ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuit: an online luxury home goods and sculptures retailer

Plaintiff Portia Mason, represented by Wilshire Law Firm, filed a class action complaint against an online luxury home goods and sculptures retailer in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on June 17, 2021. The lawsuit alleges violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title III and California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, asserting that the defendant's website is not fully accessible to blind and visually-impaired individuals.

The complaint details numerous specific accessibility barriers encountered by Plaintiff, including a lack of alternative text for non-text elements and linked images, missing title frames for identification and navigation, equivalent text not provided for scripts, inaccessible forms, text resizing failures, unadjustable time limits, absence of web page titles, indeterminable link purposes, indiscernible keyboard focus indicators, unprogrammatically determined human language, unadvised context changes on focus or input, missing labels or instructions for user input, markup validity errors, and inaccessible Portable Document Format (PDFs). These issues prevent full and equal access to the online platform for users relying on screen-reading software.

This action underscores significant legal risks for online businesses that fail to design, construct, maintain, and operate their digital platforms to be fully and equally accessible to disabled users in compliance with WCAG 2.1 guidelines. Non-compliance can lead to demands for permanent injunctive relief, statutory damages, and attorneys' fees, impacting the ability of the defendant and similar businesses to serve a broad consumer base and exposing them to substantial litigation costs.