Four Years of Continued Legal Pressure

The rate of ADA Web and App Accessibility filed cases reached one-an-hour in year 2018 and continues in 2019. The 2019 year total of 2235 cases was slightly below the 2018 year total of 2314 due to plaintiff lawyers waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether or not to hear the Domino’s case. The 2017 total was 814 and the 2016 year total was only 262 cases.

Act fast or expect repeat lawsuits

21% of all cases in year 2019 where companies being sued for more than the first time, demonstrating that unless you act fast, there is a high probability of receiving another. Companies with multiple brands and/or multiple websites and apps are most targeted. There were a total of 2235 cases in year 2019 with 479 being companies sued for the second or multiple times.

The Domino’s Effect

Average cases filed per week slowed down to about 30 leading up to the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the Robles vs Domino’s Pizza case but then quickly accelerated back up to 58 a week to make up for the gap.

Most Targeted Industries

Retail was the most targeted industry with over 60% of all cases (1347 cases). Second was Food Service with 202 cases, Entertainment and Leisure was similar with 194 cases. Then Travel got 157 cases, Self-service had 60, and Real Estate saw 49 cases.

 Large Retailers a top targets in 2019

Over 66% of the Internet Retailer’s Top 500 have now been named in an ADA web or app accessibility case since 2017, with over 40% of those having more than one lawsuit.

Restaurants also on the menu

Restaurants have always been popular targets for physical accessibility lawsuits but now over 60% of the top 100 US restaurant chains have now been named in a ADA web or app accessibility case since 2017, with over 20% of those having more than one lawsuit

Legal Leaderboard

400 plus more lawyers have filed or defended an ADA web or app accessibility lawsuit during 2019. That has decreased the percentage of total that the top ten represent. With the top ten Plaintiff Lawyers now representing 60 percent or all cases down from 82% in 2018. The top ten defendant law firms now represent 20% of all cases down from 32% in 2018.

What you can do to avoid this

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Sources

*Data was collected up through December 16, 2019 (comparable to 2018) by UsableNet research team.

** Retail list of top 500 used to check suit names was the Internet retail 500 2019 list.

*** Top Restaurant Chain list used was for Restaurant business online top 500.