Digital Accessibility News

On February 14, 2023, Assembly Bill 950 by Assemblyman Brian Maienschein (D-San Diego) was introduced to address internet website accessibility. AB 950 would add Civil Code Section 55.565 and would amend Government Code Sections 4469.5 and 14985.6. Section 1 of the bill would amend the heading of Part 2.53 of Division 1 of the Civil Code so that Part 2.53 is called “Attorney’s Fees and Statutory...

Trying to join her friends at a restaurant on a recent Friday required real effort from Allyson Mallory. First, she had to find a handicap-accessible parking space at a grocery store across the street. Then she had to maneuver her electric wheelchair across snow-covered sidewalks — or try anyway. Finding they had not been shoveled, she had to turn around, go back and find a...

You can spot them on every other homepage: carousel widgets with auto-rotating content. Those who use them want to show more content within a limited space. At the same time, they aim to present the most important messages as prominently as possible. However, if design and development do not receive proper attention, you will be at the highest risk of creating usability and accessibility issues. This...

Seyfarth Synopsis: The number of ADA Title III lawsuits filed in federal court dropped by 24 percent, the lowest since 2017, and California is no longer the epicenter. ADA Title III case filings in federal court had been on a sharp upward trajectory since we started compiling these statistics in 2013. That year, there were only 2,722 lawsuits nationwide. Eight years later, in 2021, there...

Holden Foreman is the first accessibility engineer at the Washington Post, a role which entails maintaining up-to-date accessibility standards across the Post’s products, as well as researching new opportunities for accessibility, engaging with the paper’s audience about this topic, and educating other staff members on accessibility issues. This is a support role rather than a journalism role, but Foreman will also be working with newsroom...

Even as serial ADA lawsuit claims have faced pushback, case numbers still are climbing nationwide, with an estimated 12 percent rise in 2022 compared to the year prior. The increase in the number of website accessibility lawsuits will create pressure on businesses to devote resources to making their websites accessible to people with disabilities, attorney Minh N. Vu told the Northern California Record by email....

A legal complaint against a Clovis brewery claiming its website is inaccessible to the blind is what one attorney calls the next iteration of lawsuits taking advantage of the Americans with Disabilities Act — and breweries appear to be in the crosshairs. The trial between San Bernadino resident and plaintiff Luis Licea against Tactical Ops Brewery in Clovis found its presiding judge this week with a...

Bealls Inc. operates a website that is not accessible to blind and visually-impaired users in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and New York human rights laws, according to a class action lawsuit filed Feb. 2 in New York federal court. Plaintiff Andrew Toro says he is a legally blind person who requires screen-reading software to access website content on his computer. Screen-reading software...

Before last year’s televised Grammys ceremony began, the award show had already garnered viral attention for its use of ASL interpreters on the red carpet. An accessibility measure rarely presented during the entertainment industry’s major awards shows, the presence of the sign language interpreters was the byproduct of more than a year’s worth of conversations between the Recording Academy and Recording Artists and Music Professionals With...

A new class action lawsuit filed against Whirlpool claims its website kitchenaid.com is not accessible to visually impaired and blind people. More specifically, the lawsuit claims the company has not made its website compatible with screen-reading software that helps visually impaired consumers navigate websites. ...

No surprise here: Elon Musk has once again made Twitter worse. The CEO's latest blow to the platform's functionality removes free access to its API(opens in a new tab), posing an imminent threat for users with disabilities, accessibility advocates, and helpful bots. On Feb. 1, Twitter announced it would be moving all API access to paid tiers based on usage, another revenue grab as the site...

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which leads development of the technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the web remains open, accessible, and interoperable, officially launched as a public-interest nonprofit organization as of Jan. 1. After 28 years of being hosted collectively at MIT and three other international host organizations, the crusaders for web standards have become their own entity. Many diverse brains make...