One of the most pressing concerns for our clients is the fear of being sued over missing or inadequate website accessibility. Clients rightly want confidence that the accessibility service they're investing in will shield them from potential complaints and legal action.
This is the right place to set the record straight once and for all — to explain clearly and plainly what you should and shouldn't worry about, and what the right solution actually looks like.
Our goal isn't to help clients fight lawsuits. Our goal is to make sure they never get sued in the first place.
How do we do that? Through a four-layer service package: 1) We remediate your website professionally and thoroughly in line with the legally required standards, 2) We provide a compliant accessibility statement, 3) We maintain your site's accessibility level through ongoing monitoring and quality-control systems to detect and fix issues, and 4) We provide full technical support and response in any case where an accessibility complaint arises. Simple, practical, and effective.
The reality on the ground is this: if you've had your website made accessible by a specialist provider and you display a compliant accessibility statement on your site, the likelihood of being taken to court drops to virtually zero. This is a fact that most players in the industry prefer to downplay, because "protection from lawsuits" is a great marketing slogan — and a convenient excuse to charge clients extra fees.
In practice, if your website is accessible, no one can sue you over accessibility issues without prior written notice. What the law allows a person with a disability who encounters an accessibility problem on a given website is to contact the site owner with details of the issue and request a fix. In such a case, the site owner has a 60-day window to review the complaint and correct the issue, if it is indeed found to exist. Only if that period passes without a response and/or a fix does the complainant have the right to proceed with legal action against the site owner.
At the same time, the law requires site owners to publish an 'Accessibility Statement' on their website, detailing the site's accessibility features, the accessibility arrangements in place at the physical business location (store/office/clinic/studio, etc.), and the contact details of the person responsible for accessibility inquiries (or the designated accessibility coordinator). However, unlike a complaint about the site not being accessible, no prior notice is required before filing a lawsuit over a missing or non-compliant accessibility statement — and unfortunately, this loophole is widely exploited by serial litigants.
Past experience shows that the vast majority of web accessibility lawsuits have been filed on the grounds of a missing compliant accessibility statement or failure to respond to pre-suit notices. In other words, businesses that had their website properly made accessible and displayed a compliant accessibility statement simply did not get sued.
Moreover, experience shows that behind many web accessibility lawsuits there are no people with disabilities — but rather attorneys who scan the internet looking for websites without a compliant accessibility statement and file suit without prior notice, with the goal of extracting a settlement payment from site owners in exchange for dropping the case.
We're not claiming that accessible websites are error-free or immune to complaints. On the contrary — this is a dynamic technology space, and like any other field, issues do arise. But there is an enormous gap between an issue occurring and a lawsuit being filed, and proper handling by the site owner can make that gap insurmountable. Our service package empowers clients to handle things the right way — and sleep soundly at night.