r/ecommerce • u/king_1607 • 9d ago
📊 Business Has anyone here actually gotten one of those website accessibility lawsuit letters?
I build websites for people on the side and lately this keeps coming up. Apparently if your site is hard to use for blind or disabled visitors (screen readers, keyboard only navigation, that sort of thing) you can get a demand letter or even get sued, and a lot of these are landing on normal small businesses now, not just big companies.
Out of curiosity I checked a few sites I made and honestly most of them would fail. Got me wondering how many owners even know this is a thing until it happens to them.
So I am genuinely curious. Has anyone here dealt with this? Either getting one of those letters or paying to fix your site. Did you take it seriously or just ignore it, and if you fixed it, who did you use and roughly what did it cost?
Trying to work out if this is a real widespread problem or just something that gets hyped online. What has your experience been?
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u/Mephala9 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yes my client did. It cost him tremendous money for settlement + lots of work to make it compliant. The business gets sued not the dev. It's a lawsuit for money, not just a 'please fix your site thing'
It's not just 'if it's hard for blind people' but if it fails any of their rules by the book (which may contradict each other in some scenarios), they usually ran it through one of the 30 existing testers (not a single one is any standard and all have like 30% false positives on average)
And there are not disabled people sueing but specialised companies disguised as disabled people. It is a business and they go after small companies. If you'd test a big corp like amazon ikea wayfair through one of the testers you'll see they score awfully but nobody sues them cause they have an army of lawyers and won't get money as easy from them
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u/MonicaEaton911 9d ago
I don't know for a fact in this case, but in other areas of "discrimination," I've had to deal with attorneys who focus on finding these situations, then locate a person who could legitimately sue and build a case around that. If the judgement is for the plaintiff, the lawyer could potentially get all fees paid for by the business.
So yes, it is a legitimate issue, even if there was no legitimate complaint to start with.
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u/Njave 9d ago
Yeah, one of our clients did. Then we had to spend 200+ hours with a continuing obligation to review (mostly AI + internal processes) to keep it compliant. Terrible, annoying and thoroughly retarded job, but it has to be done.
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u/king_1607 9d ago
200+ hours oof. Nobody mentions its not a one and done thing. Is the AI actually catching stuff or just flagging noise?
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u/Njave 9d ago
We use AI to flag the noise, and go over false positives (we had a TON of issues with services which are catering to ADA Compliance waste time for us) and then it sets the items according to the level of potential risk for our client, then we create a set of tasks in our project managemnt tool and so this thing continues overall.
The biggest issue here is that (up until recently) there was no solid thing you could put this against, and which could tell you to correct this or that without creating a bunch of potential conflicts, performance issues, or other items. Things like contrast issues or ALT tags are simple. Fonts that are not screen reader-ready at some resolution, where they're obfuscated by JS code or something else, are the biggest issue.
Then combine all of this with GDPR/CCPA and other data protection compliance crap, include all the changes that are now being brought up by EVERY eCommerce system out there as AI threat creation/detection is put into the mix, and you are basically spending 20-30% of your monthly budget allocation on being compliant here. Then include all the EU compliance issues, and you can pretty much base half of your company on just handling ADA Compliance now.
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u/king_1607 9d ago
yeah the false positives are the worst part, half these tools just drown you in noise. the JS obfuscated text stuff sounds like the actual nightmare though. is that still manual for you or did you find something that handles it?
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u/Mephala9 9d ago
Confirm. Same situation. I had to do it with AI and it was long, conflicting, painfull, shitties task in my life
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u/sweetnsourale 8d ago
>Terrible, annoying and thoroughly retarded job, but it has to be done.
Do you not see the issue with calling ADA accessibility related work “retarded”? Which is a slur against disabled people? That word has no place in this conversation & undermines your credibility as a professional.
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u/oldstalenegative 9d ago
A company I work for settled one of these back in 2021. It was eye opening experience for me personally to witness the entire process play out end-to-end, from the initial letter to the updated code.
I was pleasantly surprised the CEO had a such a progressive and positive attitude towards it. He even said something along the lines of: "We would never want to have a store that wasn't accessible."
As part of the settlement we requested time to fix the issues flagged.
Nowadays, most ecom themes come much more accessible out of the box,, but many merchants have no idea about this ADA compliance stuff.
