In video three of my most active plaintiffs law firm series, we’re looking at the Shaked Law Group with Dan Shaked and we’re looking at the accessibility issues that are claimed in his complaint. And this complaint was filed in February of 2023.
And so on the screen with me, I’m going to read through some of the accessibility issues that are claimed. And okay, so it starts off with a summary and it says the barriers on the website include lack of alternative text, inaccessible dropdown menus, a lack of navigation links, the lack of adequate prompting and labeling, the denial of keyboard access, empty links that complain no text, redundant links where adjacent links go to the same URL address and the requirement that transactions be performed solely with a mouse. So that really, that summarizes his claims.
And then the each claim, or at least most of them, for each claim, he goes into more detail on what accessibility issues exist on the website allegedly. And so first there’s alternative text and then he gets into the search fields and other form fields. It says, forms include search fields to located products to search fields to select quantity and fields used to fill out personal information including address and credit card information. And then there’s lack of adequate labeling. And then there’s a paragraph 34 where it says specifically when plaintiff attempted to make a purchase using JAWS, she encountered the following problems. And he lists off a bullet point list of problems. Plaintiff did not receive verbal notification when attempting to add items to the shopping cart. When entering on the add to cart button, nothing is announced.
So that’s actually a 2.1, version 2.1 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. That’s actually a 2.1 issue. So basically what he’s getting at is there’s no status message notification that’s being announced to screen reader users. And then the next bullet point says plaintiff was unable to find out where defendant’s products are sold. She was able to find, she was able to select the where to find us. That’s all it says, the where to find us. When selecting this link, sighted users see a lost of store logos where the products are sold. However, the store logos of images of texts that screen readers cannot read. The next bullet point says plaintiff was unable to access the join our community pop-up window. Sighted users see a pop-up window. However, this pop-up window does not receive focus. It is not announced. So plaintiff and other blind visitors to the website have no idea it exists.
And then it says plaintiff was unable to complete the checkout process because she did not receive error notification. If a checkout form is submitted with errors, sighted users see that the system responds by highlighting each problematic field in red and included in an error message in each field, but no announcement is made. And then continuing on, furthermore, the website lacks accessible image maps. And then it also says it lacks accessible forms. And then it says the lack of navigation links on the website makes attempting to navigate through the website even more time consuming and confusing. And then it says the website requires the use of a mouse to complete a transaction.
And so it’s fairly exhaustive and it actually gets fairly detailed as well. So these are the accessibility issues that are being claimed. And with this mini-series, I want to hammer home that this is actually, we are distilling down to what actually gives rise to litigation. So if you want to prevent a lawsuit, if you want to prevent demand letters from being sent to you, then these are the accessibility issues that you need to account for and remediate because these are what plaintiff’s lawyers are looking for.
