During the first six months of 2018, according to a mid-year report from law firm Seyfarth Shaw, more than 5,000 lawsuits were filed in federal court alleging businesses were in violation of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). That number is expected to reach 10,000 by the end of the year, a 30% increase over the prior year. Is it because these businesses are not making their facilities accessible to people with disabilities? Actually, no. In most cases it’s about their websites. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/15/americans-with-disabilities-act-website-lawsuits-accessibility “We have been dealing with website issues for a long time,” Jeff Thom, past president and government affairs director for the California Council of the Blind told the Los Angeles Times. “We want compliance. It is a serious problem, no question about it.”
The problem isn’t limited to California. In New York state, a local television station reports that 26 wineries are among the more than 1,000 businesses hit with ADA-related lawsuits this year. The city of Bradenton Beach, Florida, had to recently shut down its website because of its non-compliance. A blind man sued a subsidiary of the tire manufacture Bridgestone Corporate alleging that its website was not accessible enough for people with visual impairments. Personal care products company Bert’s Bees is also facing similar claims. Let the good times roll: why US construction looks set for a boon Gene Marks Read more The number of ADA/website-related lawsuits in Florida is on the rise as well. “If anything, there are more cases, and more plaintiffs filing them,” Anastasia Protopapadakis, an attorney with the firm GrayRobinson who specializes in defending businesses against claims tied to the Americans With Disabilities Act, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Protopapadakis said she started seeing increases in the number of web-related ADA cases by south Florida plaintiffs in 2014 and 2015. “They started targeting large retailers and then moved on to mom-and-pops,” she said. Plaintiffs (and their opportunistic attorneys) have discovered a loophole in the ADA: whether a company’s website is in compliance with the law is just as much fair game for a lawsuit as their physical premises. A website has to be accessible. It must have clear and bright visuals that can be easily picked up by software that translates content for people with vision or hearing problems. Its videos should include subtitles for the hard of hearing. Its keyboard navigation options must be easy enough even for those who can’t use a mouse. Many companies don’t think of this when designing their sites and that exposes them to lawsuits. Unfortunately, there isn’t much help from the federal government either and for that many blame the president. The justice department began drafting formal regulations back in 2010 but late last year withdrew from the process – despite the pleas of 103 members of the House of Representatives – mainly as a result of the Trump administration’s rollback of federal regulations. So what was designed to reduce red tape for businesses opened up the floodgates for enterprising plaintiffs who saw a chance to exploit the lack of clarity in the ADA rules. So what can a business do? According to the Los Angeles Times report, “a consortium of web innovators” has created some rules (otherwise known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) that are already followed by many governments for making websites more accessible to disabled people. These are just guidelines and there’s still room for judgment. But it’s a start. And yes, of course, there will be a cost. Updating a website can cost thousands of dollars which is not exactly spare change to many small businesses. But the cost of not doing so could be much greater. The law has been written to significantly favor the plaintiff and allows large payouts without giving businesses the chance to fix their sites. In California, which leads all other states in the number of ADA-related states filed, the minimum penalty a business must pay for each violation is $4,000 plus attorney’s fees. -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
