Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:
US Accessibility Lawsuits
There have been a number of accessibility related lawsuits in America of late. As ever, I’ll try my best to summarise, but bear in mind I am no legal expert.
On Reconsideration, Judge Albright Transfers AudioEye, Inc. v. accessiBe Ltd. In December 2020, AudioEye accused accessiBe of infringing 9 patents, as well as committing false advertisement. The lawsuit has dragged on since then on the basis of where the case should be heard. It was originally filed in the Western District of Texas (WDTX), but accessiBe requested that it is heard in New York (WDNY) instead. After initially declining, the Judge has now agreed to transfer the case to WDNY; the article goes into details on why.
As Refining harm in Web Accessibility cases: Harty v. West Point Realty describes, New York is the most popular district court to process ADA web accessibility cases. In this West Point Realty case, the plaintiff attempted to visit the hotel’s website but “couldn’t discern from the room description whether the accessibility features in the hotel room meet his needs”. This allegedly violates the Department of Justice’s 2010 ADA regulations that require hotels to “identify and describe accessible features in the hotels and guest rooms offered through its reservation service“.
However, in such cases, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the violation brought them harm, something author Ken Nakata summarises as the “no harm, no foul” rule. It’s clear that the plaintiff would suffer a real harm should they book the hotel room believing that it is accessible, and then can’t navigate their wheelchair into the bathroom. But Ken doesn’t believe this lawsuit will succeed on the basis of “emotional injury” alone.
The final case I’d like to look at – also centred in New York – is Early Win for Deaf Plaintiff in VR Captioning Lawsuit. In 2020, Dylan Panarra, who is deaf, filed a lawsuit against the HTC corporation, arguing that they violated the ADA for failing to include captioning in their virtual reality content (housed on their subscription service “Viveort Infinity”). The case is still ongoing, and is the first known case about virtual reality captioning, so is an important one to keep an eye on.
Prefer longer newsletters? You can subscribe to week11y, fortnight11y or even month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
