Key takeaways
- Website accessibility lawsuits are common and rising. UsableNet’s 2025 year-end report tracked 5,114 ADA digital accessibility lawsuits, 62% in federal court and 38% in New York and California state courts.
- Ecommerce businesses are the main target at 70% of filings, followed by food service at 21%.
- Small businesses get sued too: 64% of the companies sued had less than $25 million in annual revenue.
- Being sued once does not end the risk. 1,427 federal lawsuits, 45% of federal filings, targeted companies that had already been sued.
- The best defense is fixing your site against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, documenting the work and publishing an accessibility statement. Overlay widgets do not prevent lawsuits.
Website accessibility lawsuits are filed under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, state laws such as California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and New York’s human rights laws, and occasionally other federal statutes. A plaintiff typically claims that barriers on a site, such as unlabeled buttons or images without alt text, kept them from using it. This Emulent guide covers who gets sued, why, how to assess and fix your site and how the same work supports SEO and sales. It is general information, not legal advice; talk to an attorney if you receive a demand letter or complaint.
Who gets sued over website accessibility?
Any business with a public-facing website can be sued, but the data shows clear patterns. According to UsableNet’s 2025 report:
| Risk factor | What it means |
|---|---|
| Industry | ecommerce sites drew 70% of filings, food service 21% and healthcare 2%. |
| Location | New York led both federal and state filings, followed by California and Florida, with rising activity in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Missouri. |
| Company size | 64% of defendants had under $25 million in revenue, while the share over $25 million rose to 36%, up from 27% in 2023. |
| Repeat targets | nearly half of federal suits named companies that had been sued before, often because earlier fixes were incomplete or new content reintroduced barriers. |
| Widget users | more than 1,400 suits targeted companies that had accessibility widgets installed. |
A business does not need to be in New York or California to be sued there. Plaintiffs often file where state law allows statutory damages, and an online store that ships nationwide can be reached in those courts.
What do plaintiffs typically claim is wrong?
Most complaints describe barriers a screen reader or keyboard user hit while trying to shop, book or find information. Courts and settlements usually measure those barriers against WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
- Images and product photos with no alt text, so a screen reader announces nothing or a file name.
- Buttons, icons and links with no accessible name, such as an unlabeled “add to cart” or search icon.
- Menus, filters, carousels and popups that cannot be operated by keyboard or that trap focus.
- Forms and checkouts with missing labels or error messages that are never announced.
- Low-contrast text, the most common error in the 2026 WebAIM Million report, found on 83.9% of top home pages.
- Videos without captions and PDFs that are scanned images.
Because these issues are detectable with free tools, sites that fail basic checks are easy to find. WebAIM detected WCAG 2 failures on 95.9% of the top one million home pages in 2026.
How do you reduce your risk of an accessibility lawsuit?
Find and fix the barriers, then show your work. A documented, ongoing program puts you in a stronger position than a one-time scan.
- Audit: run WAVE, axe DevTools or Google Lighthouse on your main templates, then test with only a keyboard and with screen readers such as NVDA, VoiceOver and TalkBack.
- Fix task blockers first: checkout, cart, search, account login, booking and contact forms.
- Repair shared components such as headers, menus, product cards and form fields so fixes apply site-wide.
- Assign owners: content teams for alt text and headings, designers for contrast and focus styles, developers for markup and custom widgets.
- Publish an accessibility statement with the standard you target and a phone number and email for reporting problems, and respond quickly when someone reaches out.
- Check third-party tools: review widgets, chat tools and booking systems, and add WCAG 2.1 AA language to vendor contracts.
- Retest after redesigns, theme or plugin updates and new product launches.
Do not treat an overlay as protection. In April 2025 the FTC finalized an order requiring overlay vendor accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its widget could make any website WCAG-compliant. Results of any remediation vary, and no approach guarantees a site will never be sued.
How does accessibility work connect to SEO and conversions?
The fixes that lower legal risk also help people buy and help search engines understand your site. Screen readers and crawlers both rely on clean, semantic HTML.
- Alt text on product images supports image search as well as screen reader users.
- Logical headings help search engines and AI answer engines understand page structure.
- Descriptive link and button text tells users and crawlers what happens next.
- Labeled forms with clear error messages reduce checkout and lead form abandonment for everyone.
The audience is significant: the CDC reports more than one in four US adults has some type of disability. Pair accessibility fixes with strong SEO and the same work supports traffic and sales. For ecommerce brands, we recommend Shopify, where accessible themes and careful app choices make a big difference; on WordPress sites, most fixes happen at the template level.
How the Emulent team can help
Emulent audits websites against WCAG 2.1 AA with automated scans and manual keyboard and screen reader testing, then fixes the issues in your templates, components and content. We document the work, help you publish an accessibility statement and set up checks so new pages do not reintroduce barriers. Our website design team builds accessibility in from the start on new projects. To find out where your website stands, contact the Emulent team.