For restaurateurs in 2024, the legal implications of “compliance” extend well beyond matters of health code into the digital realm.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), legally enforced in the U.S. by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), require restaurateurs to maintain the health of their websites – or risk very physical consequences.
This is where Jacquie Sherry Coombe, Co-Founder and COO of Elite Strategies, enters the scene – and with a full team of experts behind her.
A self-described “Manhattan girl”, Coombe began her career in hospitality marketing in New York, continuing her family’s decades-long legacy in the restaurant industry.
As a young hospitality professional, Coombe worked for a major New York City based restaurant company as well as night clubs, and later shifted into a development and operations role before joining moving into the hotel industry.
“Even though I had a great career at the time, I had a one-year-old child and was looking for ways to redirect my professional path,” she reflected.
Serendipitously, Coombe’s husband, Patrick Coombe – CEO and Co-Founder of Elite Strategies and a U.S. Navy Veteran – had years of experience with computer programming, IT, and related consulting work.
The business-savvy couple decided to merge Patrick’s technical expertise with Jacquie’s ability to manage teams and leverage connections in the hospitality world.
The resulting enterprise began in 2009 as a service for small businesses: a focused period that “we loved and learned from,” Jacquie said. “But over time, we started working with hotel and restaurant groups, international and national brands, and evolved into a full-service, 360-degree digital agency.”
Today, Elite Strategies is an international provider of internet marketing and design services. The company’s team includes professionals with backgrounds in web development, advertising, design, content creation, digital accessibility, and search engine optimization (SEO).
“Sometimes, clients think they just need a ‘creative team’ or a ‘development team’ for particular needs,” Coombe described. “But at Elite Strategies, we recognize and position our value as a full-service company that pulls expertise from different professional walks of life.”
This dynamic skillset is invaluable, especially in view of stringent ADA regulations. Coombe traced some of the most consequential ADA changes to 2016, when the scope of ADA-identified disabilities expanded to include seizure disorders, learning disabilities, dyslexia, and other conditions.
“The situation became very serious, and several restaurant and hotel groups found themselves in litigation due to ADA noncompliance,” Coombe shared.
“But, given our established digital expertise and experience, we were able to provide evidence for clients’ legal teams, document the clients’ remedial actions to make their websites ADA-compliant, and help them settle their cases at significantly lower amounts.”
“We can’t say enough about the invaluable role that Jacquie and her team have played in helping my clients in the restaurant industry meet ADA compatibility for their websites,” noted Amanda Fugazy, a leading industry attorney specializing in restaurant law at Ellenoff Grossman & Schole LLP.
“It’s become a moving target that demands someone that is tuned into the constant changes in compatibility requirements.”
“Elite Strategies offers a range of services from text and images changes to ensuring proper heading structures, and even providing keyboard navigation options,” Fugazy added.
“These changes not only make the website more accessible and user-friendly for individuals with disabilities but also improve overall user experience.”
Coombe could not have anticipated this ADA-induced turn, nor prepared to provide these services by obtaining a specific degree. “There are no certifications or formal educational programs for this kind of work,” she noted.
“We had just worked with so many websites and clients, and established trusting relationships with them, that they started coming to us with these concerns.”
Many clients lack the time and expertise to keep up with the ADA, WCAG, and other digital and legal developments. As a result, “a lot of our remedial work now takes place in litigation; and at that point, there’s nothing you can do to stop it completely,” Coombe concluded.
What restaurateurs and other business owners can do, Coombe advised, is “get their websites assessed for accessibility right away.”
“Once you’re too far gone, the lawsuits can and will happen,” she said. She offered the hypothetical of a hotel group with hotels in 12 locations: “Say they get a suit for one location; pretty soon, the suit would simultaneously hit every other location.”
E-commerce sites, restaurant and hotel groups, and gourmet shops are especially susceptible to this kind of legal action, Coombe said.
After this initial assessment, Coombe urges business owners to establish an ongoing plan of action and outline remediation steps to get to compliance: “a top priority,” she emphasized.
Despite the allure of an easy fix, “you can’t just add a third-party plug-in to your website that claims to ‘check’ for accessibility and automatically be ADA-compliant,” Coombe stressed.
“Depending on the state of a client’s site, we’ll likely need to adjust their font sizing and colors, readjust their content in a clearer lineage, title-tag images and descriptions, and ensure their third-party booking systems are also accessible.”
This can be complicated and time-consuming work, Coombe acknowledged – “but our experience as manual experts has enabled us to become the go-to provider for all things digital, including accessibility” she contended.
“Most pressingly, we want our clients to understand the aggressive and fast-acting nature of these lawsuits and form an ongoing plan to stay in compliance.”
Elite Strategies personalizes the execution of each plan to clients’ unique needs and budgets.
Depending on the case, “we can build and manage a site, perform an audit, support with design and development, and create a marketing plan to maintain and grow the site – all in compliance with ADA regulations,” Coombe assured.
For more information about Elite Strategies’ website accessibility services and other offerings, visit at Elite Strategies’ website.
