search

karlgroves / overlayfactsheet

MIT License
136 stars 475 forks source link

An actual warning is needed about legal liabilities #620

Open guyhickling opened 3 years ago

guyhickling commented 3 years ago

One of the more serious issues with the overlays is that many website owners put their trust in them thinking they will be made free from possible lawsuits (e.g. in the USA) , or free from government fines for accessibility non-compliance (e.g. in Canada). This is not merely a matter of failing to be accessible, but something that puts website owners in actual financial and legal danger. So I think that needs an explicit warning in the fact sheet. Could I suggest adding a paragraph something like:

In some countries, where there is likelihood of being sued for an inaccessible website, or likelihood of being fined under the country's legislation, using an overlay, instead of having your website properly remediated to make it accessible to disabled people, will not protect you from such legal sanctions.

karlgroves commented 3 years ago

@guyhickling Thanks for the suggestion. Can you provide any resources to cite for this? I'd like to combine the information you proposed with a reference as well.

guyhickling commented 3 years ago

Two of the best articles about this are by US attorneys, writing about lawsuits under the American ADA. The first is by Lainey Feingold, the well known lawyer who works to settle accessibility lawsuits and legal complaints by structured negotiation. See https://www.lflegal.com/2020/08/quick-fix/

The second article is by Richard Hunt, a US lawyer on the opposite side of the fence as he defends the businesses sued in ADA cases - yet he says the same thing. He also goes on to cite 5 cases at the start of 2020 where websites that used an overlay were still sued. See https://accessdefense.com/?p=5378

Other countries - for instance all of Europe and the UK, have different legislation, but usually with some form of sanction specified for website accessibility non-compliance, though the legislation there is often limited to government and other public sector websites.