Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble settled in 2019. They got sued again in 2022.
Barnes & Noble's website was first sued for inaccessibility in 2019. Like other retailers, they settled and committed to fixes. Three years later, in 2022, another blind plaintiff sued them again for largely the same violations — screen reader incompatibility, missing image descriptions, broken keyboard navigation.
The story is familiar by now: settle, half-fix it, drift out of compliance, get sued again. The plaintiff law firms watch each other's cases and know which companies have already paid once. Repeat targets get sued first because the second case is usually easier to settle than the first.
Court
Southern District of New York
Case
Rodriguez v. Barnes & Noble, Inc.
1:22-cv-00000 (full docket not confirmed — verify via PACER)
Outcome
Status unclear — filed 2022 (prior lawsuit by Egal Shabaz filed 2019 against same defendant)
What went wrong on the site
Each visual below shows what visitors with disabilities actually experienced.
<div onClick="buy()">
<div>Buy now</div>
</div>
Custom controls had no ARIA roles, so screen readers could not announce what they were or what state they were in.
WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value
Screen reader announces:
"Image. Image. Image."
Product images and key visuals had no alt text — screen readers announced 'image' or the file name instead of describing what users were looking at.
WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content
Click only — Tab key does nothing
Core interactions required a mouse. Keyboard-only users could not navigate menus, complete checkout, or operate widgets.
WCAG 2.1.1 Keyboard
Sources & documentation
Is your site exposed like Barnes's was?
Run a free scan to find out which of these violations exist on your site right now.
Scan my siteAll Retail cases
See the full retail risk landscape
Other cases, top WCAG failures for retail, and what to fix first.
More B2C cases
Retail / E-commerce
Target Corporation
First major e-commerce ADA settlement in U.S. history; established that commercial websites are covered by ADA and class-action exposure is real — Target paid $6M+ in 2008.
Retail / E-commerce
Fashion Nova
Largest disclosed ADA web accessibility class settlement in recent years at $5.15M — and the DOJ intervened in 2026 to argue even this wasn't enough, signaling elevated federal scrutiny.
Streaming
Netflix
Established that the ADA applies to web-only businesses with no physical stores; Netflix paid $795k in fees/monitoring and committed to 100% captioning of its entire streaming library.