ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuit: an online grocery and household supplies retailer

Plaintiff Juan Alcazar, a visually-impaired individual, has initiated legal proceedings against a Delaware-based online grocery and household supplies retailer. This class action complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on April 28, 2020, asserts that the retailer's digital platform fails to provide equal access for blind and visually-impaired users.

The complaint itemizes several critical accessibility deficiencies on the digital platform, directly impacting users relying on screen-reading software. Key issues include the absence of alternative text for non-text elements and images, rendering them indiscernible to screen readers. Empty links lack descriptive text, leading to confusion, while redundant links with identical URLs create navigational inefficiency. Furthermore, the website fails to provide adequate text equivalents for non-text content, lacks clear identification and navigation for title frames, and uses scripts without equivalent text. Other barriers include content that cannot be resized without functionality loss, enforced time limits without user control, and web pages without descriptive titles. The purpose of many links is not programmatically determinable, keyboard operable user interfaces lack discernible focus indicators, and the default human language of web pages is not set. Context changes upon focus or user interface setting modifications occur without prior user advice, labels are missing for user input, and markup language elements contain errors like incomplete tags, improper nesting, duplicate attributes, or non-unique IDs. Inaccessible Portable Document Formats (PDFs) and untraceable user interface element names, roles, and changeable properties further compound the inaccessibility.

This action underscores the growing legal imperative for online businesses to ensure their digital offerings are fully accessible to individuals with disabilities. Companies operating similar e-commerce platforms, particularly those offering a wide range of products and services, face significant exposure under federal statutes like the Americans with Disabilities Act Title III and state-specific civil rights laws if their websites do not adhere to recognized accessibility guidelines, such as WCAG 2.0/2.1. The pursuit of injunctive relief and statutory damages in this case highlights the potential for substantial penalties and the necessity for proactive measures to implement inclusive digital policies and practices, emphasizing that denial of access to online services is considered discrimination.