Why this matters: Federal website-accessibility filings topped 3,100 in 2025, a 27% jump from the year before, and they keep climbing. This isn’t meant to scare you. It’s meant to give you the lay of the land so you can make an informed decision. And if you’d rather someone else handle the details, that’s what we’re here for.

If you’ve never received a demand letter over your website, you’re not alone. Most business owners haven’t. It’s not something that comes up in the day-to-day of running a business.

And that makes sense. You’re busy keeping the business running, serving customers, managing people, making payroll. Website accessibility isn’t going to jump to the top of that list. It doesn’t bring in revenue today. It doesn’t solve an immediate problem.

But courts have shifted how they interpret website accessibility over the last few years, and if you’re the person responsible for the website, whether you built it, inherited it, or paid someone for it five years ago, it’s worth understanding what you’re dealing with. Not out of fear. So you can make a call and move on.

What’s Actually Happening

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), places of “public accommodation” must be accessible to people with disabilities. For decades, that meant physical spaces, restaurants, stores, hotels. But as commerce moved online, courts increasingly applied the same logic to websites.

According to Seyfarth Shaw’s annual ADA Title III tracking, website accessibility lawsuits filed in federal court rebounded to over 3,100 in 2025, a number that has nearly quadrupled since 2017. And the share targeting websites specifically keeps growing.

These aren’t just Fortune 500 cases. Small businesses, non-profits, local service providers. They’re all in the mix. A demand letter can arrive out of the blue, alleging that your site doesn’t work with screen reader software, lacks adequate color contrast, or can’t be navigated by keyboard.

When we build a site, this is the kind of thing we handle from the start so you don’t have to think about it later. But if you’re working with an existing site, it’s worth knowing where the bar is.

The Standard, in Plain Terms

The legal benchmark most referenced in these cases is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at Level AA. Here’s what that means in plain terms:

WCAG is an international standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the same organization that sets the technical standards for how the web works.
Level AA is the middle tier (A, AA, AAA). It covers the most common barriers without requiring the exhaustive effort of the highest level.

What does that mean in practice? Your site doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to accommodate every possible disability in the most advanced way. But it does have to be usable. People should be able to perceive, operate, and understand your content, and your site should work with the assistive technologies people rely on.

What the Requirements Actually Look Like

WCAG AA organizes around four principles, POUR:

Perceivable: Information has to be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. That means text alternatives for images, captions for video, and content that adapts to different screen sizes and assistive tools.
Operable: People need to be able to navigate and interact with your site. Keyboard accessibility, enough time to read content, no design elements that could cause seizures.
Understandable: Content and interface need to be clear. Readable text, predictable navigation, helpful error messages on forms, the things that frustrate everyone when they’re missing.
Robust: Your site should work across current and future technologies, including screen readers, voice control software, and other assistive tools.

None of these are exotic. They’re the same principles that make a website better for everyone, faster, clearer, easier to use. When we build a site, these are baked into our process, not added as an afterthought. The overlap between “good for accessibility” and “good for your business” is nearly complete.

What You Can Do

If the idea of a lawsuit makes you uneasy, here’s the part that should feel better: the path to an accessible website is clear and more affordable than most people expect. It rarely means rebuilding from scratch. It means a systematic approach:

Get an audit. Have your site evaluated against WCAG AA. Automated tools catch a lot, but a human review matters for understanding how real people experience your site. We do these audits as part of our work. It’s not something you need to learn to do yourself.
Fix the high-impact issues first. Low-contrast text, missing image descriptions, forms without labels. These are common problems that affect a lot of users, and they’re usually straightforward to fix.
Build accessibility into your process going forward. If you’re adding new content or features, it’s much easier (and cheaper) to include accessibility from the start than to retrofit later.
Document your progress. If you ever do receive a complaint, showing that you’ve made a good-faith effort to improve accessibility goes a long way.

A Note About Liability Insurance

Some business insurance policies now cover digital accessibility claims, or at least ask about your website’s accessibility during underwriting. It’s worth asking your insurance agent whether your policy addresses this. The answer might move accessibility up your priority list, and it’s a smart question to ask regardless.

The Bottom Line

We don’t do fear-mongering. Most businesses will never face a lawsuit. But the risk is real and growing, and it’s entirely preventable. The same work that makes your website accessible to more people also makes it less legally vulnerable.

You don’t have to become an expert on WCAG. You don’t have to learn to audit your own site. That’s what we’re here for, to handle the things that matter but aren’t your job. Your job is running the business. Ours is making sure the website doesn’t become a liability while you do it.

The bottom line: Website accessibility lawsuits are real and growing, but the standard (WCAG AA) is achievable. Your site doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to be usable. And you don’t have to figure it out alone. Starting now, with the right help, is the best protection.