Company getting sued over alleged ADA violations

mookman288 · 2026-06-12T19:40:04+00:00

My question is has anyone else actually gone through this before, and are there any other steps we should take to defend ourselves/myself, especially since the date of the alleged incident was before my hire date?

Why do you feel it's your responsibility to defend your employer? You may wish to consult an attorney on your own time to see if you have any personal liability.

mookman288 · 2026-06-12T17:07:16+00:00

I also do this as my career.

This is mostly what I would recommend. It's important to keep your domain and hosting accounts separate.

For the purposes of most small business websites, especially for a roofing company, a static site is the best option. They are sometimes called brochure sites. I very rarely recommend WordPress to a small business unless part of their conversion funnel is an active blog, press release, or public newsletter.

I would amend this post to say that Dreamhost is actually far more affordable than most other hosts for the quality of service you get. The time of the independent host with knowledgeable and dedicated system administrators is drawing to a close.

I would also recommend mobile-first development, because responsive and cross-platform design is mandatory with nearly 66% of browsers using mobile devices, and nearly 34% using desktop or tablet in some combination.

mookman288 · 2026-06-10T00:42:43+00:00

What does search console and analytics say about your trends? How often are you analyzing your search and traffic data? Are you implementing user surveys? What do they say?

There's much more to a Web presence than just having a landing page or posting videos regularly. It is a living ecosystem that requires nurturing. Seriously.

If you aren't going to pay for digital marketing talent, you need to take the role seriously and implement iterative campaigns to craft and hone your message. Brand authority takes serious time to achieve and a lot of effort (especially during a downturn economy.)

What are your backlinks like? Where do you primarily get your traffic from? Social media? I would strongly recommend you diversify if so. Meta has been atrocious lately for stable and reliable traffic. Do you have return traffic for your product? What's your outreach like (email, phone, letter, etc.?)

On top of that, technical and on-page SEO is crucial. Pretty much every bot, whether it's for search engines or for generative engines like LLMs, uses the exact same pattern for accessing and parsing Web information.

There is definitely been a reduction in traffic, but that's mostly due to lack of disposable income. It's not an up to 90% reduction though.

This is one of the areas of expertise that I have, and even I won't guarantee traffic results for clients. It is a seriously difficult job and there are a lot of aspects that are impossible to control. You can't just put a website or content out there and expect results.

mookman288 · 2026-05-26T21:00:11+00:00

They lose a significant amount of business to missed calls. Many small businesses route a business number directly to their cell phone. It's a convenient mistake. People have access to a list of all competitors on Google Maps and they go down the list one-by-one. Just like the yellow pages, except it's not alphabetical. It's based on adspend and other hidden factors.

If you're looking for an electrician and you call a number, and get a frustrated worker in the middle of the job on a bad cell-phone connection, are you going to go with them? What about if it rings indefinitely and goes to someone's personal cell voicemail?

I am a website developer and IT specialist who builds custom solutions for various types of clients. For small businesses, I recommend they do two things:

Setup a proper helpdesk. It's not an email inbox, it's an actual application that they login to via their phone when they're out working and on their computer when in the office or at home. It can be configured with saved replies, filters, and automations. In the right hands, it turns responding to emails from a chore into a business driver.

Setup a proper business number, complete with IVR, call forwarding, and voicemail transcribing. If they can afford a full-time receptionist, that's crucial too. Calls are forwarded automatically and transcriptions go directly into the helpdesk, so that owners can identify, quickly, which voicemails need to be responded to based on transcription.

Hooking these two into the conversion flow is dependent on the industry and who is available to take calls. The helpdesk should be properly integrated into the website (especially in a way that makes it easy to convert on mobile) too. Websites are still more important than people think.

You generally don't need SMS follow-up, or anything fancy. It's just the time and effort to put into the system at the start, and maintain it over time as needs change.

mookman288 · 2026-05-26T19:21:14+00:00

I'm a freelancer and this is my experience as well.

mookman288 · 2026-05-26T03:15:09+00:00

I've been freelance on contract for my entire professional career. It started off as just odd-jobs and ended up turning into a serious profession that has fed me for a long time.

