ADA-related website lawsuits have increased dramatically. Here's what accessibility means in practice, what the legal exposure looks like, and what it actually takes to build a compliant site.
What Website Accessibility Means
Website accessibility refers to designing and building sites that can be used by people with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive disabilities. This includes users who rely on screen readers to navigate (because they can't see the screen), users who navigate by keyboard only (because they can't use a mouse), and users with low vision who need high-contrast text and scalable fonts.
The international standard for web accessibility is WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, published by the W3C. WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the benchmark most courts and regulators use when evaluating accessibility. It defines specific technical requirements across four principles: content must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.
The ADA Legal Landscape
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that "places of public accommodation" be accessible to people with disabilities. Courts have increasingly ruled that websites qualify as places of public accommodation, meaning businesses that operate primarily or exclusively online can be subject to ADA claims if their websites aren't accessible.
ADA website lawsuits have increased dramatically: from a few hundred per year in 2017 to over 4,500 filed in 2023. Most target small and medium-sized businesses, not large corporations. Retail, hospitality, food service, and healthcare websites are among the most frequently targeted. Defendants typically face demand letters seeking remediation plus legal fees, settlements commonly range from $5,000 to $25,000 before attorney costs.
Common Accessibility Failures
The most frequently cited WCAG failures are: missing alt text on images (screen reader users hear nothing), poor color contrast between text and background, forms without accessible labels, videos without captions, keyboard navigation traps (elements that can be clicked but not tabbed to), and PDF documents that aren't screen-reader accessible.
None of these are difficult to fix if caught during development. All of them are significantly more expensive to retrofit into an existing site than to build correctly from the start. A site built to WCAG 2.1 AA from day one costs no more than one that ignores accessibility, but retrofitting an existing site typically costs 30–50% of a full rebuild.
Accessibility Overlays: A Warning
A category of products called "accessibility overlays" (JavaScript plugins that claim to make your site accessible automatically) has become popular as a quick fix. Products like AccessiBe, UserWay, and others typically cost $50–$500/year and inject a toolbar onto your site that applies automated fixes.
The accessibility community, including the National Federation of the Blind, has formally opposed these overlays. Independent testing consistently shows they don't achieve WCAG compliance; they address some automated checks while missing the substantive issues that affect real disabled users. Courts have also ruled against defendants whose only accessibility accommodation was an overlay. Don't rely on an overlay as legal protection.
What a Real Accessibility Audit Covers
A genuine accessibility audit evaluates the site against WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria using both automated scanning and manual testing with actual assistive technology. Automated tools (axe, WAVE, Lighthouse) catch roughly 30–40% of issues. The rest require human judgment: can a screen reader user actually navigate this checkout flow? Can a keyboard-only user complete this form?
After the audit, issues are categorized by severity (Critical, Serious, Moderate, Minor) and a remediation plan is developed. Critical and Serious issues, those that block access entirely for disabled users, are addressed first. An audit report that just lists automated findings without manual testing and severity prioritization isn't worth much for legal protection or actual user experience.
Website accessibility is both the right thing to do and a genuine legal obligation for businesses that operate online. WCAG 2.1 AA is the standard. Overlays don't provide real compliance. An audit by a human using assistive technology is the only way to know where you actually stand.