In 2014, South Florida entrepreneur Scott Trachtenberg was sitting in his office when he was served with legal papers claiming his meal delivery company website was not compliant with American with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards.

He first thought he was being pranked because he never heard of such a thing, but has since sold the meal business and founded ADA Site Compliance to help other companies, government entities and organizations make their websites ADA compliant and prevent their own costly legal judgments.

Today, Lake Worth-based ADA Site Compliance is already a multi-million-dollar operation with a team of over 50 and a client list including Five Guys, Hair Cuttery, Western Union, Napa Auto Parts, Waffle House, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, Braman auto dealerships, City of Boca Raton, Iberostar, City of Tampa, Broward Center for Performing Arts and hundreds of others.

The tech company is poised for even more dramatic growth as organizations large and small scramble to make their sites more accessible and protect themselves against mounting litigation.

Millions of dollars were paid in federal courts during 2018 related to these types of cases, and likely hundreds of millions were paid in sealed settlements, as well as in state and local courts. These lawsuits continue to quickly increase, up almost 200 percent from 2017 to 2018 in federal courts only.

Florida is home to the second highest number of lawsuits (New York is first) and some of the largest settlements. Just in Palm Beach County, Trachtenberg said the following high-profile organizations have been served and/or settled: Office Depot, ADT, The Breakers, Palm Beach Gardens Community Hospital, SunFest, The Raymond F. Kravis Center, PGA Resort, JFK Medical Center, Alco Capital Theaters, School District of Palm Beach County, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and many more.

“These groups might have been like me when I was handed those papers in 2014. I had absolutely no idea about website compliance,” Trachtenberg said. “But when I looked it up, the very first result was about Target settling a suit for $6 million. I knew right away that the issue was big and real.”

Soon after, he also realized there was a significant business opportunity because he couldn’t find anyone with expertise to fix his website problems.

Even his fellow Entrepreneurs’ Organization South Florida (EO SOFLO) members were unaware of the issue, and they owned a vast range of businesses from every sector. EO SOFLO is one of the world’s biggest EO chapters with 190 members who run companies with more than $2 billion in annual revenues and 10,000 employees in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

“While it cost his first business a large chunk of cash, Scott became an expert himself and turned that original lawsuit into an amazing long-term opportunity,” said Darren Seys, EO SOFLO board member and founder of Peak Seven Advertising in Boca Raton. “That’s the kind of vision and execution we all shoot for as entrepreneurs.”

Trachtenberg and Seys have worked together for numerous mutual clients who proactively want to make their websites accessible and informative to all.

“That’s the smartest strategy, to make your website ADA compliant in the first place,” Trachtenberg said. “This way your site is best supporting your customers and constituents, and you won’t have to worry about my experience of a legal server knocking on your door.”

For more details, go to www.adasitecompliance.com. For more information on EO SOFLO, visit www.eosoflo.com.