Web Accessibility Laws & Regulation

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Litigation breakdown

U.S. laws make it very difficult for businesses and organizations to defend against disability-related non-discriminatory lawsuits.
Under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), prior warning or dialogue with the non-compliant business is not required.
Moreover, actual harm or demonstration of inaccessibility to a disabled person is not a prerequisite to filing a suit. As most websites are not compliant, and only a click away from anyone in the world, the Internet has virtually turned into the Wild Wild West of litigation.
And if that wasn’t enough, ADA legislation permits plaintiffs who win in court to recover their attorney’s fees while nullifying this right from prevailing defendants. This only increases the incentive to file lawsuits and pushes businesses toward early settlements outside the court in order to mitigate financial damages.
Being unaware of the law, displaying good faith, or even fixing the accessibility issue under contention is not sufficient to defend against an ADA violation.
Target paid $6 million in 2008 to settle a class-action suit against its commercial website, and an additional $4 million to its own legal defense and plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees.
Small and midsize businesses are not likely to face these kinds of figures, but even several thousand can have a detrimental effect on the business’s future.
Government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as recipient organizations and institutions of federal funds such as universities and colleges, associations, and voluntary organizations, are required to comply with Web accessibility standards.

Uptick in Web accessibility lawsuits

How likely are you to get hit by a disability-related claim?
In 2020, ADA federal lawsuits passed the 11,000 mark nationwide. That’s more than 30 cases per day. And pre-litigation demand letters, resulting in private settlements, are estimated to be much higher.
After hovering under the radar for the most part of the last two decades, Web accessibility-related lawsuits exploded since 2017—following the Department of Justice’s labeling of websites as places of “public accommodations,” requiring ADA compliance—bringing the inaccessible virtual world into the forefront of the legal system.

Web accessibility compliance

Let us make it rather simple for you. There are many compliance requirements that stem from different laws and regulations, but they all boil down to conformance against WCAG standards.
Today, WCAG 2.0 Level AA will meet most regulatory non-discriminatory compliance standards. But statutory rule makers are bound to update compliance demands some time in the future—as past legislation has demonstrated—which is why EqualWeb transforms your digital assets to the most up-to-date WCAG 2.1 Level AA criteria, facilitating a seamless operation inclusive for all, opening the Internet to those who were left behind.