Flor Jimenez, a person who is legally blind, has filed a class action lawsuit in California against the Hyatt. The plaintiff alleges the hotel’s website puts up barriers for people who use screen readers. The barriers prevent the plaintiff from enjoying full, equal access to the company’s products and services. The complaint alleges that this violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.
According to the complaint, form elements are not coded properly to be accessible to screen readers. One example is screen reader users cannot explore Hyatt properties in a particular part of the world. For example, searching for Hawaii there are five Hyatt properties. Those are not explained to the screen reader.
This isn’t the first time Flor Jimenez has filed a class action lawsuit against a hotel. Martinez is also behind the Four Seasons ADA Class Action lawsuit, Ayres Hotel Co. and others.
Thomas Logan: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next episode of Accessibility Insights. This is Thomas Logan from Equal Entry, and I’m here with Ken Nakata from Converge Accessibility. In this episode, we’re talking about a new lawsuit from Flor Jimenez, a person who’s legally blind, and his product class action lawsuit in California against the Hyatt.
He’s alleging the hotel’s website has barriers for people who use a screen reader. This could both be potentially a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. Let’s dive into this. First, starting up with Ken, what’s unique about this claim?
What Is Unique About This Claim?
Ken Nakata: Well, the (John) Does 1 to 10 are some unnamed defendants that or alleged to have possibly committed some misdeeds in the complaint that would lead to the damages that the plaintiffs are seeking to redress.
To tell you the truth, I’ve never seen a complaint styled this way. Because usually you wouldn’t name third-party defendants like this. Instead, you just name your one defendant that you know, and then as you discover things, you start adding new defendants. So, it is pretty interesting to me that they just put out there in their complaint that there are some other potential defendants.
And so it seems pretty clear that they are going to be amending this complaint down the road to include the specific things that those defendants did wrong.
Thomas Logan: And is the idea that those other defendants would be people that participated in the design and development of the website?
Ken Nakata: I think so. It isn’t really clear. The complaint just says that the identities of these Does 1 through 10 will be ascertained in the future. And, that they are somehow legally responsible for, in some manner, for the events and happenings that are alleged by, in the complaint. And that could potentially include people like web developers.
And under the Americans with Disabilities Act, it’s really hard to sue third-party developers. But it is a lot easier under Unruh, I think, to do that, although it’s, it’s even tricky there.
What Is California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act?
Thomas Logan: Okay, so you just mentioned Unruh. What is the Unruh Act? I know this relates to California, but how is this a unique for a type of lawsuit brought in California? What’s the Unruh Act?
Ken Nakata: The Unruh Act is a California law that protects the civil rights of various classes of people. Not just people with disabilities, but also other protected classes. So Unruh can be used to bring a gender discrimination claim or a racial discrimination claim. There is some specific provisions primarily brought in through the Disabled Persons Act that allows people with disabilities to also sue under Unruh.
And there are a couple of unique things about it. The ADA, for instance, does not allow you to seek compensatory damages. It only allows you to go after attorney fees and an injunction to correct the problem that caused the problem. Under Unruh however, you’re entitled to get the same sorts of things, but you’re also entitled to get liquidated damages of four thousand dollars.
And actually, it’s more than that. You can actually get your actual damages times three. Or if you can’t figure out what those actual damages are, then it just defaults to four thousand dollars per claim. So, potentially, you can get a lot of money under Unruh. But in order to sue for a disability claim under Unruh, it’s kind of complicated.
There are only two ways you can really do it. First is you have to prove an underlying ADA violation. So that’s one way. The second way is if you can show intent. So there are certain things as we all know that don’t really rise to an ADA claim. For instance, if you sue a purely online only company in California, you can’t sue under the ADA because of this crazy thing called the nexus requirement, which is well beyond the scope of today’s podcast. But you can sue an online only company under the Unruh Act, but not the ADA.
But if you do that, then you have to show intent, which basically means that you have to show that the person intended to create something that was inaccessible. So, it’s a pretty high bar.
Thomas Logan: I think famously in 2006, Target was the poster child of the accessibility world for being held accountable under the Unruh Act. How are they able to do that now?
