Paper Self Assessment Return Deadline
ADA Website Accessibility Compliance Check
Why this matters.
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. §12182) prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability by businesses that are places of public accommodation, a category in 42 U.S.C. §12181(7) that covers shops, restaurants, hotels, professional offices, gyms, service providers and more. The Department of Justice’s March 2022 Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA states that businesses open to the public must make their websites accessible to people with disabilities, and that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a helpful reference. There is no Title III regulation setting a technical standard for private websites, so courts and settlements commonly measure websites against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the standard DOJ adopted for state and local governments in its 2024 Title II rule (28 C.F.R. Part 35, Subpart H).
Website accessibility lawsuits and demand letters are filed in large numbers every year, and small businesses using off-the-shelf templates are frequent targets. Under 42 U.S.C. §12188 private plaintiffs can get injunctions and attorney’s fees, and DOJ can seek civil penalties. State laws add damages: California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civil Code §§51 and 52) treats an ADA violation as a violation of state law, with statutory damages of at least $4,000 per violation. Overlay widgets alone do not fix underlying problems such as missing alt text, unlabelled form fields or keyboard traps. Fixing the main barriers, publishing an accessibility statement and giving people a way to report problems lowers both legal risk and lost sales.
