Fashion Nova has reached a sizable accessibility suit by agreeing to pay $5.15 million, offering damages of as much as $4,000 for eligible blind consumers who were denied equal access to the fast-fashion retailer’s website. The settlement is among the largest digital accessibility agreements in recent years and demonstrates growing legal consequences for companies that discriminate against individuals with disabilities.
The accessibility lawsuit and its origins
The class action lawsuit, filed in February 2020 by Juan Alcazar in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, alleged Fashion Nova’s website violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. The plaintiff alleged that the company’s website was incompatible with screen-reading software, thereby denying legally blind individuals “an experience equivalent to that of sighted persons”.
The case lasted five years with over 205 court filings, displaying the heavy legal cost of long accessibility cases. Fashion Nova has continuously denied liability during litigation, maintaining that the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing or a violation of any law.
Terms of settlement and payment structure
The $5.15 million settlement establishes two different plaintiff classes with different benefits:
- Nationwide class: Legally blind individuals who attempted to access Fashion Nova’s website using screen-reading software from February 26, 2018, to the date of final judgment. This class is subject to injunctive relief requiring website accessibility changes.
- California subclass: Legally blind individuals living in California who meet the same criteria are also subject to receiving compensatory damages under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which gives statutory damages up to $4,000 for each violation.
California class members can be given a maximum of $4,000 per household, with a single payment per household regardless of the number of eligible people residing there. The final payment sum relies on the number of approved claims received. If there is not enough money left to give every claimant $4,000, the settlement administrator will split the remaining money evenly among all approved claims.
Critical October 20, 2025 deadline
All members of the California class must submit claim forms on or before October 20, 2025, to receive payment. The deadline is for multiple actions:
- Submitting claim forms seeking money damages
- Submitting exclusion requests from the settlement
- Submitting objections to the terms of the settlement
Complaints can be filed online at www.FashionNovaAccessibilitySettlement.com or mailed to the settlement administrator. No documentation is required, but claimants must provide approximate dates of accessing the Fashion Nova website and affirm under oath that they are legally blind.
Website accessibility violations
The suit explicitly named some of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) violations, the international standard of digital access. Fashion Nova’s website was said to contain a number of screen-reader barriers:
- Missing alternative text: Graphics, graphs, and visual elements had no textual descriptions that screen readers utilize in order to present content to blind users.
- Empty links: Hyperlinks contained no descriptive text, making users without any means to understand where links would redirect them.
- Redundant links: Multiple sequential links with the same description led to confusion for assistive technology users.
- Inaccessible linked images: Linked images were not giving alternative information about their destination or the purpose they serve.
These hindered blind customers in effective browsing of products, reading reviews, buying products, and accessing other essential website functionality that was effortless for sighted users.
Settlement administration and payment timeline
Upon court approval, payments to entitled California class members will be disbursed approximately 65 days after the February 12, 2026, final approval hearing. The settlement administrator, CPT Group Inc., will process the claims and pay out via either check or electronic transfer based on claimants’ options.
Any balance left over after payment of all allowable claims shall be given to the American Foundation for the Blind. Fashion Nova is also required to become “substantially conformance” with WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines to make its website more accessible to future visually impaired users.
Broader implications for digital accessibility
This settlement is the second-largest publicly disclosed digital accessibility settlement, following the National Federation of the Blind v. Target case which was valued at approximately $6 million in damages. The considerable settlement indicates the increasing financial risk that companies are subjected to whenever websites fail to accommodate individuals who are disabled.
Legal commentators point out that California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act substantially boosts possible damages in access cases since it defines any failure to comply with federal nondiscrimination laws as a state civil rights violation with financial penalties of up to $4,000 per occurrence. With its dual-jurisdiction approach, California has become a center for access litigation.
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