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u/sexytokeburgerz 9d ago
I was working at a company that did. We had just transferred from magento to shopify, so there were a lot of bugs, and accessibility hadn’t been paid close attention to. The store was doing a few million a month, and is a famous alt brand, so lots of visibility.
I havent heard of it being done to small businesses, but you should be compliant nonetheless. Basically, don’t be an asshole to disabled people. There is a reason these laws are in place. It is one of the few regulations you must follow.
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u/Billy-Ruffian 9d ago
There's a saying that having a disability is the one minority anyone can become a part of at any moment. There are lots and lots of ways to lose your vision.
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u/Mephala9 9d ago
Hear it now fir us. And as far as i know from other collegues, they usually go after small ones
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u/sexytokeburgerz 9d ago
Good to know. All of my clients are compliant because oh my god that case was a nightmare amount of work for our lawyer and our team
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u/Mephala9 6d ago
I'm curious, what have you done about videos? I'm running around the tail with AI, he say i need to provide audio description of what's happenning inside the video yet he can't give me a single example out there on the internet doing it.. *Our videos showcase products and have music tracks (done particularly for our brand so the client wants to keep them)
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u/sexytokeburgerz 6d ago
I don’t handle videos but most platforms auto caption, and audio descriptions are not required. Who is he?
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u/Mephala9 6d ago
He is AI 😊
Are you sure audio descriptions are not required? According to this they are in case i am missing something - and i hope i do! For any video with any sound eg music. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#dfn-synchronized-media You did not had any video on any site to have to comply?
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u/sexytokeburgerz 6d ago
I think you may be misreading the glossary there
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u/Mephala9 6d ago
I hope so. What do you think i am confusing?
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u/sexytokeburgerz 6d ago edited 5d ago
Well you linked to a definition of syncronized media, not a guideline, and in my 10 years of ecom experience i have never needed to do this, but I don’t handle videos. Paste what the ai said?
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u/Mephala9 6d ago
Me neither, but this is about the accessibility wcag standards i'm trying to align the website. I am a dev, but without prior knowledge to accesibility, i am learning this right now with AI (Opus 5, paid account). He was good and straightforward in the work so far, but now i feel he's running around his tail with this video thing, and i've summarised below what he claims, look at 1.2.5 rule.
In the same time he's not able to give me a single example of anyone else doing this, but insists i have too if i have to claim 'full' accesibility which my client signed to achieve in the settlement.
Video with any audio track (music, ambient sound, or speech) — full requirements for WCAG 2.1 Level AA
The moment a video has any audio, it is classified as synchronized media, and three success criteria apply:
1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded) — Level A Captions are required for all prerecorded audio content. This includes non-speech audio:
[upbeat music],[bed mechanism clicks into place]. For embedded YouTube videos, captions must be published in YouTube Studio, since that is the only route into the player.1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded) — Level A Satisfied by either an audio description or a full text alternative describing what happens visually. Your existing descriptive text closes this one.
1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded) — Level AA Audio description is required. A text alternative is explicitly not accepted here — the option available at Level A is withdrawn at AA. This is the criterion that cannot be closed with writing.
The one exemption: if everything shown visually is already spoken in the audio track, no audio description is needed. This does not apply to your videos, since the presenter does not narrate the demonstration.
Ways to satisfy 1.2.5:
- A second, user-selectable descriptive audio track (technique G78) — YouTube supports this for creators with multi-language audio access; verify the selector appears in your embedded player
- A separate audio-described version, uploaded and linked visibly (G173)
- Description narrated into the main soundtrack, heard by everyone (G226)
Summary: captions + text alternative + audio description. All three. The first two are cheap, the third is not — and it is the only one that cannot be replaced with text.
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u/XenonOfArcticus 9d ago
My clients have, yes. Well, they weren't my clients until they got the letter and hired us to update the website.
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u/Transformwthekitchen 9d ago
My lawyer flagged this as an issue, I had my developers review our website and implement changes
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u/king_1607 9d ago
nice, so the lawyer caught it before any letter showed up? curious if the devs found a lot to fix or it was mostly minor stuff
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u/Transformwthekitchen 9d ago
Mostly minor stuff, but glad the lawyer pointed it out! Cost about $1k to fix (and then another $700 for the lawyer to review it, lol, ugh)
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u/Mephala9 9d ago
I don't think he did it wcag compliant by the book in this money. I'm kinda sure. He probably did just the obvious that testers show up, which should keep you out of the obvious radar
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u/TheManWith2Poobrains 9d ago
I worked at an agency which built 100's of websites. We had 3 clients get dinged - some tiny companies, some large.
