Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

Please note that an unfinished draft of this article was accidentally published earlier. The finished draft below has been hastily rewritten. I don’t know what happened to the previous version – very frustrating my changes were lost!

The ADA lawsuit settlement involving an accessibility overlay

• A UX Collective article about a recent case against accessibility overlays.
• Eyebobs is an online glasses company that used an accessibility overlay to attempt to conform to WCAG. It was sued by a blind plaintiff in January 2021, for violations of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).
• The case enrolled Karl Groves as an expert witness, who wrote a 35-page indictment of how inaccessible the Eyebobs site was even with the overlay. Karl also created overlayfactsheet.com, to educate on how accessibility overlays don’t work.
• The settlement requires Eyebobs to take the following actions:
  • Create an accessibility coordination team
  • Perform an accessibility audit of its ‘digital properties’ (using an accessibility consultant)
  • Adopt an accessibility statement
  • Implement an accessibility strategy
  • Provide accessibility training to its employees
• It must comply with these measures within two years.
• It must also work with third-parties (such as embedded maps) to make their content accessible. The deadline for this can be extended up to five years, reflecting the added complexity.
• The article ends with a link to Lighthouse vs ADP – “the next lawsuit to keep an eye out for”.

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