Business ADA Compliance Lawsuits

[XSAXS]

Anyone dealing with this bullshit?

tl;dr ... Evidently, since 2024, there's been an epidemic rise in these ambulance-chaser hit jobs on small business websites all over. If your site doesn't pass the ADA Compliance scans, they slap you with a lawsuit knowing/expecting you'll just settle and pay some exorbitant amount to make it go away. This was/is? big business in the 90s and 2000s for brick and mortar stores. If your business didn't have the right accessibility ramps or bathroom fixtures, the lawyers were there to collect. Now, they're extending the requirements to websites ... for things like screen reader accessibility, keyboard navigation, proper semantics for headings, menus, breadcrumbs, accessible forms, etc, etc.

Youtube Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0IoeXbOD8k

[INever]

A friend was hired to babysit google self driving cars and i thought it would be fun if his car hit me a little.

As it turns out, a google car hit someone else and the project my friend was involved in was cancelled/postponed.

For what you're talking about, i'd just put up some disclaimer nonsense including threatening to countersue for a trillion dollars if someone files a frivolous lawsuit.

That and can host offshore in Eastern Europe or Asia and mention that jurisdiction in the disclaimer too.

[Mr Pheer]

Originally Posted by XSAXS

Anyone dealing with this bullshit?

tl;dr ... Evidently, since 2024, there's been an epidemic rise in these ambulance-chaser hit jobs on small business websites all over. If your site doesn't pass the ADA Compliance scans, they slap you with a lawsuit knowing/expecting you'll just settle and pay some exorbitant amount to make it go away. This was/is? big business in the 90s and 2000s for brick and mortar stores. If your business didn't have the right accessibility ramps or bathroom fixtures, the lawyers were there to collect. Now, they're extending the requirements to websites ... for things like screen reader accessibility, keyboard navigation, proper semantics for headings, menus, breadcrumbs, accessible forms, etc, etc.

Youtube Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0IoeXbOD8k

It’s been going on since at least 2020. When they tried it with me I simply ignored them. Don’t engage with scammers.

[cerulean]

In the mainstream I've spent a considerable amount of time learning WCAG to help small businesses both get ahead of this and increase their marketability. There are some decent tools you can employ on a monthly fee too, that will help expedite the process and then monitor your site for you.

Most people who have a disability that's applicable here, if the site has a proper accessibility portal, will simply file a report if something doesn't work. There are absolutely lawsuit scammers who try to scare site operators though. They used to give up if you didn't reply, but recently I had a meeting with a mainstream accessibility specialist and they told me that those lawsuits are actually being filed now. They've had to ramp up their legal support in order to accommodate.

Most of the time, if one of these scammers sees the effort you've put in, they'll just move on. None of my clients in the mainstream have been contacted yet.

On the adult side, I had a client who was willing to invest in this. They had realized that they had a new demographic primarily containing people with visual impairment disabilities, hearing impairment disabilities, and mobility impairment disabilities. We didn't put a tremendous amount of effort in, but it turned out to be a very good investment. The demographic seemed to open up. They were surprisingly verbal on social media about adult, which I didn't expect.

There's a lot you can do at the foundational level to ensure you're accessible. It's not cheap, because you need someone who has gone through the guidelines, learns the tools, and has preferably attended seminars on the subject. There is very little ongoing investment though besides subscribing to a monitoring tool and making small incremental changes to ensure compliance. That same client sent me to a conference a few years back and I went to one of these seminars. It was honestly eye-opening. Everyone is leaving money on the table by not being accessible, in my opinion. You do not have to be perfect, just hit the majority of important guidelines.

I can answer more questions if there's anything specific.