One law firm brought hundreds of website accessibility cases. One of their clients says they 'beefed up' her disability in more than a dozen lawsuits.
- In 2015, just 57 businesses were sued over website accessibility. Last year, over 2,500 were.
- One of the most prolific law firms overstated a client's disability in legal filings.
- The client said she didn't even know what her lawyers were claiming about her disability.
Frances Kalender is legally blind. She has a condition called retinitis pigmentosa that is eating at her peripheral vision. She can't drive, and some things look blurry, but her central vision still works; she can read.
But in 13 lawsuits, her lawyers gave a different impression, telling a judge that Kalender couldn't browse the internet without text-to-speech software known as a screen reader.
When Insider read portions of the lawsuits filed in her name, Kalender seemed confused. She doesn't need a screen reader. In fact, she finds them somewhat annoying. "They beefed up my blindness," she said of her lawyers.
Website accessibility is a real problem for blind users, and lawsuits can be an effective way to get businesses to fix their sites. But the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act are vague, and even though over 2,500 businesses were sued last year over their websites, surveys of blind internet users suggest accessibility isn't actually getting better.
Insider spoke with attorneys, people with visual disabilities who have struggled with technology designed for sighted people, and business owners who paid to settle cases they didn't think had merit. Kalender also shared details about the strange path that led her to the doorstep of the most prolific website-accessibility lawyers in the US.