WellPoint
Anthem health insurance — sorted out with no lawsuit at all.
Two blind Anthem Blue Cross members, Mendelsohn and Chen, used structured negotiation to compel WellPoint (now Anthem) to make anthem.com, all their mobile apps, and all member materials WCAG 2.0 AA compliant by mid-2014. No litigation, no court, no public filings.
The agreement was binding and enforceable, with confidential financial terms. This 2014 case is one of the earliest examples of a major insurance company being forced to remediate digital accessibility — and a reminder that lots of accessibility enforcement happens entirely outside the court system, invisible to the press.
Court
No court — resolved through Structured Negotiation (pre-litigation)
Case
Mendelsohn and Chen v. WellPoint, Inc. (Structured Negotiation)
N/A — structured negotiation, not filed in court
Outcome
settled
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
your name here
Screen reader: "Edit text. Edit text."
CAPTCHAs were visual-only with no audio or accessible alternative — blocking blind users from signing up or logging in.
WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content
medical-records-2024.pdf
Scanned image, no text layer
Screen reader announces: "Document, 12 pages."
Critical documents — bills, statements, records — were posted as scanned PDFs that screen readers could not parse.
WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content
Sources & documentation
Is your site exposed like WellPoint's was?
Run a free scan to find out which of these violations exist on your site right now.
Scan my siteAll Financial cases
See the full financial risk landscape
Other cases, top WCAG failures for financial, and what to fix first.
More B2B cases
Healthcare
MedStar Health
DOJ secured a $440,000 consent decree against MedStar Health (DC/Maryland's largest hospital system) for ADA violations including inaccessible digital communications; decree required WCAG 2.1 AA compliance for all posted web content.
Healthcare
University of North Carolina Health Care System
NFB and Disability Rights NC won a $125,000 settlement against UNC Health (2022) for systematically denying blind patients accessible medical records, billing, and forms; a 2023 federal injunction then required a system-wide overhaul of patient communications.
Accounting
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
DOJ forced the AICPA and NASBA — the accounting profession's own gatekeepers — to make the Uniform CPA Exam accessible to blind candidates, paying $15,000+ in damages and integrating JAWS and ZoomText across the entire exam platform.