Accessibility Industry Update: August 2025
Hello accessibility champions, and welcome to the August 2025 edition of QualityLogic’s accessibility industry update.
In terms of accessibility, it was comparatively a slower month than we’re used to (not necessarily a bad thing). That said there are still a few updates worth noting, along with a healthy helping of fantastic reads from the community.
As always, let us know if you think we’ve missed something, or share the link with your colleagues or partners who may benefit from some or all of this information. You can also sign up to receive these accessibility updates via email.
Contents:
Upcoming Conferences and Events
- The Design + Accessibility Summit, hosted by CreativePro Network, will be held online from Tuesday September 16 – Friday September 19
- The Deaf & Hard of Hearing Accessible Technologies State of Science Conference, hosted by Gallaudet University’s Technology Access Program, will be held from September 16 – 17 2025 in Washington D.C. and online via Zoom.
- The Disability Innovation Forum will take place in Washington D.C. at the Grand Hyatt on Thursday, September 18.
Legal Stuff
Fashion Nova, INC. Pays Second Largest Digital Accessibility Settlement
By far, the biggest chunk of legal news this month was a settlement in the Alcazar v. Fashion Nova, Inc. class action lawsuit, where fast-fashion retailer Fashion Nova agreed to pay $5.15 million to resolve claims that its website was inaccessible to legally blind individuals using screen-reading software. This is the second largest publicly known digital accessibility settlement after National Federation of the Blind v. Target, where the grocer was forced to pay damages amounting to around $6 million. It is worth noting the presence of the word “digital” here, accessibility/ADA (not solely digital) lawsuits have cost businesses $240 million in one outlying case, $20 million in another, and the list goes on.
This particular lawsuit, filed in February 2020 in the Northern District of California (Case No. 4:20-cv-01434-JST), alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act by asserting that the website denied visually impaired users equal access to information and services. The settlement, announced on June 20, 2025, establishes two classes: a nationwide class for injunctive relief and a California subclass eligible for statutory damages. California class members who submit valid claims by October 20 2025 may receive up to $4,000 per household, with payments expected approximately 65 days after the final approval hearing on February 12, 2026. Any left-over funds will be donated to the American Foundation for the Blind. Additionally, Fashion Nova is required to enhance its website’s accessibility for screen-reader users.
So what? We can learn a bit from each and every case. This one in particular is a cautionary tale of failure to resolve an issue quickly. Over the five years the case dragged on, there was a reported 205 filings. Ken Nakata from Converge Accessibility summarizes this in an excellent breakdown of the situation: “It’s pointless to draw out web accessibility litigation as a defendant. If you don’t settle quickly, you will always pay more.”
Digital Accessibility Lawsuits Posed for Another Record-Breaking Year
For the past six years, UsableNet has published reports outlining the digital accessibility landscape. They do this by combing through all digital accessibility lawsuits filed in the U.S. by hand.
In July, they dropped the 2025 Midyear Accessibility Lawsuit Report, with insights from Jan 1 – June 30. Here’s what you need to know:
- Plaintiffs have already filed 2,019 digital accessibility lawsuits, and we’re only half-way through 2025. Assuming a consistent rate of growth, this puts us at an estimated 4,975 by year’s end. This would be the highest on record.
- The projected 4,975 lawsuits for 2025 represents a 20% increase over 2024’s 4,187 cases.
- New York, California, and Florida state courts are seeing a rise in filings. This can likely be attributed to state laws like California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and New York’s Human Rights Law, which offer plaintiffs favorable conditions including higher statutory damages and less judicial fatigue compared to federal courts. In Florida, the Winn-Dixie Decision provides solid precedent.
- E-commerce businesses remain the top target, comprising 69% of lawsuits in 2025.
- Companies with annual revenues exceeding $25 million are increasingly targeted, reflecting plaintiffs’ focus on high-profile brands with greater financial resources. Small to medium sized businesses are still the popular pick (64% of lawsuits targeted companies with annual revenue below $25 million). That said, some states have instated safe harbor provisions for small businesses, so there’s a good chance this continues to even out.
- Accessibility Overlays are still under fire. Over 20% of Lawsuits targeted companies with quick-fix accessibility widgets installed. This comes after the Federal Trade Commission fined overlay provider accessiBe $1 million in January 2025 for misleading claims. In addition to the community’s general consensus that Overlays do not work, there is reason to believe that Overlays stick out like a soar thumb to Serial plaintiffs.
If you want more information, you can download the PDF file directly.
AI in Accessibility
- Writing Alt Text with AI: One of the most highly sought after and frequently discussed use cases of generative AI is its ability to speed up the process of providing alternative text descriptions for images. Prompts like “describe this image” are wholly insufficient and buggy, yet what most people seem to be doing. This article does a deep dive into what works and what doesn’t.
- Accessibility Lightning Talks: AI for Accessibility, Engagement, Audio, and Access – Equal Entry: An article based on four lightning talks given at the A11yNYC conference.
- Accessibility is not optional – it’s the future of AI – Capita
What We’ve Been Reading
- Adrian Roselli called out two new Overlay products that have recently come on the scene making similar claims to accessiBe, AudioEye, and others:
- iOS26 Empowers Blind Users – Converge Accessibility: Features like a smarter Siri, braille access, App Store Nutrition Labels, live captions, and support for STEM content and BRF files make iOS 26 an exciting release to be sure. This post is a comprehensive roundup of how each works.
- The ‘Accessibility’ link is a Lie: My Adventures in Weaponizing Corporate Virtue Signaling – Sightless Scribbles: In summary: “never fight a corporation’s customer service department. Fight its legal department or its PR department. They don’t care about your inconvenience, but they are terrified of a broken promise. And their Accessibility Statement is the biggest, most legally binding promise of all.”
- While we’re on the topic of Accessibility statements, Bogdan Cerovac wrote an intersecting piece: We need to talk about your accessibility statement
- GitHub – Steady5063/Automated-Accessibility-Example-Lib: Library of accessibility automation examples that use multiple different testing frameworks: This repository offers a nice starting point for QA teams and engineers who would like to enhance their accessibility test scripts with samples for Cypress, PlayWrite, and Puppeteer plus integrations for different engines.
- Information on the 41st annual CSUN assistive technology conference (CSUNATC) is now live with calls for proposals, papers, and presentations ending in September.
- The Accessibility Assistant Figma plugin (formerly A11y-Focus Order) just got a major overhaul. Some of the new features include design walkthroughs via checklists and annotated alt text for images, headings, landmarks, and alerts.
- Cognitive Accessibility: Writing Copy That Works for Everyone – Digital Access Training
- Accessibility In 2025: Prepare For New Regulations With The Right Tools: Or why digital accessibility platforms are important.
- Check / Uncheck all in a Table – Adrian Roselli
- The top 5 digital accessibility myths debunked – The Drum
- Was my IAAP Certification worth it? – Nic Chan: Talks about the pros and cons of accreditation from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), as a healthy mix of pain points and constructive criticism.
- Please, can we have ARIA Notify – Nic Chan
- How does tech enable me as deafblind? – Torbjörn Svensson, GAAD 2025: An engaging talk from the t12t Stockholm Accessibility Meetup covering a topic that many practitioners are curious about.
- Accessibility Meets Innovation: How The ADA Shaped The Tech Industry – CRN
As always, let us know if you think we’ve missed something, or share the link with your colleagues or partners who may benefit from some or all of this information. You can also sign up to receive these accessibility updates via email.