  15. Footnote 16.Vladan Starčević et al., The Nature and Correlates of Avoidance in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, 45 Australian & N.Z. J. Psychiatry 871 (2011).
  16. Footnote 18.42 U.S.C. §12182(b)(2)(A)(iii)
  17. Footnote 18.28 C.F.R. §36.303 (auxiliary aids and services; effective communication).
  18. Footnote 19.42 U.S.C. §12182(b)(1)(E).
  19. Footnote 20.42 U.S.C. §12102(4)(A)
  20. Footnote 20.ADA Amendments Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-325, 122 Stat. 3553.

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