I talk about:

🔥The importance of making all content, including social media posts and videos, accessible to people with disabilities.

🔥Highlight that all digital content, including websites and social media, must comply with the ADA to avoid legal issues.

🔥The cost of website accessibility lawsuits which ranges from $5,000 to $20,000.

🔥How many ADA-related lawsuits were filed in 2022, highlighting increased awareness of accessibility infringements and the challenges for business owners to be compliant.

🔥Actionable tips on how to make your content more accessible, such as using alt text for images and captions for videos.

Let’s connect:

Episode Transcript:

 Website accessibility lawsuits can typically range from costing you, or a business in general, between $5,000 to $20,000, and they can even go much higher.  

Hello, and welcome to Business Unfiltered, the podcast. I'm Kristen Kubik, and I'm the bridge between ethics and profits and your gatekeeper between you and the legal. I'm an inclusive marketing and business compliance consultant dedicated to keeping companies running ethically and helping make sure all voices are actually heard. 

Today we're talking about accessibility in your content and above all the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). I love this topic purely because it is so underrated and partially because people don't realize it actually applies to them outside of their website.

So, the settlements for website accessibility issues typically range from $5,000 to $20,000. However, it depends on things like severity of the alleged violation location (which I think is really interesting in itself), the type of lawsuit, whether you take a settlement or go to court as all of that can factor into whether it's going to be more, less, lawyer fees. So let's just be real right now and talk first about how many ADA lawsuits were filed last year?

We don't have numbers for 2023 officially yet. We have numbers for the first half of 2023. And these numbers are actually just federal numbers. We actually don't have numbers for states.  We're going to look at 2022 because we do have full numbers. We're also going to look at the 1st half of 2023. 

The full numbers for 2022 were almost 8,700 title 3 lawsuits, which is the public accommodations and commercial facilities section, so we're talking about things like brick and mortar stores and hospitality.

To be exact there were 8,694 lawsuits were filed in federal courts in 2022. And  people were excited because this was actually a decrease from 2021, but either way, it's a massive uptick from pre pandemic levels. And I think that's really interesting. I think pandemic levels really brought on the severity of what people were lacking. 

That being said, mid year reports from 2023 looked at tracking ADA lawsuits and the trend seems to be continuing downward. They reported, and I say they, usable net reported 4,500 ADA related app and web accessibility lawsuits were filed in the first half of 2023.  Apparently, it was lower than that same period in 2022. 

I'll be interested to see what the numbers look like at the end, once they actually finish obtaining the rest of 2023 data so to see if it was actually on the same trajectory.

So, why does this really matter in your business and how can you start to combat this to make sure it's not a problem. I do want to let you know that for the first time ever, you can snag the replays of Six Figure Messaging, which is my signature group offering. Six Figure Messaging is three days towards your next 100k. 

In six figure messaging we focus heavily on accessible content that does revolve around the ADA and it revolves around bringing the ability to include disabled people into your content because that is a massive group that is often missing and forgotten about in the way that content is written, it's posted, things like that.

So, you know your content is good. I know your content is good. Let's spend three days together amplifying it to expand your audience of potential buyers to include people who are often forgotten about. Six figure messaging focuses on inclusivity and accessibility in your content. So not only are you appealing to all corners of your ideal buyer, but you're avoiding any potential legal troubles as well.

It's 147 to join the link is in the show notes, or you can find me on Instagram for more information at Kristen Unfiltered.

So, we're talking about the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and how it affects your content. Because something we talk about a lot is  the ADA and how it affects your website, and the website copy, and the website look.

What we don't talk about is how it affects your content and especially how it affects your social media. Because what we have seen is a massive rise in lawsuits in general, especially post pandemic because of things like heightened awareness. There's been increased public awareness of the ADA and disability rights, and it has empowered a lot of individuals to identify and challenge barriers that they encounter. 

So this isn't just limited to your website, this goes as far as your social media, this goes as far as  how you are on any platform. I don't even just use social media in terms of maybe Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. I'm talking about YouTube. I'm talking about Pinterest. I'm talking about all these different places.

So, another reason for an increase is the big focus on digital accessibility. Websites and mobile applications are increasingly targeted in lawsuits, because they fall under the ADA's definition of public accommodations.

Seeing as your content on any mobile platform falls under the public accommodations, you now have to make sure that you are creating your content in a way that is now legal and it abides by the ADA. So if you don't know what the ADA is, the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was actually signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in 1990. So July 26, 1990, just a mere couple of months before I was born. 

It  marked a major moment for the disability rights movement, because it granted people with disabilities the same civil rights protections that other minorities had. So, it essentially created protections for disabled people. 

That being said, because of that, it's actually been instrumental, in a sense, in improving the lives of millions of Americans with disabilities. It's led to increased access to public accommodations, employment, educational programs, but it's not foolproof. So we continuously have to make sure that we are updating.

We are making sure that it is still relevant and in 2008.  The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 was passed to kind of further clarify and strengthen the protections that were offered by the original ADA, reflecting the evolving understanding of disability and addressing limitations in court interpretations. 

Essentially, what happened was, they didn't want to have confusion over what do people consider their interpretation over certain types of wording. Because of that, the ADA's legacy was able to be kept intact. It was able to allow disabled people to still be a protected class without people interpreting certain aspects of them and their livelihood should actually be in  conversation, essentially.

That being said, let's talk about your content, because are you actually posting correctly?  Oftentimes the answer is no, and it may not even be your fault. That's not that big of an issue, however, the issue is, do you do something with the information I'm about to tell you? The content is more than just throwing up a post that just flowed out of you, right?

