ADA and FHA defense attorney Richard Hunt wrote a blog post entitled, Is there a silver bullet for ADA website accessibility? Sorry, but the answer is no where he listed out 5 cases (in a two week stretch) where the defendants used an accessibility overlay / widget / toolbar and were nevertheless sued.
Note: This is because accessibility overlays, despite their claims to the contrary, do and can not make your website instantly accessible per the commonly referenced WCAG 2.0 AA standard (nor do they meet with WCAG 2.1 AA).
In this 5 part series, I’ll extract the claims of inaccessibility from each case and the overlay / widget being used. Below are all five cases and we’re on the third, Fredericka Nellon v. Agri Beef Co..
Fredericka Nellon v. Agri Beef Co., Case 1:20-cv-10595-RGS in the United States District Court for Massachusetts
Law
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101
Website
https://www.snakeriverfarms.com
Overlay
No mention of an overlay was made in the filing.
As of July 24, 2020, SnakeRiverFarms.com doesn’t have the traditional AccessiBe icon but it does have a clickable wheelchair icon of sorts next to the footer navigation links that opens up to the AccessiBe menu.
I checked Archive.org and the earliest I can see this same AccessiBe icon is April 6, 2020.
Claims
- promotional pop-up content is not announced. Although the 10% off pop-up contains text, a text field, an unlabeled button, and a submit button, the text content is not announced.
- Promotional text, including a coupon code, is not accessible to blind users. The main image on the homepage contains a promotion with timing, discount amount, and coupon code. None of this content is announced to screen reader users.
- Error messages are not announced. Registration form has 6 fields and 2 buttons for a user to enter. None of these fields are marked as required, however, the sighted user can see errors when any of the fields are left blank.
Plaintiff’s Lawyer
Jason M. Leviton of Block and Leviton, LLP
Notes
None.