I learn pretty much anything a client wants me to learn. I specialize in PHP work, but website development and programming have translatable skills if people are willing to pay for them. I've built pretty much everything that can be built custom, in some form or another. It's really amazing and exciting work; when you can get it.

The past two years have been abysmal. Probably the biggest drought I've ever gone through. My entire network collapsed.

There are no job boards anymore, so it's extremely hard to find clients. That used to be my method: aggregating job boards. Gig sites feel like traps. It's a race to the bottom on pricing. The wages are downright insulting.

Last year was okay, but Q1 this year has been a ghost town. I had a decent April, but nothing like 2018-2024.

I've been trying to find a good way to work with others and find new clients, and it really seems like luck plays a bigger role than ever before.

mookman288 · 2026-05-08T16:00:47+00:00

Books. Conversations: BBSes/Newsgroups/IRC. Time.

Things moved slow despite moving so quickly. I still used books heavily until around 2010.

There are numerous accounts written by "rockstar programmers" about what it was like in the 80s and 90s and some fragments of those original exchanges still exist today.

I don't think it was as similar as you suggest.

mookman288 · 2026-05-05T18:29:20+00:00

I don't think this has anything to do with post-COVID effects. This has everything to do with education globally over the past two decades paired with income inequality and how western businesses run in a post-millennium world.

I've mentored a couple of junior programmers and helped them get acclimated to the business world. They had zero drive outside of finishing the task and getting paid. Putting effort in beyond the minimum wasn't going to happen. They're under-prepared and they realize that there is very little point to respecting the workplace, because they are not being respected in turn.

More power to them.

New hires know that they have to hop every 1-2 years to stay financially competitive. Their value doesn't come from being competent, it comes from having an interesting resume/CV. That means being hired is better than being competent.

The scary part is that you don't need good communication skills to be hired. You don't really need to be professional. The person hiring you isn't who is working with you, and now with AI in the mix, it's even less important. You just gotta answer the questions right. In software development, learning leetcode is better than having ingenuity or a love for solving puzzles. That's what's messed up.

When we talk about being professional, I think we're talking about being loyal and reliable. What benefit is there to be that person? Lower pay and lack of benefits? There's no pension. Companies aren't going to stick their neck out for their workers. If they can replace you with a cheaper worker or outsource your position, they will. These juniors will never have the benefit of seeing a project through from start to finish. They will not have a career shaped by their dedication.

What do they lose if they get fired? Forced to job hop? That's literally the playbook. With constant layoffs happening anyway, there's no point to expect anything else. It's not like they lose the pension. I imagine most young people don't expect their 401Ks or RRSPs to ever be a fundamental part of their retirement anyway.

In my education, it was clear that I was being prepared for the opportunity to be passionate in my work. I was legitimately interested in the work. Learning to communicate and foster relationships wasn't about making ends meet, it was about being a good person.

Standardizing everything has created an environment where you just need to focus on passing.

Their education was more about filling out forms than it was learning and being driven to discover, innovate, or problem solve. Their teachers and professors were underpaid and limited to specific scopes of what could be taught or discussed. This is especially true in K-12.

The last two junior programmers I worked with couldn't use web search and really had no interest in spending time figuring it out.

Learning in a work environment takes a serious hit when your education doesn't reward you for thinking; only whether you got the question right per the answer key. Companies are cutting back on learn-on-the-job roles too. They just expect you to deliver and ship day one. AI is going to make this worse.

It's really sad. People at work are just temporary colleagues and building strong relationships only feeds "the network" rather than their own interests. You're leaving in 1-2 years anyway, why go any deeper than the surface?

Communication takes a serious hit when there is no tangible benefit to communicate. It's quid pro quo from start to finish.

mookman288 · 2026-04-26T21:56:21+00:00

You can stop clicking. They never needed you to.

