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A hand reading embossed braille on paper, illustrating the ADA website accessibility lawsuit against Alastin Skincare

Alastin Skincare Sued Over a Website Blind Shoppers Can’t Use

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A legally blind New York shopper has sued ALASTIN Skincare and its parent company, Galderma Laboratories, alleging that alastin.com cannot be used with a screen reader. The complaint says she tried to research and buy the brand’s anti-aging products three times this summer and couldn’t tell the products apart or get anything into her cart. The case, McLean v. Alastin Skincare, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-08451, was filed on September 28, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

This is a lawsuit about the website. It doesn’t claim any ALASTIN product is unsafe, contaminated or mislabeled. And there’s no settlement and nothing to file: the case is one day old, and none of its allegations have been tested in court.

Legal information disclaimer: This article is general consumer information about a public court filing and is not legal advice. Everything described below is an allegation in a complaint. The defendants have not yet responded, and no court has ruled on any of it.

Table of Contents

What the Lawsuit Says

The plaintiff, Kelly McLean of the Bronx, is legally blind from a progressive inherited retinal disease. According to the complaint, her optometrist describes her as “almost completely blind,” with only minimal perception of light and shapes. She browses the web with NVDA, a free screen reader that reads a page out loud, and she moves around sites with the keyboard instead of a mouse.

The complaint says she visited alastin.com on June 11, June 13 and August 12, 2026, trying to compare products, read ingredient lists and clinical claims, check prices and subscription options, and place an order. On each visit, it alleges:

  • Product images were announced only as “image,” with no description of what they showed.
  • Buttons and links were read out as “button,” “link” or “blank,” with nothing to say what they did.
  • Form controls had no labels, so the screen reader couldn’t identify the subscription options, the quantity selector or the “Add to Bag” button.
  • Pop-ups appeared without any alert to the screen reader, and carousels moved on their own with no way to pause or stop them.
  • Broken ARIA code and a jumbled heading structure made the screen reader skip or repeat whole sections of a page.

The result, the complaint says, is that she couldn’t tell products apart, couldn’t follow the clinical claims and couldn’t complete a purchase. She says she still wants the products and will go back once the site works with her screen reader.

The Products Named in the Complaint

The filing names four products she tried to research:

  • Restorative Skin Complex with TriHex+: ALASTIN’s flagship peptide serum. The audit found the most errors on this product’s page.
  • Ultra Nourishing Moisturizer
  • A-LUMINATE Brightening Serum
  • HydraTint Pro Mineral Sunscreen SPF 36: a tinted mineral sunscreen.

It also says she tried the Anti-Aging, Serums, Moisturizers, Suncare and Best Sellers category pages and ran into the same problems there. The complaint argues that shopping online matters more for her than for most people. She can’t read packaging in a store, so the brand’s own product pages are where she would find the ingredient breakdowns and usage instructions she needs to choose a gentle formula. The filing says she deals with dryness and sensitivity, the same thing anyone with a moisturizer that stings on reactive skin is trying to avoid.

What the Accessibility Audit Found

The complaint relies on scans the plaintiff’s lawyers ran with WAVE, a free automated checker from the nonprofit WebAIM. The scans were run on May 25, 2026 and reported:

  • 73 errors on the ALASTIN homepage
  • 88 errors on the Restorative Skin Complex product page
  • 33 errors on the Anti-Aging Skincare Products page

The errors listed include missing alt text, empty buttons and links, unlabeled form fields, broken ARIA references, faulty heading structure and low-contrast text. The complaint measures all of this against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, the W3C standard that most web-accessibility cases use as their yardstick.

Keep in mind that automated tools like WAVE flag code patterns, and a raw error count doesn’t tell you how many of those problems actually stop a screen-reader user. The complaint pairs the scans with the plaintiff’s own account of what she heard, and that account is what the court will weigh.

Who Is Being Sued, and Why Galderma Matters to Acne Patients

Alastin Skincare, Inc. is a Delaware company based in Carlsbad, California. It was founded in 2015 and is known for its patented TriHex peptide technology. Most of its products are sold through dermatology and plastic-surgery practices as well as on its own site.

Galderma completed its acquisition of ALASTIN on January 5, 2022. The complaint names Galderma Laboratories, L.P. as a co-defendant because of that relationship, and it points to the “GALDERMA – EST. 1981” branding in the website’s footer.

ALASTIN isn’t an acne brand. Its products are anti-aging and procedure-recovery skincare. Galderma, though, is one of the biggest names in acne care. It makes Differin, the over-the-counter adapalene gel that many dermatologists suggest trying first for blackheads and whiteheads, and Cetaphil, one of the most commonly recommended gentle cleansers.

This isn’t the only Galderma consumer case in the news this year. The company agreed to a $990,000 settlement in Williams v. Galderma Laboratories, which alleged possible benzene contamination in three Differin benzoyl peroxide products. That settlement’s claim deadline was May 19, 2026, so it’s closed. The Differin case was about product safety. This one is only about the website.

