ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuit: Online Consignment Retailer

Meghan Downing has filed a class action lawsuit against an online consignment retailer in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on September 2, 2021. The lawsuit alleges that the retailer's website is inaccessible to blind and visually-impaired individuals, violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, seeking to secure redress for these digital accessibility barriers.

The complaint details numerous Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) violations, including a lack of alternative text for non-text elements and linked images, missing title frames for identification and navigation, and an absence of equivalent text for scripts. Further accessibility barriers cited involve forms not having the same information and functionality as for sighted users, content structure not conveyed visually, text that cannot be resized without assistive technology, and enforcement of time limits without user control. Additional issues encompass web pages lacking descriptive titles, purposes of links being undeterminable from text or context, keyboard operable user interfaces without discernible focus indicators, and programmatically undetermined default human languages. The website also reportedly initiates context changes when components receive focus or settings are altered without user advisement, lacks labels or instructions for user input, contains markup language errors, and features inaccessible Portable Document Format (PDFs). Finally, user interface elements' names and roles are not programmatically determined, items cannot be set by users, and changes are not notified to user agents.

This legal action underscores the critical need for online businesses, particularly those operating e-commerce websites integrated with physical locations, to ensure their digital platforms comply with ADA Title III and WCAG 2.1 guidelines. Failure to implement comprehensive accessibility measures can lead to significant litigation, demands for injunctive relief requiring costly website modifications, and statutory damages for each accessibility barrier encountered by disabled users, creating substantial legal and financial risks for non-compliant entities.