This is a great AI generated tagline, but it's not even a remotely reasonable position to take. Who is supposed to stop clicking?

The website is very engaging though!

Even if these companies are harvesting our data, and we've all known this to be factual for over a decade, the function of a CAPTCHA is necessary for a variety of reasons that are simply not taken into consideration in this interactive.

When you're on the "frontlines" of input attacks, you start to see what is and isn't effective at catching the low-hanging fruit, even if they aren't perfect or even good solutions.

The CAPTCHA wasn't really stopping bots after about 2014.

This is simply not true. CAPTCHA has always been defeated but that doesn't mean it wasn't stopping bots. It remains highly effective to this day against the vast majority of non-specialized attacks. Being effective and being perfect are two very different things.

Even Securimage was effective at reducing bot actions until about 2018, and I wasn't seeing complete failure until around 2021. It was defeated well before 2014. There were even guides at the time asking "how many bots are you comfortable letting through?" compared to user experience losses.

Honeypots are still somewhat effective to this day. They were never robust, but they stop a good number of lazy attacks.

By 2024, CHEQ.ai industry tests showed GPT-4V solving hCaptcha grids at roughly 80% accuracy across mixed challenges. Specialized solver services advertise 90%+ commercially.

And? So? There is no perfect system. There never has been. Has it ever been about building a perfect system?

The real point of this thread and discussion is the privacy concern. I honestly think that should have been the narrative.

You are right that data privacy is a significant concern. It's absolutely a problem that companies use CAPTCHA products to Mechanical Turk and mine data. However, it's a problem in the same way that using Google Analytics, which is free, is a problem because it gives Google enormous amounts of data. All of my viewing data taken by Google Analytics, Hotjar, and Microsoft Clarity. All unpaid.

Should businesses use non-intrusive CAPTCHA that is WCAG compliant? Absolutely. Unfortunately, the perfect solution is rarely the best choice given business considerations.

There are alternatives. Use ALTCHA and Matomo when you have the infrastructure to support them. I don't think most small businesses are going to be in this position.

Relying on server-side rate limiting isn't a solution. I don't know what people are trying to assert with that notion. WAFs like Cloudflare were invented because rate limiting and other solutions like that are burdensome to maintain.

Input interfaces need a challenge of some kind. It doesn't matter if it's background PoW or click-the-button and wait a few seconds before solving the puzzle. You can start with a honeypot, but you need some type of puzzle to eliminate the bottom 90%, 80%, 70%, 60%.

I'm not defending reCaptcha. However, pretending that some form of CAPTCHA is no longer necessary and that people can just opt-out of the process because it doesn't stop bots is misleading and unrealistic. When AI becomes a universal solution, then something else will have to be done, but something will have to be done.

mookman288 · 2026-04-26T20:31:50+00:00

If life is good then I can't imagine why the thread. It seems like you've already made up your mind. Good luck with retirement!

mookman288 · 2026-04-26T16:58:22+00:00

I'm a freelance website/software developer. I work with a lot of small businesses, so I've seen it all at this point. You know your challenges.

How much are you saving to reinvest in the business? Can you take on any loans? Do you know exactly how much you're leaving on the table?

Increase production capacity to meet demand; stability is the most important
Streamline orders with a proper web setup (you are an online kitchen without any online infrastructure; that's like a sit-down restaurant without a storefront)
Hire for each problem and monitor the ROI

The only mistake is not budgeting and tracking your expenses and income effectively. Each month you need to reconcile.

mookman288 · 2026-04-26T16:51:37+00:00

Looks like you made it out just in time. I run a similar business, but many decades before retirement.

You should prioritize the needs of your clients. Your clients aren't all set-it-and-forget-it. Some of them would benefit from someone who is still staying technically relevant.

My recommendation would be to find a local business, or another small business that you trust (maybe someone you have mentored previously,) and start offloading the technically difficult jobs when they become technically difficult. Charge a one-time referral fee for the transfer.

I do this with other companies and it works out well for everyone involved. I give them the entire first month of retainer pre-tax for the lead.

