Site Check Webinar: Are Your Website and Mobile App Exposing You to Liability?

Any company with a website or a mobile app faces the potential threat of a lawsuit claiming a lack of accessibility to users with disabilities. The threat reaches businesses in almost every industry serving the public—retail, restaurants, entertainment & leisure, travel & hospitality, higher education, healthcare, and banking among others. And the threat is real and growing: in 2015, there were fewer than 100 digital accessibility lawsuits; at the end of 2019, more than 5,000 lawsuits were filed.

Join Goodwin and Level Access for a webinar discussing risk mitigation strategies to support and protect companies from digital accessibility lawsuits. Companies can stave off the threat of litigation by proactively taking steps to bring their web and mobile assets into compliance with the latest web accessibility best practices. After attending this webinar, companies will have a clear understanding of how the ADA is being applied to websites and mobile apps, the associated risks, and the steps required to mitigate those risks.

Goodwin Partner William Jay and Associate Andrew Kim, along with Founder and CEO of Level Access, Tim Springer, will be featured speakers.

Resources

Webinar Recording

Slide Deck

Q&A Follow-Up

Do different accessibility guidelines apply to native mobile apps (as opposed to web mobile apps)?

Generally, no. WCAG 2.1 sets forth web accessibility best practices that can be applied to both native apps and mobile web pages. While the application of the guidelines to native apps does vary by platform – specifically Android’s approach to accessibility is different than iOS’s approach – the guidelines are the same across all platforms.

Is there a general sense of how long it will take an “average” website to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, as opposed to WCAG 2.0 Level AA?

This varies greatly on a website-by-website basis. The WCAG 2.1 requirements are a superset of the WCAG 2.0 requirements. As a result, if your website is compliant with WCAG AA 2.0, it will be compliant with around 70% of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines as well.  WCAG 2.1, however, includes a variety of additional accessibility requirements that build on top of and expand the WCAG 2.0 requirements.    In particular, WCAG 2.1 materially expands the requirements for mobile app and site accessibility. In practice, the amount of time it takes to implement those improvements will vary by website.

What is market for Limitation on Liability and Indemnity where a company is responsible for their customers' front ends and apps?

Most organizations will ask for full indemnification of the risk associated with digital accessibility as part of the contracting process. In general, we have seen the market providing a degree of indemnification but having that be capped at some multiple for the current year contract value.

What federal/state laws apply to Newsletters/Email marketing accessibility? is an email considered a web content? as a document?

There is little formal federal or state guidance on electronic communications and accessibility. This does vary by market and jurisdiction, however, and some areas – notably healthcare – may have clearer regulatory, statutory or market requirements for the accessibility of digital communication. Bottom line, a conservative approach often includes such communication under the need to provide “effective communication” to people with disabilities for entities covered under the definition of a public accommodation.

Cases Discussed

Robles v. Domino’s Pizza
Gil v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.
National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corp.
Earll v. eBay, Inc.
Young v. Facebook, Inc.
Access Living of Metro. Chi. v. Uber Techs.
Nat’l Ass’n of the Deaf v. Netflix
Nat’l Fed’n of the Blind v. Scribd, Inc.
SAS/DOT Consent Decree