An April 3, 2019 decision from Texas’ Third District Court of Appeals should give pause to many lawyers filing website accessibility lawsuits under the ADA. In Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Rosales, Case No. 03-18-00147-CV (April 3, 2019)* the Court of Appeals wrote this about an ADA website demand letter:
“And regardless of whether Rosales “believes” that the ADA applies and that the WCAG guidelines establish ADA standards, the question of whether the ADA applies to websites is, as Rosales admits in his briefing to this Court, an unsettled issue that courts across the country disagree on. To that extent, his statement that “the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to websites” is, at best, a misrepresentation and, at worst, dishonest and deceitful.” More
I’ve blogged before about the problems created by a lack of ADA website regulations, including the difficulty courts have deciding just what “accessible website” means.* The Circuit Court most likely to shed light on this issue is the 11th Circuit, for the pending Gil v Winn-Dixie appeal presents the question directly. There is, however, a more fundamental problem. It may not be possible to create an objective standard for accessibility. I’ll explain why by looking at the most commonly referred standard, WCAG 2.x and showing that it is impossible to determine objectively whether any website actually conforms to WCAG 2.x at any Success Level. 
Next Friday, May 3, I’m going to be presenting a webinar explaining how the FHA, ADA and ACAA treat animals of all kinds. Here’s the official link from the University of Texas School of Law CLE program.
On April 23 at 11 a.m. eastern time I will be presenting a webinar on website accessibility litigation in conjunction with Jason Taylor of Usablenet, a firm that provides accessibility solutions for websites. It is free to register, just click on the following link for more information and instructions:
A third of the reported ADA and FHA decisions in the last three weeks involved a single plaintiff, Scott Johnson. Mr. Johnson’s name is often found in this blog because he has been a fertile source of decisions on a wide range of ADA issues. As discussed below, outrage is one common response to his lawsuits.