ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuit: an online restaurant chain

Plaintiff Portia Mason, a legally blind resident of Los Angeles County, initiated a class action in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on June 15, 2022. Represented by Wilshire Law Firm, Ms. Mason alleges that an online restaurant chain's website is not fully or equally accessible to visually impaired consumers, thereby denying equal access to its goods and services in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California's Unruh Civil Rights Act. The complaint seeks a permanent injunction to mandate corporate policy and practice changes, ensuring the digital platform becomes and remains accessible to all users.

The complaint details numerous precise WCAG violations that create significant access barriers for screen-reader users. These include a pervasive lack of alternative text for non-text elements, images, and linked images, which prevents screen readers from conveying descriptive information. Further issues cited are the absence of title frames for identification, non-provision of equivalent text when using scripts, and forms that do not offer the same information and functionality to sighted users. Additionally, content meaning is often conveyed solely visually, text cannot be resized without functionality loss, time limits are enforced without user adjustment, and web pages frequently lack descriptive titles. Keyboard operable user interfaces suffer from indiscernible focus indicators, the default human language of pages cannot be programmatically determined, component focus initiates unadvised context changes, and labels/instructions are missing for user input. Inaccessible Portable Document Format (PDFs) and faulty markup language elements (incomplete tags, incorrect nesting, duplicate attributes, non-unique IDs) also contribute to the site's inaccessibility.

This legal action underscores significant digital accessibility risks for businesses operating online platforms that are integrated with physical establishments. Entities failing to adhere to established accessibility guidelines, such as WCAG 2.1, face potential litigation under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act and state-level statutes like California's Unruh Civil Rights Act. Such lawsuits emphasize the imperative for companies to proactively design and maintain fully accessible digital interfaces to ensure equitable access for all consumers, thereby mitigating legal exposure and fostering inclusive online environments for individuals with disabilities.