Not that this is a new sleazy practice, but there is a vulnerability to brewer’s and a relitivly simple protection. Some lawyers are using the leagal system to extort settlements from wineries, based on ADA violations against the visually impaired. The article is brief and explains the issue and the solution. Actually any website is potentially at risk. https://www.whec.com/news/wineries-being-sued-for-non-compliant-websites/5303391/
Are they mad the websites aren't in braille? They said they were being denied directions I hope they're not driving.. This is like a deaf person suing a music company because they can't hear the music.
Though there are accessibility standards that the sites can strive to meet (as mentioned in the article), not sure how the plaintiffs are affected to the point of financial recourse. I think it behooves most businesses to reach the widest audience for potential customers. It's not overly hard to achieve a fair level of accessibility, though I can understand how new businesses don't think about it right away.
“Is it (the website) screen-reader accessible? Blind people use technology that reads the screen to them,” she explains, and that’s where most businesses trip up on their websites: JPEGs without descriptions, maps and uploaded PDF files often aren’t placed on the site in a way that can be translated for the readers.
Don't misunderstand.... these law firms don't give a rat's ass whether these "issues" are fixed or not. This is simple extortion: pay up or we take you to Federal Court. They don't even care about the outcome of the case. They are extorting a settlement since the small business can't afford to go to court. Similar legal scams were rampant here in MN regarding access to small business's buildings.
Legalities and profiteering aside, there is good reason to accommodate the visually impaired on morale grounds as well as cultivating all potential customers. The concern here is that some people will always seek to exploit the system. However, awareness of the vulnerability may give folks the ability to address the issue.
I don't know much about creating websites, but it seems like there are professional designers out there who do that work. If there is a valid law somewhere that says a website should be 'readible' by visually impaired people, then it seems like the website designer has the liability here. If a brewery is capable of creating their own website, then they better start looking closely at the ADA standards to make sure that their website is compliant, or let a professional do it.
Understood. My comment was on the legitimacy of the claim from as purely a legal standpoint as I can muster as a non-lawyer.
It’s actually worse than this. The ADA doesn’t provide for recovery of damages in accessibility cases, so the only thing a plaintiff can recover is injunctive relief (ie, fixing the problem) and attorneys’ fees. These businesses are offering to fix the problem, so the “settlement” being demanded is just to pay the lawyers. Now to be fair, the attorneys fees provision exists in the statute so that disabled people are able to get lawyers to help them. No one would pay a lawyer thousands of dollars out of pocket to fix a website or make a restaurant install a wheelchair ramp. So lawyers can serve a valid purpose here. However, I would make the safe guess that the fact the businesses are not paying the demand means that it’s unreasonably high, say $5,000 instead of $500 to cover the cost of writing a simple letter. This is a well known racket run by certain lawyers who do nothing but send these form letters to all kinds of businesses, this just happens to be the new niche they’ve found. They recruit disabled people to be plaintiffs rather than simply help peopale who have come to them seeking help. I’m a lawyer, and trust me, most of us can’t stand these bottom feeders.
