NEW YORK — A blind man has filed a class-action lawsuit against Playboy.com for discrimination because the site allegedly isn’t compatible with his screen-reading software.
In the suit, plaintiff Donald Nixon claims Playboy.com is violating the American Disabilities Act (ADA) by not making the site accessible to the blind.
Nixon is seeking class-action status with the civil suit that seeks unspecified damages and a change in “corporate policies, practices and procedures so that defendant’s website will become and remain accessible to blind and visually-impaired consumers.”
In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Nixon, who lives in Queens, complained that blind and visually-impaired people “cannot fully and equally use or enjoy the facilities, products and services” because images lack “a text equivalent.” The suit also said that text cannot be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without losing content or functionality and that there are time limits that the user cannot extend.
The lawsuit also accuses PlayboyShop.com of breaching the ADA, and that because the software has the same issues, he’s unable to purchase products from the site.
According to the New York Post, Nixon has filed 47 similar suits against companies for ADA violations.
Industry attorney Lawrence Walters of Walters Law Group, who isn't a party to the suit, said that many ADA claims are settled out of court, "often after some reasonable accommodation is made and a monetary settlement is reached."
"It is difficult to determine at this early stage whether this claim is viable, but it should serve as a warning about the many legal risks taken by operating a website in the current litigious environment," Walters told XBIZ.
Nixon’s lawyer, Jonathan Shalom, and Playboy did not respond for XBIZ comments by post time.
