If you talk to people in the accessibility space, most are all for the law firms going after companies who do not have accessible websites. This is mainly because literally everything has moved online. Your banks, your healthcare, your pharmacy, everything. If people with disabilities cannot access this, then you are denying them a real service, a service you have forced upon people because its saving money for your bottom line.
Having come from the legal industry myself, to me, this is the new ambulance chasing. Generally speaking the process is pretty simple. Find a site that has an accessibility flaw. Contact company and threaten lawsuit. Give company X amount of time to fix before lawsuit is filed. Sometimes they threaten lawsuits unless X amount is paid for extension.
Its borderline extortion because NY and CA now include anything digital in the ADA. This means a company can reside in BFE Kansas but some NYC law firm has a bot that catches a defect on their website and since jurisdiction is simply determined by the idea that if someone in CA or NY can access your site? Then its covered by the their new ADA rules.
Just this year alone, there has been a 200% increase in ADA lawsuits filed. Even worse? Let's say Target or Walmart get sued for a single ADA accessibility violation. They fix it, or have to pay some firm because they didn't fix it in time. That firm goes in, and finds another violation? Yeap, brand new lawsuit.
This is the new reality and any company who doesn't have a dedicated team of A11Y engineers working on this, already has a massive blind side. One that has started to really ramp up in the last three years. There are a handful of law firms that are actively scanning the web looking for accessibility widgets and other ways firms are cutting corners to try and make their sites appear to be accessible, when in reality, they are not and are now liable.
If you talk to people in the accessibility space, most are all for the law firms going after companies who do not have accessible websites. This is mainly because literally everything has moved online. Your banks, your healthcare, your pharmacy, everything. If people with disabilities cannot access this, then you are denying them a real service, a service you have forced upon people because its saving money for your bottom line.
Having come from the legal industry myself, to me, this is the new ambulance chasing. Generally speaking the process is pretty simple. Find a site that has an accessibility flaw. Contact company and threaten lawsuit. Give company X amount of time to fix before lawsuit is filed. Sometimes they threaten lawsuits unless X amount is paid for extension.
Its borderline extortion because NY and CA now include anything digital in the ADA. This means a company can reside in BFE Kansas but some NYC law firm has a bot that catches a defect on their website and since jurisdiction is simply determined by the idea that if someone in CA or NY can access your site? Then its covered by the their new ADA rules.
Just this year alone, there has been a 200% increase in ADA lawsuits filed. Even worse? Let's say Target or Walmart get sued for a single ADA accessibility violation. They fix it, or have to pay some firm because they didn't fix it in time. That firm goes in, and finds another violation? Yeap, brand new lawsuit.
This is the new reality and any company who doesn't have a dedicated team of A11Y engineers working on this, already has a massive blind side. One that has started to really ramp up in the last three years. There are a handful of law firms that are actively scanning the web looking for accessibility widgets and other ways firms are cutting corners to try and make their sites appear to be accessible, when in reality, they are not and are now liable.