ADA website lawsuits: what an inaccessible website risks for a US business

Updated 2026-10-29 · 9 min read · by the IsHacked team

Every year thousands of US businesses get a letter or a lawsuit saying their website can't be used by people with disabilities. Most of them are small: restaurants, bars, shops, salons and clinics. The letters cite the same handful of problems again and again, and most of those problems are cheap to fix before anyone complains.

This guide explains the risk in general terms. It is not legal advice; for your own situation, talk to a lawyer.

Check your homepage for the most-cited accessibility issues

Why a website can break the ADA

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires businesses open to the public to give people with disabilities equal access to their goods and services. The Justice Department's 2022 guidance on web accessibility says that includes what a business offers online, and it names restaurants, shops, banks and hotels as examples.

A blind person browses with a screen reader, which reads the page aloud. Someone with low vision zooms in or uses high contrast. People who can't use a mouse move with the keyboard. When a menu is only a photo, a button can't be reached with the Tab key or a form field has no label, the site shuts them out, and that is what the complaints are about.

There is no regulation with a technical standard for private businesses, so the benchmark everyone uses is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at level AA. In Robles v. Domino's Pizza (2019), a federal appeals court held that the ADA applied to Domino's website and app because they connected customers to its restaurants, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal.

How common the claims are

• Seyfarth Shaw, a law firm that tracks these cases, counted 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in federal courts in 2025, 27% more than in 2024 and more than a third of all ADA Title III lawsuits.
• New York, Florida and Illinois see the most federal cases. California cases mostly go to state court instead, under the state's Unruh Civil Rights Act.
• The pace hasn't slowed: federal ADA Title III filings reached 5,006 in the first half of 2026, 9% more than a year earlier, and UsableNet projects about 6,176 federal and state lawsuits over websites and apps for the year.
• Those counts leave out cases in other state courts and the demand letters that settle before anything is filed, which are far more numerous.
• A small group of law firms files most of these claims, often with the same plaintiffs and near-identical complaints. A letter usually comes with an "audit": automated scan reports, screenshots and sometimes a screen-reader recording.

What it costs

Under the federal ADA, a private plaintiff can't win money damages for themselves, but they can get a court order to fix the site, and the business that loses pays the plaintiff's attorney's fees. Some states add damages on top: in California the Unruh Act sets a minimum of $4,000 per violation. Most cases settle, and the bill typically includes:

• a settlement payment and the plaintiff's legal fees,
• your own lawyer,
• fixing the site, usually on a deadline the settlement sets, and often an outside audit,
• the next claim: settling with one plaintiff doesn't stop another, and a business sued once can be sued again if the site still has the same problems.

Already holding a letter? Read what to do with an ADA website demand letter: what each part of it means, what to do in the first 14 days and what your lawyer will look at.

Hosted site builders don't take the risk off you

Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, WordPress themes and online ordering platforms each produce some of the code, but the business publishes the content: the menu photo, the colors, the PDF, the form. Claims name the business, not the platform. A template that blocks zoom or a theme with faint grey text is still the site's problem.

Overlays and widgets are not a fix

Accessibility toolbars that add a script to the page promise compliance in minutes. They don't change the underlying page, screen-reader users often find them make things worse, and sites with them installed keep getting sued. In 2025 the Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million for claiming its widget made websites compliant.

The issues demand letters cite most

These come up in claim after claim, especially against restaurants and local businesses. Each is a WCAG 2.2 AA failure that an automated check can spot, so they are the first to fix.

1. The menu is a picture. A food or drink menu, price list, opening hours or event flyer posted as an image (or a scanned PDF). A screen reader says "image" and nothing else. Put the menu on the page as text; if you keep the image, give it alt text with the same content. (WCAG 1.1.1, 1.4.5)
2. Links that pretend to be buttons. An "Order online" or "Reserve" link coded as a button, or a button that opens another page. The screen reader announces the wrong control. Use a plain link to go to a page and a button for an action; styling one like the other is fine. (4.1.2)
3. No way to skip the menu. Without a "Skip to main content" link or a main landmark, keyboard and screen-reader users go through every navigation link on every page. (2.4.1)
4. Zoom blocked on phones. A viewport tag with user-scalable=no or maximum-scale=1 stops people from pinching to zoom. Remove both. (1.4.4)
5. Form fields without labels. A newsletter or reservation field with only placeholder text: it vanishes as you type, and many screen readers skip it. Give each field a visible label, and add autocomplete="email", "name" or "tel" to personal details. (1.3.1, 3.3.2, 1.3.5)
6. Low contrast. Light grey text on white, white text on a photo, faint field borders and focus outlines nobody can see. Text needs a ratio of at least 4.5:1 (3:1 for large text), and fields and focus indicators 3:1. (1.4.3, 1.4.11)

Letters often add a missing page language (<html lang="en">, 3.1.1), pages that all share one title (2.4.2) and pages without a single main heading.

What to do now

1. Find and fix the common failures. An automated check finds the issues above in minutes. IsHacked checks every monitored site for the first five on each scan and lists each one with the page, the element and the fix. Measure contrast with a tool that loads the rendered page, such as WebAIM's contrast checker.
2. Test it yourself. Unplug the mouse and use the site with Tab and Enter: can you see where you are, open the menu and finish a booking? Then try VoiceOver (built into iPhones and Macs) or the free NVDA screen reader on Windows. Automated tools catch only part of WCAG.
3. Publish an accessibility statement with a phone number and email so people can tell you about a problem, and answer them.
4. Keep a record. Note what you fixed and when. If a claim arrives, it shows a good-faith effort, and some courts have dismissed cases once a business proved the site had been fixed.
5. Keep checking. A new menu photo, a theme update or a new form brings the problems back. Check after every change, or let monitoring do it.

Small businesses may be able to claim part of the cost back: the IRS Disabled Access Credit (Form 8826) covers some accessibility spending for businesses with $1 million or less in revenue or 30 or fewer full-time employees. Ask your accountant whether your website work qualifies.

Government and public sites have deadlines

State and local governments fall under a separate rule (ADA Title II) that does set a standard: WCAG 2.1 AA, by April 26, 2027 for entities serving 50,000 people or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones and special districts. If you build sites for cities, counties, schools or public utilities, those dates apply to your clients.

Run a free check

FAQ

Does the ADA apply to my small business website?

If your business is open to the public in the US (a restaurant, shop, salon, hotel, clinic), the Justice Department's position is that the ADA covers what you offer online too, and courts have agreed, especially when the website is tied to a physical location. There is no minimum size. Ask a lawyer about your own case.

Which standard do I have to meet?

No regulation sets one for private businesses. In practice, demand letters, settlements and court orders measure websites against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at level AA, version 2.1 or the current 2.2.

Will an accessibility widget or overlay protect me?

No. A script that adds a toolbar doesn't fix the code underneath, and sites using overlays keep getting sued. In 2025 the FTC ordered one overlay vendor, accessiBe, to pay $1 million for claiming its tool made websites compliant.

Does an IsHacked scan make my website ADA compliant?

No. Automated checks find a set of common failures, the same ones automated tools in demand letters find, so you can fix them first. Many WCAG requirements need a person to test them, and only a lawyer can advise you on your legal position.

I got a demand letter. What should I do?

Don't ignore it, and don't reply on your own or just install a widget. Talk to a lawyer who handles ADA defense, keep a record of what the letter cites, and start fixing those issues, keeping dated notes of every fix.