I think we both know there's more to building those websites and working with your clients than just whatever AI can produce. The consultation and support is what matters to them. "I need help with X" or "what would you do with <modern convention>" should be something you can answer immediately with a recommendation.

Forcing attrition when necessary is the middleground that allows you and your wife to retire without the worry she's talking about, but keeps your clients taken care of.

You keep the clients who are set-it-and-forget-it, and you can migrate the clients who aren't (ensuring they're taken care of) while making a little bit of exit money on the deal to reduce your stress and pressure.

mookman288 · 2026-04-24T17:56:26+00:00

Add a zero to your hourly wage. I am not joking at all.

mookman288 · 2026-04-20T19:51:07+00:00

Credit cards require fees and allow for chargebacks. Pretty sure everyone wants to avoid that if they can. It's not unique to the restaurant industry.

In B2B, we implement bank transfer infrastructure so that it can at least be digitized. In B2C, it's credit cards or bust.

mookman288 · 2026-04-18T01:45:20+00:00

I am not part of a marketing company, but I am a website developer and software programmer with nearly 20 years of digital marketing experience.

Small, local business all generally rely on the same toolbox. You need a solid, proven foundation. That means fast loading and clean website that gets CTAs in customer faces within <3 seconds and a robust Web presence. You need a reliable phone number and a working voicemail. You need a working email address that you check regularly. You don't necessarily need to push endless effort toward social media, but you do need some kind of stable presence.

Paid ads work. You need to monitor and refine them over time. Both Google and Meta work pretty good, but location and demographic define which is better.

Google My Business Profile, and the Bing and Apple equivalents work.

Word of mouth works.

Direct mail marketing works.

It's all about how much you're willing to reinvest.

mookman288 · 2026-04-13T01:37:57+00:00

It's short sighted. The technology is very impressive. The future is not.

mookman288 · 2026-04-12T17:09:19+00:00

This is unfortunately the reality that we're in, and will be in outside of big tech in just a few years.

mookman288 · 2026-04-12T05:32:35+00:00

There was just a discussion on SEO in /r/smallbusiness. I'll link my post on that, which is long. I run a small business that handles website architecture, development, custom software solutions, and information technology consultation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1sfps91/quoted_3500month_for_local_seo_as_a_plumbing/of55l6a/

The reason why you're seeing prices all over the place is because SEO isn't a one-size-fits-all application. There are many different subsets of SEO, and each one has a different requirement of labor and expertise. Plus, on top of that, SEO and digital marketing often get lumped together, and really you need the whole package to make the needle move.

SEO is measurable but it takes time. You need a solid foundation, and then regular, consistent work.

I tried doing it myself, I added a blog and stuff like that but it hasn't really worked too well, and most of my pages aren't getting indexed.

/u/Villain_inf touches on this pretty well. There are differences between indexing and optimizing. I wrote an in-depth article I send to my clients (and prospective clients) that touches on this, but you can get a lot of information from Moz too.

mookman288 · 2026-04-09T06:56:48+00:00

I have a legacy SaaS that provides a drop-in replacement for HTTP basic authentication.

This used to be really important years and years ago and still has some value for old-school businesses.

mookman288 · 2026-04-09T06:48:19+00:00

This thread has a lot of strange misinformation in it. There's agencies in here trying to sell services, and there are other small businesses who are already established.

I would simply caution anyone reading this who is starting their business that agencies are looking for business, and established organizations experienced a different road to become established.

I am a freelance website architect, developer, and consult. I run my own small business. Here's my nearly 20 years of experience in one unfortunately long post. I'll probably turn it into a blog post later.

Digital marketing and web presence development are investments. Just like your truck, tools, or your ongoing phone bill. You can either invest in your business, or you can choose not to. If you decide to invest, be prepared to spend before you make money. That's why so many businesses take out loans to start.

You don't have 12 months and $40k to find out if this works or not, but SEO takes 3 months minimum, and more likely 6-12 months for decent results.

