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Ready to Protect Your Brand
Ready to Protect Your Brand
Prop 65 Defense
35+ Years In Practice
Food Industry
Litigation
California · Nationwide
Class Action Defense
Prop 65 Defense
35+ Years In Practice
Food Industry
Litigation
California · Nationwide
Class Action Defense
An unexpected letter arrives, claiming your website shuts out screen-reader users and demanding payment for it. You do not know if the claim is real or just a form letter sent to hundreds of companies at once. You do not know what it will cost. You do not know if fixing the site today does anything for the claim already sitting in your inbox. And you are wondering if this is a one-time headache, or the first of many.
Those are exactly the questions our California website accessibility defense team answers for food, beverage, and supplement companies every week. The Food Lawyers® is a Chambers USA-ranked food and beverage defense boutique, and across more than 35 years defending companies like yours, we have learned how these letters are built and where they fall apart.
Schedule a Zoom Meeting and send us the letter. We will tell you plainly what you are facing, and get to work closing it.
We defend food, beverage, and supplement companies at every stage of a website accessibility claim, from the first letter to a fully filed lawsuit. And because we know the plaintiff’s bar in California, we usually know within a day whether the sender is someone who litigates these claims — or someone who just sends letters hoping for a fast payout.
We handle all of it as follows:
Each of these starts the same way, with a letter or a filing that names specific pages and specific alleged barriers, and each one needs an answer, not a form response.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title III, a company found liable for an inaccessible website faces a court order to fix the site and the plaintiff’s attorney fees, not federal damages. That is exactly why plaintiffs’ firms in California also add a claim under the Unruh Civil Rights Act to the same letter. Unruh carries a $4,000 minimum in statutory damages per violation, and a website with dozens of alleged access barriers can turn one letter into a demand that looks far larger than the underlying issue.
Does fixing the website make the claim disappear? Sometimes, and sometimes not. The legal strategy and the technical remediation have to move together, not one after the other. A rushed fix without legal input can leave the damages claim standing on its own even after the site is clean.
This reflects California and federal accessibility law as of July 2026.
Food, beverage, and supplement companies are showing up in accessibility demand letters at a higher rate than most retail categories. There is a reason for it. These sites run heavy checkout flows, subscription sign-ups, and nutrition or allergen information buried in PDFs and image-based labels. Those are common accessibility failure points, and serial filers and their counsel know exactly how to find them.
California is one of three states with the highest number of website accessibility lawsuits filed nationwide. Once one letter goes out against a company in this space, others often follow from different plaintiffs’ firms within months of the first.
Knowing that pattern in advance changes how we respond to the first letter. The goal is not just closing this claim. It is making sure the next one never gets written, and that the fix holds up if a different plaintiff comes looking six months from now.
Do not respond to the sender directly and do not take the website down. Send the letter to us first, preserve it exactly as received, and let us evaluate whether it names real, fixable issues or is a form letter sent to hundreds of companies at once. Most matters move faster once we take over the correspondence and the sender is dealing with counsel instead of your team.
Sometimes. Courts have been more willing to dismiss the federal ADA claim as moot once a website is fully fixed. But statutory damages already owed under the Unruh Act generally survive that dismissal. Federal courts may decline to keep hearing the Unruh claim at all once the ADA claim is gone, which can push the money question into state court instead of making it disappear.
Demand letter matters we handle before a lawsuit is filed often resolve within weeks, once the website issues are assessed and a response strategy is set. Once a lawsuit is filed, timelines move on the court’s schedule, but the fastest resolutions happen for companies who bring us in before that point.
Fix the site regardless, but bring in counsel before you respond to the letter itself. A remediation effort alone does not resolve the statutory damages claim already threatened, and how you respond in writing can affect your exposure and whether the letter turns into a lawsuit.
Yes, and in the food and beverage space it happens often. Once a company responds visibly, whether through a public settlement or a rushed website fix, other plaintiffs’ firms take notice. We build the response so it closes the current claim without inviting the next one.
You do not have to figure out whether this claim is real, or what it is worth, on your own. Send us the letter, and our California website accessibility defense team will tell you plainly what it will take to close it, and how to keep the next one from landing in your inbox. Schedule a Zoom Meeting with The Food Lawyers® today.
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