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It’s generally less of a legal liability and more of a reputation thing; as you grow you will get more and more users telling you off. See Wordle for an easy ex

It’s generally less of a legal liability and more of a reputation thing; as you grow you will get more and more users telling you off. See Wordle for an easy example. Plus, its not that hard to do correctly, so the “we’re a startup on a critical burn rate” stops working as an excuse rather early

diggan 3y ago
> Plus, its not that hard to do correctly, so the “we’re a startup on a critical burn rate” stops working as an excuse rather early It's not a question of it being too hard or easy, but as always, a question of priorities. Say you can either build feature A which is expected to open up the product to be used by 1% more users, as people been asking for that feature. Or you can build feature B, which enables motionsick people to use your app without getting sick from your wasteful animations. This will help 0.001% of your current users, when you have 10,000 users in total lets say. Not saying it's right or wrong, but I understand why people (managers/owners) make the choice to do feature A instead of feature B, especially in a startup-context where it might be the (imaginary or not) choice between surviving or not. I'm personally in the camp of thinking about accessibility as part of all the work done, but it's not exactly the mainstream workflow.
linkjuice4all 3y ago
While it's generally a good idea to make your app/site accessible to all users and user agents - the trouble usually comes when you're big enough to get sued. In my previous life at an ad agency we had a number of clients getting pursued by accessibility lawyers and firms. These were typically nothing more than shakedowns for some insignificant settlement (<$10k) - but it was an open-and-shut case if you wanted to take it to court so it was just easier to settle and spend a couple of sprints on WCAG best practices. IANAL and my agency didn't do the actual implementation so it was typically up to the client to sort out - but having a lawyer on hand should be one of the first things you take care of once you start making or accepting large amounts of money.
- lelandfe 3y ago
  I have been a tech lead on a11y remediation projects, downstream from you. This is all accurate.
- mypalmike 3y ago
  I'm curious... If you settle without remediating, aren't you still open to lawsuits from other plaintiffs?
  - linkjuice4all 3y ago
    I don't recall the specifics - but I think the settlement usually included language around remediation or dismissal was pending remediation. Typically it was just an embarrassing experience for some middle manager, some lost budget, and some extra dev hours to add 'WCAG Compliance' to the QA checklist.

diggan 3y ago

> Plus, its not that hard to do correctly, so the “we’re a startup on a critical burn rate” stops working as an excuse rather early It's not a question of it being too hard or easy, but as always, a question of priorities. Say you can either build feature A which is expected to open up the product to be used by 1% more users, as people been asking for that feature. Or you can build feature B, which enables motionsick people to use your app without getting sick from your wasteful animations. This will help 0.001% of your current users, when you have 10,000 users in total lets say. Not saying it's right or wrong, but I understand why people (managers/owners) make the choice to do feature A instead of feature B, especially in a startup-context where it might be the (imaginary or not) choice between surviving or not. I'm personally in the camp of thinking about accessibility as part of all the work done, but it's not exactly the mainstream workflow.

linkjuice4all 3y ago

While it's generally a good idea to make your app/site accessible to all users and user agents - the trouble usually comes when you're big enough to get sued. In my previous life at an ad agency we had a number of clients getting pursued by accessibility lawyers and firms. These were typically nothing more than shakedowns for some insignificant settlement (<$10k) - but it was an open-and-shut case if you wanted to take it to court so it was just easier to settle and spend a couple of sprints on WCAG best practices. IANAL and my agency didn't do the actual implementation so it was typically up to the client to sort out - but having a lawyer on hand should be one of the first things you take care of once you start making or accepting large amounts of money.

lelandfe 3y ago
I have been a tech lead on a11y remediation projects, downstream from you. This is all accurate.
mypalmike 3y ago
I'm curious... If you settle without remediating, aren't you still open to lawsuits from other plaintiffs?
- linkjuice4all 3y ago
  I don't recall the specifics - but I think the settlement usually included language around remediation or dismissal was pending remediation. Typically it was just an embarrassing experience for some middle manager, some lost budget, and some extra dev hours to add 'WCAG Compliance' to the QA checklist.