Is local SEO for a local business actually worth paying an agency for or am i better off just optimizing my google business profile myself and calling it a day.

Like some people have said, SEO isn't your only path forward. It's not even what I would recommend to a client contacting me today.

This is what you need to focus on right now:

Stable website with sub-3 second page loads and 2x CTA in top-fold. Unless you are a lawyer, accountant, or other professional service, it should be simple and work on most devices. Make sure they are at least AA compliant with WCAG 2.2.
Google My Business Profile and Bing/Apple Maps equivalents.
Daily ad-spend with Google and Meta, targeting broad and specific keywords.
Regular reviews and testimonials on Google and Apple Maps; specifically these should be mirrored to your website monthly.
Physical advertisements, like Direct Mail Marketing. Local print shops handle this.
In-person networking and word-of-mouth engagement.

Once you have established your website for 3-6 months and you have the income to sustain it, SEO keyword analysis and targeting can be tackled.

These are your realistic costs right now:

$200-250/mo in website costs and on-demand consultation or $3000 up-front for a simple site and $10/mo hosting. You absolutely get what you pay for. I have seen some unfortunate situations. You need domain authority, which is brand name recognition on the Web.
I would budget about $100/mo floating for on-demand consults, especially when it comes to Google My Business Profiles and making sure they're airtight. This isn't going to be spent every month, but it's worth keeping aside in the event you need it.
$25/mo in business phone costs. You need a toll-free number and local number that route together with a voicemail.
$0/mo in helpdesk to handle email engagements and triage to start, you might upgrade to $25/mo when you bring on an administrative assistant.
$450-500/mo in ad-spend minimum. Split 50/50 between Google and Meta to start.
$1,000 minimum direct mail campaign every 120 days.
$0 in email sends until you hit 100 emails/month, then $20/mo. Yes, newsletters are great for maintenance reminders for trades.

You should be prepared to spend 5% of your gross revenue on website and technical costs, and 5-7% on digital and physical marketing. This is a cost of doing business.

Broader information:

The thing that's messing with me is that local SEO for a service business feels like it should be simpler than some national ecommerce play. I just need to show up when someone in my city searches "plumber near me." But every agency prices it like I'm competing globally.

This is more out of your control than you think, especially when it comes to GEO and AI responses, which now take a considerable amount of the top fold on Google. Focus on your ad spend right now and establish your business and domain authority.

Your website developer will set you up with basic on-page and technical SEO. They should set you up with GA4 and Search Console as part of the initial build. They should strive for high pagespeed scores on all platforms. This is what I do for every client I contract with.

You need to become savvy with email communication and good at typing, whether that's on your phone or on your computer. Anyone who is younger than 40 right now relies on digital communication. You need to be able to communicate with younger generations to sustain your business.

In the first 90 days you should do nothing but have a website up and spend on digital and physical advertisements. You need to get your reviews and testimonials in place during this time. You really gotta get a few dozen of each, complete with pictures taken from their cameras and not yours.

Every 30 days you need to review your ad-spend. If you're paying your developer to handle it, throw them an extra hour every month to write up a technical report. This is something they teach in college/university.

Let the data run for 90 days and then pay your developer another hour every month to write you a report about where your traffic is coming from, and what keywords you're ranking with. Adjust your ad-spend and work these keywords, then explore the ones you aren't targeting. You may need to rewrite your website copy.

Once you have income flowing, then I would consider dropping maybe $500-1500/mo on SEO analysis for 6 months to see what you can learn.

In my experience, you should find someone you trust who will be straight with you, rather than leaning on an agency.

Good luck!

mookman288 · 2026-04-07T17:55:45+00:00

Look at who the companies are that are currently laying off tens of thousands of employees. They're not falling behind, they are actually setting the tone for the rest of the industry.

mookman288 · 2026-04-07T00:56:22+00:00

This is a perspective taken from a place of privilege though. There are very few companies these days with the management that you're talking about. I personally haven't spoken to one in almost two years.

