Check your website for accessibility problems

The ADA covers businesses open to the public

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act bars discrimination by places of public accommodation, and the law’s own list runs from restaurants and stores to the office of a lawyer or an accountant. The Department of Justice’s March 2022 guidance says the ADA’s requirements apply to everything those businesses offer, including what they offer on the web, and that the DOJ has consistently taken the position that the ADA applies to web content.

There’s no federal website rule for businesses, but there is a yardstick

The DOJ says it doesn’t have a regulation setting out detailed standards for private businesses, which have flexibility in how they comply. It calls the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG, helpful guidance. For state and local governments it does have a rule, and that rule requires WCAG 2.1 Level AA by April 26, 2027 for governments serving 50,000 people or more and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones and special districts. That rule doesn’t cover private businesses, but it shows which standard the DOJ picked.

Courts don’t agree, and Florida’s answer is open

Federal courts are split on whether a website on its own counts as a place of public accommodation. Seyfarth Shaw, which tracks these filings, notes that New York’s federal judges have been more willing to hear suits against online-only businesses, while California’s federal courts have generally held those businesses aren’t covered. In the Eleventh Circuit, which covers Florida, a 2021 ruling in Gil v. Winn-Dixie that a website alone isn’t a public accommodation was vacated as moot that December, and rehearing was denied in March 2022. So there’s no settled answer here to point to.

The suits are climbing, and Florida is near the top

Federal court filings only, from Seyfarth Shaw’s tracking, 2026. Website suits were 3,117 of the 8,667 federal ADA Title III suits filed in 2025.

Other counters use other methods. UsableNet, an accessibility company, reviewed more than 5,000 digital accessibility suits in 2025 by adding New York and California state courts to the federal ones: 3,195 federal and 1,919 state, by its count. Demand letters aren’t filed with any court, so nobody counts those at all.

Settling one claim doesn’t stop the next

By UsableNet’s count, 1,427 of 2025’s federal suits, 45%, were filed against companies that had already been sued. Its report puts it bluntly: a single lawsuit rarely resolves the exposure unless the site actually gets fixed. A settlement covers the person who brought that claim, not the next one.

Some states add money damages

Under the federal ADA, a private plaintiff can ask a court to order the problem fixed and for attorney’s fees, not for damages. State laws change that. In California, any ADA violation is also a violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which sets damages at no less than $4,000 for each offense, plus attorney’s fees. New York’s Civil Rights Law, which covers disability, lets a person recover $100 to $500 for each violation. Florida’s own statute in this area, 553.5141, is about facilities and remediation plans, and whether it helps with a website is a question for your lawyer.

A widget won’t do it for you

In April 2025 the Federal Trade Commission finalized a $1 million order against accessiBe that bars it from claiming, without evidence, that its automated products can make any website meet WCAG. UsableNet counted more than 1,400 suits in 2025 against companies that already had a widget on their site.