What the Case Asks For

The complaint makes five claims:

  • Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which bars discrimination by “places of public accommodation.” The complaint argues an online store is one.
  • The New York State Human Rights Law
  • The New York Civil Rights Law, sections 40 and 41, which set a penalty of $100 to $500 per violation. The complaint demands $500.
  • The New York City Human Rights Law
  • Declaratory relief, meaning a court declaration that the site discriminates against blind users

The main goal is a court order requiring ALASTIN and Galderma to make alastin.com fully usable with screen readers and keep it that way under WCAG standards. The complaint proposes a nationwide class of legally blind people who tried to use the site and were blocked, plus a New York subclass, and it asks for a jury trial. Open Class Actions is tracking the case, with the complaint embedded, on its Alastin Skincare website accessibility lawsuit page.

Federal ADA claims by private plaintiffs can win a court order and attorneys’ fees, but not money damages. The money in this complaint comes from the New York statutes and is sought for Ms. McLean and the New York subclass. The nationwide class is proposed under Rule 23(b)(2), the rule for classes that seek a court order rather than individual payouts.

What Stands Out in the Filing

Several passages in the complaint look like they were carried over from filings against other companies. The opening paragraph calls the plaintiff “Mr. Soto” and refers to “his undersigned counsel.” One bullet says missing alt text kept her from “identifying shoe style, color, or features.” Elsewhere the complaint describes the website as letting users “select sizes and colorways,” and the class section says the defendant “markets its sunglasses and eyewear products.” ALASTIN sells skincare.

It’s also not the first time the brand has faced this kind of suit. The complaint cites Campbell v. Alastin Skincare, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-03671, an earlier ADA case in the same court that federal docket records show was filed on May 2, 2023. The new complaint says the website problems in that case were “substantially similar” and were never fixed. That’s the plaintiff’s description; the court hasn’t made any finding about it.

One more detail: the WAVE scans are dated May 25, 2026, more than two weeks before the first of the plaintiff’s three visits. The complaint says the scans covered “the specific pages Plaintiff attempted to access.”

If You Shop for Skincare With a Screen Reader

The case raises a real problem. Many skincare brands put their clearest ingredient and usage information on their own sites, and a lot of those sites are hard to use with a screen reader. Until that changes, there are a few other places to get the same information:

  • Sunscreen labels are public. In the U.S., sunscreen is an over-the-counter drug, so it carries a standard Drug Facts panel listing active ingredients, warnings and directions. The National Library of Medicine’s DailyMed publishes those labels as plain text that screen readers handle well.
  • Physician-dispensed brands come with a person to ask. Most ALASTIN sales go through dermatology practices, and those offices can read you a full ingredient list or send it in an accessible format. That’s also the right place to ask whether a peptide serum or brightening product fits alongside a serum you already use for acne.
  • Reading the physical jar. Free apps that connect you with a sighted volunteer, or that use AI to read printed text aloud, can handle small-print ingredient lists on packaging.
  • Reporting a broken site. Most retailers publish an accessibility statement with a way to report problems. A written complaint also creates a record showing the company was told.

What Happens Next

Once ALASTIN and Galderma are formally served, they generally have 21 days to respond under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, unless the deadline is extended or service is waived. Many website-accessibility suits are settled privately before a judge ever rules on whether the site actually broke the law, and the terms of those settlements are usually not made public. Neither company had commented publicly as of September 29, 2026. For skincare and beauty cases where claims are open now, see OpenClassActions.org, and for another recent skincare case on this site, read our breakdown of the Neutrogena Skin360 settlement.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I join the Alastin lawsuit or get money from it?

Not now. This is a newly filed complaint, not a settlement, so there is no claim form. The proposed nationwide class seeks a court order to fix the website, not individual payments. Money damages under New York law are sought only for the plaintiff and a New York subclass of legally blind users.

Does the lawsuit say Alastin products are unsafe?

No. The case is about whether alastin.com works with screen-reading software. It makes no claim about the ingredients, safety or labeling of any ALASTIN product.

Who owns Alastin Skincare?

Galderma, the dermatology company behind Differin and Cetaphil, completed its acquisition of ALASTIN Skincare on January 5, 2022. Both Alastin Skincare, Inc. and Galderma Laboratories, L.P. are named as defendants.

What is WCAG 2.1?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 are the W3C’s technical standard for making websites usable by people with disabilities, covering things like image descriptions, labeled buttons and keyboard navigation. Courts and plaintiffs commonly use it as the benchmark in website accessibility cases.

Has Alastin responded to the lawsuit?

Not as of September 29, 2026, one day after the complaint was filed. The allegations have not been proven, and the defendants will have a chance to answer or move to dismiss.

Sources

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