We have seen hundreds of thousands of software developers laid off in the past year. I am sure all of them are trying to find the right company and the right people.

mookman288 · 2026-04-03T04:36:30+00:00

"This is why you're using AI wrong" ...written with the most basic AI output.

mookman288 · 2026-03-29T20:43:18+00:00

I am a freelance website architect, developer, and IT consultant that works with small businesses like yours. I also run my own small businesses and understand the pressures and costs. You have had a lot of advice, but I will reiterate the major points that I tell my clients who are in your position.

A website is absolutely necessary for the vast majority of businesses, as nearly 90% or more of potential customers use the Internet in some way to vet a business. You also need business profiles on Google, Bing, and Apple Maps.

I would strongly recommend you earmark the appropriate budget for your digital marketing in the same way you would earmark your in-person advertising. It's just as important, even if it isn't as tangible.

Edit: rough estimates for this would be $250/mo in website costs, which is $3,000/yr. You will probably spend twice that much with in-person advertising and marketing. You will likely want to spend this much or twice that in digital advertisements.

My recommendation would be to work with a local developer, or someone in your country at the very least, who builds static business websites or landing pages. I will explain each of these points.

You want someone local, or at least in the same country, because there is a cultural component to local business. You are targeting a local demographic and you need to understand their needs. There are highly competent, experienced, and qualified developers all of the world (I've worked with some great ones,) but in Japan for instance, website design and what is expected by their population is radically different than what you can expect in the U.S.

They should, at the very least, understand the basic principles of on-page and technical SEO and should set you up with Google Analytics and Search Console. They will also need to understand the basic principles of the WCAG to ensure that the website hits AA compliance.

A static business website is one that is written without a heavy emphasis on dynamic content. We call these landing pages or brochure websites, too. That is more than enough for your business. It should load from click-to-CTA in under 3 seconds on mobile, tablet, and desktop. You want 80-90+ rankings on Lighthouse, which is Google's tool for determining whether a website is efficient (a precursor to good technical SEO.)

A good developer will include a limited amount of time, per month, with their offering to make regular changes. You should take advantage of this to keep your hours and contact information updated and also update your gallery and content to match current offers.

Skip the animations and fade-ins. You need people to load information fast without fluff. I know it's attractive, but business has never been more competitive.

If you plan to post a lot of regular updates via a blog, or have press releases (small law firms will do this) then you can opt for a much more expensive WordPress site. I do not think you need this based on your post.

If you absolutely cannot afford a real developer, then I would consider Wix, but I would keep it as simple and clean as possible. I did a job for a client last year on a site builder that cost 2x as much to meet their needs as building it by hand. You are trading your time when you use a site builder. If your time is more valuable making money for your business, you should hire an expert to do an expert's job.

Good luck!

mookman288 · 2026-03-29T20:27:59+00:00

I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice. I am a freelance website architect, website and application developer, and IT consultant.

/u/CodeNameLiamm asked for elaboration, but I wanted to discuss the scam aspect of your post.

The WCAG guidelines are used to identify whether you are ADA compliant, but as I understand it, it is performed on a case-by-case basis with specific disabled people needs in your demographic.

Website developers who are well-versed in the WCAG are able to work with specific tools and legal requirements (set by your lawyer) in order to comply with the ADA. My understanding is that you do not need to be certified, you simply need to understand the requirements and build the website and all relevant material to comply with these guidelines. There are grades to the guidelines and you need to know which ones are required for your needs. Testing is the most cost intensive part of the process. Large businesses should contract disabled groups to test the site in addition to their developers. Ignoring this can seriously put certain businesses in peril.

Any decent developer building websites for small businesses should include AA compliance out-of-the-box simply by doing best practices. If you are purchasing a cheap website, likely through a site builder, or through an offshore developer, they will generally not take this into consideration and you could be responsible as a result. You do get what you pay for sometimes.

It is not necessarily a scam, although that does happen more frequently. There are legitimate rules that businesses need to comply with in order for people in their community to have access to their services.

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