Does my business website need to be ADA compliant?

Which businesses need an accessible website

Accessibility isn't only a US rule. If you sell into the US, Canada, the UK, or Australia, one of these usually applies:

The Ontario figures come from the Government of Ontario's own guidance, which also says the organisation that controls the website is responsible, even when a contractor built it. That matches how it works everywhere: if your developer built an inaccessible site, the problem is still yours.

In practice, the US is where the risk is highest, because private lawsuits are common there. Elsewhere the rules are similar but enforcement is rarer. Building to the same standard covers all four.

What ADA compliant means for a website

There is no official "ADA compliant" certificate. The Department of Justice's guidance says it has no regulation setting detailed standards for businesses, and that businesses can choose how they make their sites accessible. It points to WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, as helpful guidance.

WCAG is a list of testable rules published by the W3C, the group that sets web standards. It has three levels: A, AA, and AAA. Level AA is the level Ontario's rule requires, and the one to aim for. Version 2.2 is the current one, and a site that meets 2.2 AA also meets the older versions.

In plain terms, a site that meets WCAG AA can be used without a mouse, read aloud by a screen reader, read by someone with weak eyesight, and understood without relying on colour alone. Anyone who sells you a badge or a certificate saying your site is "ADA compliant" is selling something the law doesn't define.

How likely is an ADA website lawsuit?

Seyfarth Shaw, a law firm that tracks these cases, counted 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, up 27% from 2,452 in 2024. Website cases made up 36% of all ADA Title III lawsuits filed in federal court that year. Those numbers don't include state courts or the demand letters that settle before anyone files.

Where you are matters. In Seyfarth's 2025 count, New York had 1,021 federal cases, Florida 961, and Illinois 585. Together those three states account for more than 80% of the total.

The risk for a single small business in a given year is still low. But the cost when it happens is lopsided: legal fees and a settlement, and then you pay to fix the site anyway, on someone else's deadline. Fixing it first is almost always cheaper, especially when it's folded into work you're doing anyway, like a redesign.

The most common website accessibility problems

Most inaccessible sites fail on the same few things. WebAIM, a web accessibility non-profit, runs automated tests on the home pages of the top million websites every year. In its 2026 report, 95.9% of those home pages had detectable WCAG failures, with an average of 56.1 errors per page. The six most common:

WebAIM notes these same problems have topped the list for seven years. The good news for a business owner is that almost all of them are fixed once, in the site's templates, rather than page by page.

A 15-minute accessibility check you can run

You don't need a developer to find out roughly where you stand. Open your homepage, your main service page, and your contact page, and go through this list:

If you fail one or two of these, you're in the same place as most sites, and it's usually a small job. If you fail most of them, especially the keyboard ones, the problem is in how the site was built, and that changes whether to fix it or redesign it.

Do accessibility widgets make a website compliant?

No. Overlay widgets are the small accessibility icons that sit in the corner of a page and promise compliance for a monthly fee. They can change font sizes and colours, but they sit on top of your site. They can't write alt text that actually describes your photos, add proper labels to a form that was built without them, or make a menu that only opens on a mouse hover work with a keyboard.

Those are the barriers the Department of Justice lists in its guidance: missing alt text, poor colour contrast, videos without captions, forms that can't be used, and navigation that only works with a mouse. Many screen reader users already have their own tools set up, so a widget that changes the page can get in their way. I'd spend the widget budget on fixing the templates instead: it's a one-off cost, not a subscription, and it fixes the actual problem.

Fix your current site, or redesign it?

Accessibility work lives mostly in the templates: the header, menu, footer, forms, buttons, and the few page layouts every page is built from. How easy those are to change decides the answer.

Fix it when the site is recent and well built

If the site is a few years old, runs on a modern platform, and the self-check turned up contrast, alt text, and a couple of form labels, fix it in place. Colours change once in the stylesheet, labels are added to the form template, and alt text is written for the images that carry meaning. Your team can keep writing alt text for new images from then on.

Redesign when the problems are in how it was built

If the keyboard test failed across the site, the menu only works on hover, and the pages are stacked page-builder blocks with pop-ups and sliders, fixing it can cost as much as rebuilding the templates properly. The same sites are usually slow too, and slow sites often share the same cause: too many plugins and scripts nobody controls.

Build it in when a redesign is coming anyway

If you're already planning a website redesign, make WCAG 2.2 AA part of the brief from day one. Building accessible templates costs very little extra when it's planned; retrofitting them after launch costs more. If you're unsure whether your site needs a redesign at all, the test in redesign or start over helps, and the price ranges are in how much a website redesign costs.

What an accessibility score does and doesn't prove

On the aviation website, a catalog of 120+ pages with many image-heavy aircraft and engine pages, the finished site scored 95+ in every category of Google's Lighthouse test, which includes accessibility. Because the pages were built from reusable templates, getting the header, menu, and asset page template right carried across the whole catalog. On the consulting website, alt text and a clean heading structure on every page were part of the build, next to the SEO work, because both help the same visitors find their way.

A high Lighthouse score is a good sign, but it isn't proof of compliance. Automated tools check what a machine can see: whether alt text exists, whether contrast passes, whether a button has a name. They can't tell whether the alt text actually describes the image, whether the order the keyboard moves through makes sense, or whether a screen reader user can complete a booking. That takes a person working through the key pages with a keyboard and a screen reader, like the self-check above, only more thoroughly.

What to ask a developer about accessibility

Accessibility is cheapest when it's written into the quote, not raised after launch. Add these to the questions you ask any developer:

• Which WCAG version and level will the site meet? A good answer names one, like 2.2 AA. "It'll be ADA compliant" is not an answer.
• How do you test it? Listen for automated checks plus manual keyboard and screen reader testing. Automated tools alone are a weak answer.
• Will you install an overlay widget? The right answer is no.
• How will my team keep it accessible? You want to be shown where to write alt text and which colours are safe to use.

What to do if you get an ADA demand letter

A demand letter is a letter from a lawyer saying your website discriminates against disabled visitors and asking for payment, often with a deadline. If one arrives:

1. Don't ignore it, and don't pay or reply before speaking to a lawyer who handles ADA Title III cases.
2. Don't install a widget and call it fixed. It won't repair what the letter lists.
3. Have the pages and problems named in the letter checked, then the rest of the site, using the same kind of review described above.
4. Fix the templates, and keep a dated record of what was found, what was changed, and when. Your lawyer will want it.
5. Add an accessibility page with a contact method, so the next person who hits a problem can tell you directly.

If your site needs that review or those fixes, send me the link. I'll tell you what fails, whether it can be fixed in place, and whether a redesign is the cheaper route.