ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuit: An Online CBD and Cannabis Products Retailer

Plaintiff Bruce Begg, a visually impaired individual, has initiated a class action complaint against an online CBD and cannabis products retailer in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Filed on July 10, 2020, the lawsuit asserts that the retailer's digital platform violates Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California's Unruh Civil Rights Act by failing to provide full and equal access to blind and visually-impaired consumers. The plaintiff, a proficient NVDA screen-reader user, alleges he encountered numerous barriers preventing independent navigation and access to essential services, including product information and store details.

The complaint meticulously outlines a range of specific accessibility deficiencies present on the defendant's website. These include the absence of alternative text for graphical images, a lack of label elements or title attributes for form fields, and numerous broken links that hinder navigation. Further allegations highlight issues with non-text elements lacking text equivalents, unclear link purposes, missing page titles, and non-descriptive headings. Critically, the platform reportedly suffers from an invisible keyboard focus indicator, unprogrammatically determined human language, and elements with incomplete or improperly nested tags, alongside difficulties in text resizing and bypassing repeated content blocks.

This legal action underscores the significant and ongoing accessibility challenges faced by businesses operating digital platforms. Such non-compliance with established standards like WCAG 2.1 AA exposes companies to substantial litigation risk, particularly under federal ADA Title III and state-level civil rights statutes. Ensuring that all online content and services are programmatically determined and usable by assistive technologies is not merely a legal obligation but also a critical component of inclusive digital commerce, failure of which can result in costly injunctive relief, damages, and reputational harm.