Website Litigations

[DanFelix]

An article in the local paper (Southern California) told of a man that sues website owners when the website does not comply with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) for sight-impaired or hearing-impaired visitors. Most of the cases are settled out of court for a “fee” to make the suit go away. Aside from the ethics issue, I had a few questions for forum members:

1. Has any member ever had to modify their website to conform to a disabilities act? I know of no ADA in any other country so maybe this question only applies to the USA.

2. Has any forum member modified their website for sight/hearing impaired and, if so, how?

Thanks.

[gwpriester]

First of all this sounds like a scam. I suspect unless you are working on a high profile company website that the chances of being sued are slim.

I think the best way to answer your second question is do a web search for ADA Compliant Website requirements and then see what if anything you can do you your sites.

[handrawn]

can't speak for the USA, but to have a case here under equivalent legislation the litigant would have to show they were either being unfairly disadvantaged, or discriminated against

not being able to access a website in itself is not enough....

[Acorn]

An article in the local paper (Southern California) told of a man that sues website owners when the website does not comply with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) for sight-impaired or hearing-impaired visitors. Most of the cases are settled out of court for a “fee” to make the suit go away. Aside from the ethics issue, I had a few questions for forum members:

1. Has any member ever had to modify their website to conform to a disabilities act? I know of no ADA in any other country so maybe this question only applies to the USA.

2. Has any forum member modified their website for sight/hearing impaired and, if so, how?

Thanks.

Dan, for hearing impairment issues, ensure only downloadable content is available for listening & viewing (with captions) so the onus then becomes that of the person accessing the content.

All websites should be designed with Accessibility being considered. There are many tools that can assist. Where a Xara implementation does not address these aspects then you should endeavour to made suitable changes. You cannot cover every base but there are well-defined thresholds. You should be aiming for:

In its Supplemental Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on State and Local Government Web Accessibility, the DOJ explained that it was considering proposing WCAG 2.0 Level AA as the accessibility standard for websites and web content. The DOJ noted that WCAG 2.0 has become the internationally recognized benchmark for web accessibility. The Revised 508 Standards are based on WCAG 2.0.

Offer a page that allows the viewer to advise of any aspect that impairs their use of your site.

If necessary, point out that even the US Government is lacking: https://www.justice.gov/accessibilit...ty-information (Failing visually on so many levels).

Here is the needed checklist: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/.
Xara can continue to help by including proper HTML constructs with ARIA labelling. The consequence of this is you ought to be using the latest Xara version you can afford, a small price to mitigate against potential litigation.

Acorn