So, this is where you have to think about, and this is where I love talking about inclusivity and also accessibility, because you can't really talk about one without the other, usually. You have to think about the words, the photos, and the videos that you're using. Are they accessible? Are you thinking about the inclusion of the disabled population?

People who cannot see, the people who cannot hear, the people who may have a hard time with any sort of their senses. Are you thinking about how you personally could eventually be seen or how someone could eventually find your stuff and what do you do with that information? 

Are you saying “oh, okay, it may not happen to me” or “so why should I bother”?

Or are you doing things to protect yourself, protect your clients, your potential clients, and your business in general? Because you have to remember, it doesn't just apply to your websites, right? It applies to anywhere you are doing or promoting your business. If you are using your personal Facebook page, your personal Instagram, your personal TikTok, your YouTube. 

You have to have these abilities for people to have all different means of accessing your content. That being said, let's talk about what that looks like. 

When we're talking about posting the content that you have written,  we'll start with a simple photo. A photo has to have alt text. What does that alt text look like? There have actually been, there's been a lot of discussion around this the past for like probably a year or so. Because a lot of the online coaching space has actually started promoting and teaching that you can take the alt text spot and put extra sales text, or finish your caption, or do something that has something to do with the post, but it's an extension of what you were already writing. 

That's not what alt text is for. Let's go ahead and get that out of the way. Alt text is for people who are hard of seeing. It is for blind people. It is for people who may need something that speaks what photos are, because that's what alt text does. So, in order to utilize alt text correctly, you should be describing the photo and what is in it, including if it is a graphic. 

If it is a graphic, you should be describing colors, you should be describing the font, you should be describing what it says and any numbers. Talk about anything and everything that you would need to describe something to someone.  I had to teach my social media manager how to do this actually and I've had to teach a lot of people how to do this because a lot of the times people don't realize that you cannot just put whatever you want in that space  And it's not that my social media manager thought you could, it's just that people are teaching in such different ways about things that they really shouldn't be utilizing that space for, that now people are confused, or they don't exactly know how to describe things because now they're getting like  voices in their like back ear saying that they should do something or do something one way when you've got like people who are actually hard of seeing begging you to please do it the correct way. 

Now, let's talk about videos. Because I see this a lot and I think this is really important to talk about. There is this statistic that says that the bulk of the users will not watch a video on or with the sound on anymore. And it's partially because we are so consistently overloaded with video. 

Everything in life, we are so overloaded with so much happening at all times that none of us want. We don't want sound. If you are a woman or female presenting or a trans woman you have 80,000 things going on in your head at all times anyway, and then you hear the sink dripping, or you hear the computer powering up, or you hear the AC running, or you hear your Xbox running and then all of a sudden your husband sitting on the other end of the couch or your partner and they decide to play TikTok videos at the loudest possible - it just makes you want to scream, right? So why do you want to overload yourself even more? It's sensory overload. That's really all it is. 

That being said, so many of us are so tired of doing that that we've essentially stopped watching videos. If we don't want to, or if they don't have captions. That being said, Samsung actually did something really smart which I thought was really interesting. They actually came out with a thing on your phone where you can go to turn up and down your volume, but then you can also just turn on a caption reader. 

So I can turn my volume all the way down and I can have captions automatically pop up for any video that comes across my screen. Instagram obviously has captions that for their stories, for their reels, TikTok has them for their reels. Facebook will even automatically put them up for most of their live videos or most of their recorded videos. 

My computer, I have an Alienware for example.  My computer will automatically autocaption all videos.  People have gotten the memo that we don't want to be overloaded all the time because we are already so overloaded when it comes to so many different areas in our lives that we need just one less thing to get us out or at least calm us down because our nervous systems are already so overloaded.

Why do we just want to keep going and going and going and going? My ass is not the Energizer Bunny, personally. Because mobile apps are considered public accommodations, you have to put captions in your videos.  

Whenever we look at these laws, it's not just if you are in the U.S., it's if you are doing business in the U.S. That is the part so many people miss. It's very similar to, and I'm going to do an episode on this later, very similar to the GDPR.

If an American is doing any sort of business, emailing, whatever, within the EU, they have to abide by the GDPR. If anyone outside of the U.S. is doing business in the U.S. or has U.S. based clients, they have to abide by the ADA. You have to have captions in any commercial use videos or in any commercial use space. 

That is a public accommodation and your Instagram accounts, your Instagram videos, your TikTok videos, your Facebook, all of these videos, all of these things, they have to have captions. That being said, that is a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people because it is not something people like to hear or they want to hear. 

But it's also an easy fix. Things we really go into inside six figure messaging is more of how to create more ADA accessible content. Because a lot of this is what I do a really good exercise with the content itself that shows you what it's like to actually be a person who cannot see a graphic you just made or cannot see.

A post that I just wrote because then you are going to question your whole life on what have I been doing and it's a really, really eye opening experience that's for sure. That being said, if you want to go deeper into this. Go grab the replays of 6-Figure Messaging. We spent an entire day on this, plus some, because it was really important to talk deeper about why the ADA and why disabled buyers are so important and why they often get looked over. 

If you haven't already, be sure to follow the podcast and leave a review on Spotify or Apple podcast, share with a friend. If you found this interesting or helpful, and you can find video versions on YouTube, hug that subscribe button if you haven't already. And be sure to check the show notes so that you can grab your spot for the replays of 6-Figure Messaging. It's $147 and if you have questions about it, find me on Instagram @Kristenunfiltered. And I will see you next time on Business Unfiltered™: The Podcast. 

Thanks so much for listening. Bye.