Is My Website an ADA or Accessibility Lawsuit Risk?
Thousands of accessibility demand letters go out every year, and most target small sites with the same handful of fixable issues. Here is what triggers them and how to check yours.
If your site is hard to use with a screen reader or a keyboard, it is an accessibility risk, and in the US that increasingly means a legal one. Courts treat websites as places of public accommodation under the ADA, and while there is no official 'ADA compliant' stamp for a site, the standard everyone uses in practice is WCAG 2.1 at level AA. The uncomfortable part for small founders is the volume: thousands of web accessibility lawsuits are filed each year, and the number of pre-suit demand letters is many times higher.
Why would a small site get targeted?
Small sites get targeted precisely because they are small and the process is cheap to repeat. Many firms run high-volume practices: scan lots of sites, find the same common failures, send a demand letter, settle for a few thousand dollars, repeat. You do not need to be famous or large. You need a homepage with missing alt text and an unlabeled signup form, which describes a lot of fast-built sites.
//Overlay widgets are not a fix
The pop-up 'accessibility' widgets that promise instant compliance do not reliably work, and leaning on them can make things worse. The FTC fined one major overlay vendor a million dollars for deceptively claiming its tool made any website WCAG compliant. Real accessibility lives in your HTML, not a script you bolt on.
What actually trips most sites?
Most complaints come down to a short list of concrete, fixable issues, not exotic edge cases.
- ▸Images without alt text, so screen-reader users miss what they show. This is the single most common failure.
- ▸Form fields with no real label, so a blind user cannot tell what to type. Placeholders are not labels.
- ▸Buttons and icons with no accessible name, so their purpose is invisible to assistive tech.
- ▸Low color contrast on text, making it unreadable for many people.
- ▸Keyboard traps and no visible focus, so someone navigating without a mouse gets stuck.
What about the EU?
The EU now has its own version of this pressure. The European Accessibility Act, effective 28 June 2025, requires many digital products and e-commerce services sold into the EU to meet accessibility standards that line up with WCAG 2.1 AA. So whether your users are American or European, the practical target is the same standard, which makes fixing it a single piece of work rather than two.
How do I check my site?
You can catch a meaningful share of issues automatically. Free browser tools and the axe engine will flag missing alt text, unlabeled inputs, and contrast problems. That is a real start, but automated checks only catch part of WCAG, roughly a third to a half, so a manual pass (try your site with only the keyboard, then with a screen reader) matters for the rest.
The Compliance check runs an automated accessibility pass over your site as part of its scan, flags the serious WCAG failures it finds, and is honest that the automated pass is not the whole picture. It bundles this with your GDPR, EU AI Act, and US privacy gaps in one private report, so accessibility is not a separate errand.
Want to know if your site has the common accessibility failures that trigger letters? Run a Compliance check for a private list of what to fix.
Run a Compliance checkFrequently asked questions
Is there an official ADA certification for websites? ▾
No. There is no government 'ADA compliant' certificate for a website. US courts apply the ADA to websites and treat WCAG 2.1 AA as the practical benchmark. Be wary of any vendor selling an instant 'ADA certified' badge; meeting the standard is about your actual markup, not a seal.
What standard do I need to meet for web accessibility? ▾
WCAG 2.1 at level AA is the standard cited by both US courts (for the ADA) and the EU Accessibility Act. Meeting it covers most legal exposure on both sides of the Atlantic, which is why it is worth treating as a single target.
Do accessibility overlay widgets make my site compliant? ▾
No. Overlay widgets do not reliably fix accessibility and can interfere with assistive technology. The FTC fined a major overlay vendor for falsely claiming its product made sites compliant. Real fixes belong in your HTML: alt text, labels, contrast, and keyboard support.
Can I check website accessibility myself? ▾
Partly. Free tools and the axe engine catch a good share of issues like missing alt text and low contrast, and you can test keyboard-only navigation yourself. But automated checks catch only about a third to a half of WCAG, so a manual review is still needed for full coverage.
Catch the common accessibility failures
A Compliance check runs an accessibility pass with your GDPR, EU AI Act, and US privacy checks, and hands you one private fix list. Honest about what automation can and cannot catch.
Run a Compliance checkKeep reading
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