The number of ADA website accessibility lawsuits filed against businesses is steadily increasing with no signs of slowing down. In California alone, 359 federal lawsuits were filed in 2021, a 14% increase over the 2020 filings. New York, Florida, and California are the busiest with California landing in the #2 spot.1 In one instance, a federal suit alleging inaccessibility of web content settled and the defendant agreed to pay the plaintiff nearly $385,00.00 in damages.2 These figures do not include the numerous demand letters which do not result in a filed lawsuit. Interestingly, the ADA only allows plaintiffs to sue for two things: 1) to correct the problem and 2) to have their legal fees covered.
In 1990, The Americans with Disabilities Act came into effect. The law dictates that public and private spaces cannot discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To most businesses, the law is perceived as being physical, such as requiring braille on elevator buttons. The ADA, however, also includes the digital realm, ensuring individuals with disabilities must have equal opportunity to utilize and interact with online resources. Such resources have been standardized by the and outlined in the form of the WCAG 2.0 AA3. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are part of a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the Internet.
If faced with a lawsuit, businesses typically will have to pay the disabled individuals’ attorneys’ fees, pay their own legal fees, and agree to certain website modifications. ADA compliance requires site owners and businesses to have the necessary standards in place to make sure their website content is accessible by everyone. This brings us to the question: How can small firms protect themselves from an ADA lawsuit?
The solution is simple: risk mitigation. By taking proactive steps, a firm can conduct an accessibility audit to determine the best plan of action for website ADA compliance. To improve accessibility, law firms can:
- Provide a web accessibility statement
- Provide adequate color contrast
- Include alternative text for images
- Provide appropriate keyboard input
- Include audio and video transcripts
Once your website is brought into compliance, the next step in mitigating risk is ensuring the site and any revisions made stay accessible. New elements, layouts, and even content can affect the accessibility of a website. Best practices for maintenance include:
- Integrating accessibility throughout the organization by ensuring everyone in the firm understands the goal of ADA compliance.
- Utilize a centralized testing tool and conduct frequent accessibility audits.
- Perform a screen reader validation and user testing of every website release/revision.
How can small firms conduct this audit without breaking the bank? While this may seem like a daunting task, there are several resources for doing this. One affordable method is to utilize an AI-powered accessibility widget. The AI widget can scan the website to identify pages that are not compliant while providing the proper accessibility codes and functions to allow the website owner and its website managers to immediately remediate accessibility violations. Utilization of the AI widget offers a number of useful tools, including a screen reader, dyslexia font color contrast fixes, and page structure accessibility to name just a few, all while helping to maintain the standards set out in the WCAG guideline going forward.
2 https://ncdae.org/resources/articles/legalcosts.php
3 https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/conformance#levels