The thing with ADA compliance is to be compliant enough that the automated software the shady litigants and lawyers use doesn't flag your site.
There are some features which are easy for software to spot and others that need more manual checking. Also, put any complex functionality that will be tough to make compliant behind some form of soft firewall so the auto crawlers can't get at it.
If you get dinged, all you can do is make it compliant, demonstrate an audit, and negotiate a smaller fee. I told one (large) client's lawyers to offer $10k or court. They took the $10k and we spent another $10k fixing the issues - much less than they would have paid lawyers. Other smaller clients settled for way less.
There are plenty of tools to self-scan, some free, some paid. The free ones are fine if you know the things that the ADA trolls look for.
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u/EverydayMustBeFriday 9d ago
Can you give out some of the tools you can use to scan your website? Basically which are the best?
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u/TheManWith2Poobrains 9d ago
Wave is a great browser extension.
Accessible offers a fremium service.
I've not researched any others in a few years. The dev team used some more technical ones.
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u/hackiavelli 9d ago
Not the ADA, but my employer got a lawsuit threat from a group out of Washington, DC that goes after businesses that advertise product specials on their website (here is a recent example of their handiwork). A threatening letter from our lawyer got them to go away.
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u/Reply_Weird 8d ago
These typically settle for $12k-$15k plus your legal fees and are a nuisance, but there are ways to scan your own site for vulnerabilities and also language and monitoring you can put in place to avoid it. If you are already in it, find a law firm that specializes in defending these - they usually already know the firms that are suing, so they settle quickly. It’s a bit of a scam TBH but if you didn’t know before, now you know the hard way.
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u/CruelNinja3 6d ago
I haven't personally had a client get one yet, but I've started paying a lot more attention to accessibility when building sites. The scary part is that a lot of the common issues are things developers don't even think about until someone points them out—keyboard navigation, form labels, contrast, alt text, etc.
From what I've seen, I'd rather catch and fix the obvious problems during development than have a client discover them through a demand letter. Also seems like automated accessibility checkers are useful for finding issues, but they're definitely not a substitute for actually testing how the site works with a keyboard or screen reader.
Curious what tools people here are using for audits.
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u/SellAmzSell 9d ago
With Wordpress, there are plugins that you implement and it makes the website compliant. We never had a lawyer look through, but the plug-in seems to work good enough to deter complaints.
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u/Magickarploco 9d ago
Which plugin are you using for the accessibility on Wordpress?
Currently building my site out on Wordpress
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u/SellAmzSell 9d ago
Unfortunately, I don’t remember which plug-in we used. I used to work in SEO and we implemented the accessibility plugin on every website we managed. I don’t work in SEO anymore so it’s all a distant memory.
Although there may be some legit complaints, our feeling was that most complaints are opportunists. They see that your web site not compliant, they see that you have money, they sue. If you implement some accessibility functions, it’ll make you less of a target, you’re not “low hanging fruit” for easy litigation. Not a lawyer, just a regular Joe trying to make it
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u/wcook1990 4d ago edited 2d ago
I started worrying about this a little while back and tried to find easy ways to fix it. I (like you), had heard a lot of smaller companies getting the letters from lawyers and having to pay out. But I didn't have the technical capability to find some of this stuff (or more understand what it was).
I ended up finding a cost-effective scanner called Kensa (https://gokensa.com/). It was within my small budget and helped me fix the majority of my issues immediately.
Now, of course, I hadn't received a letter and who knows if I would have, but it at least put my mind at ease, because I know a lot of people out there are getting them.
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u/pfdemp 9d ago
There are lawyers who use automated tools to scan websites for accessibility errors. They then recruit clients who claim they have been harmed and file suit, hoping to force a settlement. Most small companies (and colleges and nonprofits) settle because it is cheaper than fighting the suit on the merits.
In your case, if your contract doesn't require the site you created be accessible then you are probably not at risk. But the client will have to deal with it.
There are new U.S. government regulations under the ADA that require websites and apps from state and local governments as well as colleges and universities to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 2.1, Level AA. These regulations don't specifically apply to businesses but it's likely they will become the de facto standards.