We recently consulted with a client who had been sued over the accessibility of their vacation rental website. The client in question wasn’t AirBnB or Vrbo, but it was a similar type of property rental site where visitors can book a stay in someone else’s home, condo, apartment, etc.
The Problem
The client had already settled the lawsuit so the next step was simply meeting the terms of the settlement agreement which included making the website WCAG 2.1 AA conformant. The primary problem was that the featured content of the site, the properties, were populated by third-party listing aggregators and the client has no control over this content and it’s not like they can just turn the feed off – if the feed turns off, there is no business.
The content the feed provides includes:
- photos of the property
- details for the listing (price, amenities, etc.)
- reviews
So the feed is mostly flat content rather than interactive elements – and this is a good thing because it means the fixes are fairly straightforward:
- descriptive alt text or, potentially, null alt attributes (for decorative images)
- semantic markup for the text (heading structure, unordered lists, etc.)
What’s concerning here is that alt text is the #1 most commonly claimed issue in website accessibility litigation and headings are also among the top claimed issues (we know, our ADA Compliance Course is actually built around fixing the most commonly claimed issues in website accessibility lawsuits).
But coming back to the original issue, property rental sites (and there are many of them) don’t have control over the listings feed so they can’t remediate them.
How to Fix
But even if they had code access, what are they going to do, continually remediate every new rental listing that comes on the market?
That’s impractical from a money and time standpoint. What needs to happen is 1) the feed aggregator formats and structures the listing content to be filled in in such a way that it follows accessibility best practices and 2) the property owner (the person listing their house, condo, etc.) needs to provide the alt text descriptions for each image.
In accessibility, one important decision when it comes to images – and in this case images of homes and properties – is whether or not they are meaningful or decorative (i.e., they don’t convey material information). If they’re decorative, we simply mark them as null which means the images won’t be read by screen readers.
However, in this case, the photos of the properties are absolutely meaningful. As potential renters, we look through the images to learn more about the property, beyond the text information, things like:
- What does the backyard look like?
- Is there a fence?
- What is the layout of the house?
- How spacious are the bathrooms?
And so on.
Now if the information if the photos is sufficiently conveyed through text, then we could potentially null out the alt attributes. But that’s currently not the case and so, one way or another, we need to have that visual information present in the listing and it usually isn’t currently.
(One other note: alt text needs to be not only descriptive, but as concise as possible so there is a balancing act here.)
So here’s where the feed aggregators/distributors need to play their role and not only provide the structure and markup, but also require the individual property listers to sufficiently describe the visual information conveyed through the photos in their listing.
Client Next Steps
After we explained the situation, the client elected to move forward with an accessibility audit along with technical support so that we could help their developer in remediating what accessibility issues existed on their vacation rental site otherwise.
We also let the client know that, contingent upon fixing all issues within their control, we could even issue a statement of partial conformance – third-party content. This document represents that the owner/operator of a digital asset has made the asset (a website, in this case) fully conformant with a given technical standard (e.g., WCAG 2.1 AA) other than content outside of their control.
It acts very much like a certification that represents they’ve taken accessibility as far as they can.
Risk Remains
Of course, the other side of this is that there is still risk of being sued again – even after remediation takes place. Plaintiffs’ lawyers engaged in serial website accessibility litigation are relentless and seek out technical accessibility issues to carve out a claim of intentional discrimination and thus a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
The risk is reduced, for sure, but we let the client know that there is still the possibility they are sued again because of the issues that the feed presents.
The Best Path Forward
Owners of vacation rental sites need to put tremendous pressure on the feed aggregators to prioritize accessibility immediately. Ultimately it’s those who control the feeds who have ultimate control of the feed content and they need to level up this game to make accessibility easier for property rental sites.
If you need help with accessibility and following best practices for ADA compliance, you’re welcome to contact us and we’ll be right with you.
