[austinhutch]

As someone who both

- believes in the importance of accessibility and actively responds to real accessibility issues

- has reviewed many ADA lawsuits filed against websites (specifically companies of varying sizes with sites that are ecommerce enabled)

the law needs to be adapted or a landmark case needs to set precedent because right now it's a terrible environment with no real way to avoid speculative lawsuits from ambulance chasing firms.

[learningwebdev]

I don't know what an "overlay" is, but how vulnerable am I as an amateur web developer to being sued because a website I build is inaccessible to some users? Of course I want to make my websites accessible, but I also don't really want to be sued because I made a mistake.

[zie]

Generally nobody will START with a lawsuit, they will poke @ you/the owner of the website and say hey, X doesn't work for users Y(some group of people needing accessibility). If the owner/you are a total meanie pants, THEN they might threaten a lawsuit, maybe a strongly worded letter from a lawyer. Only after that, will they MAYBE proceed with an actual lawsuit.

Why? Lawsuits are expensive, a bug-report is 100% easier :)

So if you listen to your bug reports about accessibility, the chances of being sued are near zero. Assuming you DO get sued first, if you fix the issue before the court date, chances are you won't even have to show up, but even if you do have to show up in the court date, they won't be able to show standing anymore, and the case will get dismissed. (Assuming you actually fixed the issue)

[jasode]

>Generally nobody will START with a lawsuit, [...]

That is an incomplete picture that leaves out how some lawyers working on contingency abuse ADA laws for profit. The industry calls it "surf-by" lawsuits: https://www.google.com/search?q=ada+%22surf-by%22+lawsuits+w...

Example explanation: https://www.palisadeshudson.com/2019/03/this-is-why-we-cant-...

>Why? Lawsuits are expensive, a bug-report is 100% easier :)

Your statement assumes a world where only a well-intentioned 1st-party disabled person retains a lawyer and pays them by-the-hour to file lawsuits but the above examples of twisted financial motives flips that assumption around. The speculative-lawsuit type of lawyers are not motivated by filing bug reports.

Yes, there are real disabled people that are genuinely blocked by non-compliant websites which can be fixed. But simultaneously, there are also bad actors out there.

[zie]

You obviously are not wrong, but I was responding to the question, and for small-time websites, what I said is generally going to be true.

These surf-by lawsuits are still after 1 thing, $$$$'s. The chances of a lone developer website like the questioner having serious dollars available for a lawyer to come try and take are pretty low.

These surf-by lawsuits are generally after the big companies that have $$'s floating around ready for the taking. This person as a lone developer will almost certainly not have the problem. If they did have that problem(enough money a lawyer would be interested), hopefully they are properly insured and firewall their assets off from the taking, assuming worst-case and they lose, which is very much not a given.

Bad actors exist everywhere in every corner of the world and are always looking for an edge to exploit. That they are trying to take advantage of the ADA now isn't surprising.

[learningwebdev]

> right now it's a terrible environment with no real way to avoid speculative lawsuits from ambulance chasing firms.

I was a bit concerned because of this part, but now upon re-reading I suppose Austin was referring to large companies with lots of money, not amateur web developers.

> Generally nobody will START with a lawsuit, they will poke @ you/the owner of the website and say hey, X doesn't work for users Y(some group of people needing accessibility)

And I would really appreciate that because I don't want anything I build to be inaccessible to people with disabilities.

Thank you and I appreciate your response.