Proposed California digital accessibility law would halt startups in the Golden State
For decades, California’s Silicon Valley has been the global epicenter of technology startups. From the mid-century hard tech firms like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard who earned the Valley its moniker, to the consumer-facing digital companies of today like PayPal and Airbnb, California’s culture of bootstrap entrepreneurship has fueled countless successful launches.
But recently the California Assembly has been putting kinks in the state’s startup pipeline. The latest instance is Assembly Bill 1757 (AB 1757), a proposal that would make small businesses vulnerable to lawsuits if they fail to comply with complex guidelines regarding digital accessibility for the vision impaired.
AB 1757 entitles people with visual impairment or other disabilities to statutory damages if they can prove that a website or app “caused them to experience a difference in their access to, or use of, the website as compared to other users.” A classic example of good intentions gone bad, AB 1757, if made law, will have the unintended consequence of preventing new business ideas from reaching the public.
To determine whether a claim is valid, the new law would reference the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Among the WCAG’s hundreds of listings, the easiest to understand are intended to make apps and websites more usable to people with low vision. User interface components and graphical objects, for example, must “have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 against adjacent colors.” Text must be resizable “without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality.”
More obtuse guidelines include that functions using “multipoint or path-based gestures for operation can be operated with a single pointer without a path-based gesture, unless a multipoint or path-based gesture is essential,” and “any keyboard operable user interface has a mode of operation where the keyboard focus indicator is visible.”
The guidelines themselves aren’t a problem—websites want more users, and some of these accessibility techniques could help. Yet, such legislation will make upstart entrepreneurs vulnerable to debilitating lawsuits. Kris Rivenburgh, author of The ADA Book, says AB 1757 will “inflame serial digital accessibility litigation that’s already been out of control for years.”
By adding this new risk to businesses, the state will artificially raise the expense, time-cost, and complexity of building a website and offering goods and services online. Such a barrier to entry is the surest way to entrench the power of existing players. Companies like PayPal and Airbnb have built up enough capital over time to adapt to a law like AB 1757 without much trouble, but startups trying to bring fresh ideas to the marketplace often have not.
Airbnb’s iconic origin story is an example of a launch that likely never would have happened under full compliance with AB 1757’s onerous requirements. Back in 2008, Airbnb co-founders Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky were young web designers struggling to make it in San Francisco. They were also roommates, an arrangement which set the table for the business they would start.
Days ahead of a big web design conference and with rent coming due, Gebbia sent Chesky one of the most consequential emails in business history. “Brian,” Gebbia jotted off, “I thought of a way to make a few bucks – turning our place into ‘designers bed and breakfast’ – offering young designers who come into town a place to crash during the 4 day event, complete with wireless internet, a small desk space, sleeping mat, and breakfast each morning. Ha!”
With nothing to lose and no onerous digital accessibility requirements holding them back, the two quickly built a simple website with their pitch. To their surprise, it worked—three visitors to San Francisco found the new site online and paid $80 per night. Gebbia and Chesky made rent that month and were soon accepted into the famed startup accelerator, Y Combinator. The next year they got a $600,000 seed investment from Sequoia Capital, and within a decade they had remade the hospitality industry, delivering an age-old style of accommodation—the bed-and-breakfast—via digital means.
Under AB 1757, how many startups would be too burdened by the risk of a lawsuit to get off the ground? When any little feature might cause a user to “experience a difference in their access,” making a business liable for statutory damages, fledgling startups will proceed cautiously; some won’t proceed at all, denying the public access to new goods and services entirely.
Who knows which businesses AB 1757 will snuff out, but had it been on the books in 2008, there’s a good chance the hotel and motel chains of yesteryear — insulated from the competitive pressure of two broke roommates and their air mattress — would be sleeping more soundly today. The rest of us, however, would be worse off.
Jordan McGillis is the economics editor of City Journal and a Young Voices contributor. He lives in San Diego County and can be followed on X, @jordanmcgillis.