Ken Nakata: So in 2006, the NFB sued Target Corporation, and they brought the claim both under Unruh and the ADA. But in that case, they were able to prove that nexus requirement. So that case didn’t require Target to show intent. The reason why the NFB was able to get six million dollars in the settlement agreement from Target was because of the Unruh Act and the California class of plaintiffs.
Hey Thomas, can you give us a demonstration of some of the problems that are on the Hyatt website to see whether the allegations of the plaintiffs really have any legs to them?
Hyatt Website Demo
Thomas Logan: I’d love to do that.
The plaintiff alleged quite a bit of problems on the Hyatt website, but let’s try taking a look at exploring the different properties that are available on hyatt.com. So here I’m on the explore page.
I’m going to start voiceover the screen reader and try searching for hotels in Hawaii, because I feel like going to Hawaii.
VoiceOver: VoiceOver on Chrome, map of Hyatt Hotels and Resorts Worldwide. Vertical line. Hyatt Hotel Locations – Google Chrome – Accessibility (equal…) Keyboard shortcut. Type to search. Use up or down arrows to scroll through items.
And Tab or Enter to select.
Thomas Logan: So first thing here, the field is actually labeled “Type to search.” But we didn’t read “Where can Hyatt take you?” I would have to navigate.
VoiceOver: Where can Hyatt take you?
Thomas Logan: around with the screen reader to move to that item. It’s kind of a small issue, but it would be nice to have “Where can Hyatt take you?” associated with the search field.
I’d say that’s minor, but when we tap
VoiceOver: Keyboard shortcuts, button, map, keyboard, Type to search. Use up or down arrows to scroll through items, and
Thomas Logan: I’m now going to type Hawaii into the search field.
VoiceOver: Hawaii.
Thomas Logan: On the screen, I can see that various results have popped up in this dialogue. There are actually four different resorts available in this list that’s displayed visually on the screen, but the screen reader does not know that. Nothing was announced by the screen reader to indicate that any results were populating on the screen.
So that’s definitely an issue. We need that to be equivalent. So I would agree this is a big issue for Hyatt to fix. When I try to navigate down into the search results using
VoiceOver: Menu pop-up combo box Hawaii. Hawaii.
Thomas Logan: As I move through the items in the search results, visually on the screen, we see that results are updating, but there is no announcement by voiceover.
So again, this is a huge issue. I should be hearing what result I’m on.
VoiceOver: Hawaii.
Thomas Logan: For example, here I should be hearing “Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort.” So there’s an issue. So now when I try to search for Hawaii, I hit “Enter,” nothing happens, “Spacebar.” You can see that it activates visually on the screen, but nothing actually searches.
So, really to get this to work, I’m going to have to use my mouse to click on Hawaii, United States, which that’s also a big issue for a screen reader user. They’re obviously not going to be using the mouse to interact with the screen.
VoiceOver: Hawaii, United States. Type to search. Use up or down arrows to scroll through items.
Thomas Logan: Now I have a visual of the Hawaiian islands, and I can see visually that there’s five blue dots on the screen that represent properties that Hyatt has in Hawaii. A mouse user could hover over these and click on them. But for a screen reader user, let’s see if we can actually access those dots and find out information about the properties.
VoiceOver: Keyboard shortcuts. Map. Zoom in, button, map, Zoom in, Zoom out, link, image, Keyboard shortcuts, link, Zoom out, Zoom in, map.
Thomas Logan: So basically I can hear map and I can get to the zoom buttons but I can’t actually get to these points that are down inside of the map. Again I would have to use the mouse
VoiceOver: map, map
Thomas Logan: to hover over those items and then I would have to
VoiceOver: map
Thomas Logan: also click with the mouse to get to the information. Not sure I want to spend $800 a night for a hotel. But if I can even get to that information with the screen reader, I’m not even able to decide if I want to choose to stay at that resort.
So. I would say just from these few examples, the case has merit. There’s a lot of accessibility work that Hyatt needs to do on this demonstration here, and probably in the other places that the plaintiff alleged.
Ken Nakata: Wow! We’d love to hear from you. Let’s continue the conversation. Please add comments and we’ll be happy to respond. Thank you so much for your time and we look forward to seeing you in our next episode.
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