Sued by Nye, Stirling, Hale, Miller & Sweet over your website?

Nye, Stirling, Hale, Miller & Sweet LLP is a law firm with offices in Pittsburgh and Santa Barbara that files website accessibility lawsuits in federal courts in several states. If your business was named in one, here's what the complaints say and what to do first.

This is a technical accessibility assessment, not legal advice, and automated testing cannot establish ADA compliance.

What the court records show

Between August 21 and October 9, 2026, the firm filed 6 ADA cases in federal courts in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, by our count of the public dockets on CourtListener. We read all 6 complaints. All 6 were about the website of a brand that sells online, and none was filed as a class action.

What the complaint says

The 6 complaints follow the same outline and run to 20 or 21 pages:

• There are two plaintiffs. Both are legally blind and use screen readers. One lives in the district where the case was filed and the other lives in New York.
• Each tried to buy a product the complaint names and could not finish.
• The complaint describes two or three barriers as examples and says they are not the full list. They are specific to each site: a menu that collapses as soon as it opens, an answer or product section the screen reader skips after it expands, several buttons all announced as "Menu Button", a cookie notice the screen reader never reads.
• A third-party accessibility expert confirmed the errors.
• The website uses an accessibility overlay. All 6 complaints say this about the defendant's site, and argue that overlays don't fix these barriers.

Each one makes two claims: under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act for both plaintiffs, and under the New York State Human Rights Law for the New York plaintiff.

What it asks the court for

• A declaration that the website violated the ADA when the case was filed.
• An order to change how the company works, in a long list: hire an accessibility consultant the plaintiffs accept, train staff every two years, run automated audits regularly, have blind or low-vision users test the site every quarter, make the consultant's fixes within 60 days, and publish an accessibility policy with a way to report problems.
• The right for the plaintiffs and their lawyers to monitor the website for up to two years.
• Compensatory damages under the New York law, and nominal damages.
• The plaintiffs' attorneys' fees and costs, including the cost of that monitoring.

What any of this means for your business is a question for your attorney. How these lawsuits work, in plain English.

Common questions

Is the lawsuit real?

A filed case has a case number, such as 2:26-cv-01822. You can look it up free on CourtListener or on PACER, the federal courts' own system. If the case is there, it's real.

We already use an accessibility widget. Doesn't that cover us?

These complaints say it doesn't, and name the overlay as part of the problem. A widget doesn't change the code the complaint describes. Do widgets stop lawsuits?

We aren't in that state. Why were we sued there?

The complaints say one plaintiff lives in that district and tried to shop on the website from home. Whether that is enough for that court to hear the case is a legal question; ask your attorney.

Will an automated scan find these problems?

Only some of them. A scan finds unlabeled buttons, missing alternative text and low contrast. Whether the screen reader follows a menu or an expanded section usually has to be checked by hand. How we test, and what a scan can't tell you.

First steps

1. Write down the date you were served and talk to an attorney. A lawsuit has a short, fixed deadline to respond. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
2. List the specific barriers in the complaint. These complaints describe them one by one, so you can check each on your own site.
3. Get the technical facts. Find out which of them still exist today, and what else a scan finds on your home, product, cart and checkout pages. The complaint says its examples are not the full list.
4. Fix the real issues in the site itself. Step-by-step fixes: Shopify, WordPress.
5. Keep dated records of what was wrong, what you changed and when.

How we counted

On October 12, 2026 we searched CourtListener for federal civil-rights cases coded "ADA – Other" that list Nye, Stirling, Hale, Miller & Sweet as plaintiff's counsel and were filed from August 13 to October 11, 2026. Cases that haven't reached CourtListener aren't counted, so the real number may be higher. We read the complaints that were available as public documents. We have no connection to the firm or its clients. If anything here is wrong, tell us and we'll correct it.

Sued by a different firm? See Gottlieb & Associates, Joseph & Norinsberg, Usher Law Group, East End Trial Group.