ORLANDO, Fla — Action 9 is continuing to investigate the lawsuits targeting business over the accessibility of their websites.
Earlier this month, our team showed thousands of businesses across the country have been hit with lawsuits alleging their websites don’t meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.
Now, we’re taking a close look at the difficulty facing the blind, how hard it is for business to comply and at a stronger push for changes in the law.
The National Retail Federation, which represents businesses, is concerned about the lawsuits. It says the businesses want to comply to better serve the blind, but the way the businesses are getting hit with the lawsuits without a chance to correct the problems first isn’t fair.
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Luz Marina Rosenfeld has a service dog, cane, and special glasses.
Those glasses can describe out loud what’s in front of her. They help Rosenfeld navigate websites better than using screen reading software alone, but over the years using the web hasn’t been easy.
“Many times I couldn’t get on websites, my husband [would] have to help me,” she said.
While Rosenfeld hasn’t filed any lawsuits, that type of difficulty has led to a wave of litigation aimed at businesses with websites that allegedly aren’t ADA compliant. That includes Leaf & Blossom, Co., a small mother-daughter flower shop in Orlando.
“I’m just sitting there thinking, what on earth? Is this a scam?,” said Ajeeta Khanna, owner of Leaf & Blossom, Co. recalling her reaction after getting sued over the company website.
Khanna said they paid out thousands of dollars in a settlement and attorney fees even though they believed their website was compliant.
She’s not alone.
Action 9 and investigative teams from other Cox Media Group television stations combed through tens of thousands of lawsuits across the country. They found more than 15,000 in the past 4-years claiming visually impaired people had trouble accessing a company’s website.
In 2025 alone, they tracked nearly 4,000 cases and 90% were filed by just 16 law firms. That includes a Florida firm that represents Victor Ariza. Ariza is a blind man who has sued hundreds of businesses like Disney Parks, SeaWorld and Leaf & Blossom, Co.
Action 9 caught up with Victor Ariza at his Miami apartment.
Consumer Investigator Jeff Deal asked, “Do you think that the lawsuits have helped the blind?”
Answering in Spanish, Ariza said, “100%. A lot, of course.”
He went on to say the lawsuits are not cash grabs. As an advocate, he believes the lawsuits have made a difference in bringing better website accessibility for the visually impaired.
“I hate to attribute bad motives to people who I know actually do have these disabilities. We’re not debating that, but I do believe it is a money grab by the lawyers,” said Stephanie Martz with the National Retail Federation.
Martz said this issue has been on her radar for nearly a decade. She noted it’s in the best interest for businesses to comply with ADA requirements to cater to more customers, but she said when the law was drafted in the late 1980’s and early 90’s it was aimed at physical spaces not websites.
“The notion of e-commerce was not even a glimmer in anyone’s eye then,” she said.
Web developer Rory Martin said there are different levels of compliance and meeting the highest ADA standards on a website isn’t easy.
“There’s AAA which is almost impossible. You would have to have a full-time compliance team editing every single day based on current content,” he said.
Martin helps businesses get compliant. The size of the business and the number of pages on the website determines how much work is involved.
Martin said, “It’s a lot less expensive to get compliant than it is to get sued.”
Still, the National Retail Federation and many businesses believe the law needs to be updated to better define the website requirements and allow businesses time to make corrections, to help people like Luz Marina Rosenfeld instead of getting hit with crippling lawsuits right away.
Rosenfeld said, “They (websites) need a lot of fixing sometimes.”
Right now, Missouri is considering a bill to curb what some believe are predatory ADA lawsuits targeting small businesses, but the National Retail Federation would really like to see Congress change the ADA law at the federal level to have different requirements for physical spaces and websites.
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