After publishing my first blog on the issue, I have been following the recent discussions about AB 2190 across various forums and conversations. There are thoughtful people on both sides of this issue, including individuals and organizations I respect. The disagreement is real, and it reflects different views about how best to achieve accessibility. What concerns me is not the disagreement itself, but how the bill is being framed. Much of the argument in favor of AB 2190 rests on assumptions about how accessibility enforcement works in practice. Those assumptions do not align with what many of us have experienced over the past several decades.
The Framing Problem
At the center of the debate is a simple question: what problem is this bill trying to solve? Proponents often describe AB 2190 as a measured response to abusive litigation. The implication is that businesses are being subjected to excessive or opportunistic lawsuits, and that additional protections are needed to restore balance.
That framing is persuasive on its surface, but it assumes that enforcement is the starting point of accessibility disputes. In practice, it almost never is. Enforcement is typically the endpoint of a long process that begins with dialogue. AB 2190 risks weakening the only mechanism that has consistently produced meaningful accessibility outcomes: enforceable accountability.
What Accessibility Work Looks Like in Practice
Over the years, I have spent substantial time working directly with companies, often without compensation, to identify barriers and help improve accessibility. That work has included extended engagement, testing, detailed feedback, and reliance on voluntary remediation. In some cases, federal regulatory channels have been used to facilitate resolution, with multiple extensions granted to allow additional time to comply.
These efforts were not brief or symbolic. They spanned years. In many instances, they produced incremental improvements, but core accessibility issues remained unresolved.
This pattern is not limited to any one sector. In the technology space, I have participated in extended engagement processes involving detailed feedback, testing, and escalation through regulatory channels. These efforts have at times spanned multiple product cycles, with companies acknowledging issues, implementing partial fixes, and later introducing regressions that re-create the same barriers. The cycle repeats, often without a permanent resolution.
These are not isolated experiences. They reflect a broader pattern in accessibility work. These efforts often span years and produce only incremental improvements, leading many around me to ask why I had not taken enforcement action—or, as one put it after years of dialogue, whether I was “scared of litigation.”
At the same time, websites and mobile applications have become more complex and more dynamic. Modern systems are no longer static pages that can be fixed once and left alone. They are continuously evolving environments where new features introduce new barriers and prior fixes are routinely undone. This makes one-time remediation insufficient and underscores the need for enforceable, ongoing compliance obligations.
Why Enforcement Increased
This context matters because it explains why enforcement activity has increased in recent years. It is not the beginning of the process. It is what happens after years of unsuccessful voluntary efforts.
If litigation were the goal, it would not have taken years of engagement before any formal action was pursued. The timeline itself reflects a sustained preference for collaboration over confrontation. People do not live indefinitely to benefit from rights they already have.
The problem is not a lack of notice. It is a lack of sufficient accountability to ensure that accessibility is treated as a baseline requirement rather than a deferred priority. The law does not wait to enforce its guarantees. It holds those who violate them accountable.
The Limits of Notice and Cure
AB 2190 is built on the assumption that more notice and more time will lead to better accessibility outcomes. That assumption has already been tested.
Notice has been given, repeatedly. Time has been extended, often generously. The result has not been consistent or reliable access. Instead, “good faith effort” is repeatedly invoked as a shield against enforcement.
The structure of the bill reflects this underlying assumption. It allows businesses to limit exposure to statutory damages if they disclose barriers, maintain certain policies and testing practices, and remediate issues within a specified timeframe. In doing so, it shifts the focus from whether a user can access a service to whether a business can demonstrate a process.
For a person who cannot complete a transaction or access essential information, the harm occurs at the moment of inaccessibility, not at the conclusion of a remediation timeline. If enforcement becomes less immediate and less certain, accessibility becomes easier to defer.
Existing Limits on Litigation
There is also a broader claim that the current system lacks sufficient limits and therefore invites abuse. That claim does not fully account for existing constraints.
Consumers who seek statutory damages in small claims court are already limited in how often they can file such claims within a given year. Pursuing cases in higher courts involves significantly greater cost, time, and procedural complexity. These factors act as natural barriers to excessive litigation.
The system is not without structure or restraint. AB 2190 does not correct an unbounded system. It reduces consequences in a system that already contains meaningful limits.
Who Actually Litigates
Most ordinary consumers facing accessibility barriers are not in a position to litigate at all. Litigation requires resources, time, and the ability to navigate a complex legal process that can extend over several years. Even the legal system itself is not consistently accessible to blind and deafblind individuals. Many cannot afford to bring a claim or find representation willing to take on the burden.
Where concerns about abusive practices arise, they should be addressed directly and with precision. If certain actors are exploiting legal tools in ways that do not advance accessibility, that is a problem worth confronting. But it is a different problem from the one AB 2190 addresses.
Broadly reducing the consequences of noncompliance does not target abuse. It alters the underlying incentives for all actors, including those who are attempting in good faith to secure access.
Accessibility as Collective Deterrence
Accessibility enforcement operates, in part, through collective deterrence. A relatively small number of cases can influence behavior across an entire market. Businesses do not need to be sued individually for accessibility to improve.
The possibility of enforcement, combined with meaningful consequences, encourages proactive compliance. When those consequences are weakened, the incentive to prioritize accessibility from the outset is also reduced.
Reducing the effectiveness of enforcement does not protect ordinary consumers. It removes one of the few mechanisms that produces access at scale.
A Lesson from Service Animal Abuse
A useful comparison can be found in another area of disability rights that has faced persistent misuse: service animals. For years, individuals have misrepresented pets as service animals, creating confusion and, at times, undermining public trust. That problem is real, and it has had tangible consequences for people who rely on guide dogs for independence.
Recent federal enforcement reflects a similar pattern. The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against a major ride-sharing company after years of complaints from blind passengers who were denied service because of their guide dogs. The litigation did not arise in a vacuum. It followed sustained reports, repeated incidents, and ongoing failures to resolve the issue through voluntary compliance.
The response to service animal misuse has not been to weaken the legal protections that enable access. Instead, the focus has been on addressing misrepresentation while preserving the rights of those who depend on these protections.
The consequences of poorly targeted responses to abuse are not theoretical. Increased misuse has led to stricter airline policies and heightened scrutiny. In my own experience, this has translated into additional questioning, documentation requirements, and procedural hurdles to verify that a guide dog is legitimate. These measures are intended to address abuse, but they also introduce stress and uncertainty for individuals who rely on service animals, as well as for the animals themselves.
This illustrates a broader point. When responses to abuse are not carefully designed, they tend to shift burdens onto those who are already complying with the law. The result is friction in the exercise of rights that are meant to support independence.
The same risk is present here. If the response to concerns about litigation is to reduce accountability for noncompliance, the burden does not disappear. It is redistributed. In practice, it falls on individuals who encounter barriers and must navigate delayed or incomplete access.
Access Delayed Is Access Denied
Like the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Unruh Civil Rights Act recognizes that disabled people cannot fully participate in American society—cannot fully enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—when their equal rights are continually delayed. In the case of AB 2190, the question is not whether abuse should be addressed. It is how to do so without weakening the conditions that make equal participation possible.
The past decades have shown that dialogue alone does not guarantee access. Accessibility improves when it is treated as an enforceable obligation, supported by incentives that encourage consistent and lasting compliance.
Deterrence, applied thoughtfully, is not an obstacle to progress. In many cases, it is what ensures that progress occurs at all. Without it, access is not denied outright; it is simply deferred—often indefinitely—while disabled people struggle to live independently.