May 2021 Digital Accessibility Lawsuit Information

• 187 website accessibility lawsuits were filed in May.
• Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Durables & Apparel and Consumer Staples were targeted most.
• Three plaintiffs filed 41% of the month's website accessibility lawsuits.
• COHEN & MIZRAHI LLP filed the most complaints in May with 36 lawsuits in New York.
• Most lawsuits (73%) were filed in New York with California coming in second at 19%
• We detected that 17% of litigated websites in May are using a third-party accessibility overlay tool, up 10% from April.

Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Durables & Apparel and Consumer Staples were targeted most in May with a combined total of 79 lawsuits — 42.47% of the month's total cases. Food, Beverage, & Tobacco also appears on the list of top-five targeted industries for the second consecutive month.

Most lawsuits (73%) were filed in New York with the second-most coming from California with 19%.

This has been the pattern for several months now, as New York has produced the highest number of website accessibility lawsuits for 13 consecutive months.

Third-Party Overlays

We detected that 17% of litigated websites in May are using a third-party accessibility Overlay tool.

Typically overlays, or widgets, apply the third-party’s source code to the existing code of the host website in an effort to change the user experience by overriding or adding to the existing code. Overlays are often added instead of manually identifying or resolving accessibility barriers in a website’s code and design, which would generally occur during an audit or test from an accessibility subject matter expert. By not addressing the underlying cause of accessibility barriers, the effectiveness of overlays has been debated. There has also been an increase in the number of lawsuits against websites that use third-party overlays.

Plaintiffs Who Filed the Most Lawsuits

Cristian Sanchez filed 36 lawsuits in May and was the most litigious website accessibility plaintiff for four consecutive months. Three plaintiffs accounted for 41% of the month's cases.

COHEN & MIZRAHI LLP filed the most complaints in May with 36 lawsuits. MARS KHAIMOV LAW, PLLC filed the second-most suits with 24. All five of the firms that filed the most lawsuits in May are based in New York.