An ADA website lawsuit letter claims your website is a place of public accommodation under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act and that a visitor using a screen reader could not use it. It lists automated findings such as images without descriptions and unlabeled form fields, and cites WCAG 2.1 AA. Federal Title III carries no money damages; New York and California state laws add them.
What Title III says and how courts apply it to websites
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA, prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services of any place of public accommodation. The statute lists twelve categories of places, from hotels to bakeries to the offices of an accountant or lawyer. It was written in 1990 and does not mention websites; ADA.gov hosts the statute and the Title III regulations.
Courts split on whether a website is one of those places. Some circuits hold that a website is covered only when it has a nexus to a physical location, so an online-only store may fall outside the statute. Other courts, including many district courts in New York, treat a website as a place of public accommodation on its own. The court you are sued in decides which reading applies, and plaintiff firms know the map.
No federal regulation sets a technical standard for private business websites. In April 2024 the Department of Justice published a rule under Title II that requires state and local government websites and apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with compliance dates of April 26, 2027 or April 26, 2028 depending on population, after an April 2026 rule extended the original dates; ADA.gov summarizes the rule. The DOJ has not issued a matching Title III rule.
Complaints fill that gap by citing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 at Level AA, published by the W3C, as the measure of whether a site is usable. Courts and settlement agreements have used the same benchmark for years, and the findings section of a complaint usually lists the WCAG success criterion next to each item.
Remedies matter. A private plaintiff under Title III can obtain an injunction ordering the site fixed, plus attorney's fees, but not money damages. That is why the letter asks you to settle for a fee and a remediation agreement, and why the state law claims added to the complaint change the arithmetic, which a later section covers.
Who files these letters
A small number of serial plaintiffs and firms. In the 12 months from 2025-09-12 to 2026-09-04, Suitcast's lawsuits data search returned 887 federal dockets that cite the ADA together with screen readers, WCAG, visual impairment or alt text, from CourtListener records. Most of those dockets belong to a plaintiff who has filed before, and the majority of plaintiffs in the set appear on more than one case.
The firms concentrate further. Equal Access Law Group appears on 318 of those dockets, Gottlieb & Associates on 152, Joseph & Norinsberg on 65, Nye, Stirling, Hale, Miller & Sweet on 61 and Stein Saks on 47, per the firms page. Five firms, 643 dockets between them.
The courts concentrate too. The Northern District of Illinois holds 312 of the 887, the Southern District of New York 250 and the Eastern District of Wisconsin 65. Those three districts carry more than two thirds of the total between them, which is why the Illinois page and the New York page read very differently from a state where a handful of cases were filed all year.
Serial plaintiffs are individuals who file many suits, often against businesses in the same industry in the same month. Names repeat across dockets and the complaints are near-identical templates with the business name and the findings swapped in. That is not a comment on the plaintiff; the barriers are often real. It means the complaint you received was not written for you, and the findings in it were generated by a tool.
The state pages show what this looks like locally: New York, California and Florida each list the last 12 months of filings, the firms behind them and the industries hit, updated daily. If your letter's firm is on the firms page, you can read a dozen of its complaints before you call anyone.
What the complaint cites
The findings section of a website accessibility complaint reads like the output of an automated checker because it usually is one. The same six items recur across complaints. In the plain titles Suitcast uses for the axe-core rules behind them:
- Images have no description (image-alt). A screen reader says "image" and nothing else. Complaints call this missing alternative text, and it is the single most common allegation.
- Form fields have no label (label). The visitor hears "edit text" without knowing what to type. Complaints describe unlabeled input fields or form controls.
- Links have no text (link-name). Usually an icon or a logo with nothing behind it. Complaints call these empty links or say the link purpose is unclear.
- Buttons have no text (button-name). Icon-only menu, cart and close buttons. Complaints describe empty buttons.
- Text is hard to read against its background (color-contrast). Complaints cite insufficient contrast or the contrast ratio.
- The page does not say what language it is in (html-has-lang). A one-line theme setting that complaints describe as the language of the page not being identified.
Beyond those six, complaints add items such as no way to skip past the menu, embedded frames with no title, and headings that skip levels. Complaints usually list a WCAG 2.1 success criterion next to each finding, although axe-core treats heading order as a best practice rather than a WCAG requirement.
Two things to understand about this list. Automated tools detect only a part of what WCAG covers; the rest requires a person using a screen reader or a keyboard. And the same finding on a template repeats on every page, so a complaint that says hundreds of images lack alt text may be describing one product grid.
The free Suitcast scan runs the automated WCAG A and AA rules from that set against your public pages and reports each finding under the plain title above, with the owner-level fix and where the setting lives. The methodology page lists the rules and how the score is built.
The first steps
Preserve. Take dated full-page captures of the pages the complaint names and of the home page, checkout and contact form. Run a scan and save the report. You want a record of the site as it was on the day the letter arrived, because the fixes you make next will change it.
Scan. Run the site through an automated checker and get the list of findings with counts per page. Compare it to the complaint. Findings the complaint lists that your scan does not show, and the reverse, are both useful to your lawyer.
Fix the cited items using the plain fixes. Alt text is added in the page editor: the Shopify theme editor image block, the WordPress media library alt field, Squarespace image settings. Labels come from the form builder; placeholder text alone is not a label. Icon buttons and links get a text label or an aria-label from your developer. Contrast is a theme color setting. The page language is a site setting under Shopify Languages, WordPress General settings or Squarespace Language & Region. Fix the template once and every page inherits it.
Publish an accessibility statement. A short page that names the standard you work toward, WCAG 2.1 AA, a contact for reporting barriers, and the date of your last review. It does not stop a filing. It shows a process.
Talk to a lawyer. One who has handled website accessibility matters in the court named in the letter, since the circuit split above changes the defenses. Ask about the state law claims in particular, because those carry the damages.
Know what the money is. Federal Title III has no damages. State laws can add money that federal law does not: New York's State and City Human Rights Laws allow damages, and California's Unruh Civil Rights Act sets at least $4,000 per violation. That is one reason demands tied to those states are higher.
Overlay widget, fixing the pages, or a full audit
The decision owners face by day two, usually after a vendor email offering a one-line script that promises to handle everything.
| Approach | What it changes | What it does not change | Honest cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overlay widget | Adds a toolbar that alters presentation: contrast, font size, some generated alt text | The page code; missing labels and empty buttons remain in the source that a screen reader and a scanner read | Low monthly fee; sites running overlays continue to appear as defendants |
| Fixing the pages | The template and content: alt text, labels, button names, contrast, language | Items automated tools cannot detect, such as reading order or whether alt text is meaningful | A developer day on most small sites, plus content work on images |
| Full audit | Everything above plus manual testing with a screen reader and keyboard, and a report against every WCAG 2.1 AA criterion | Nothing about future content unless you keep testing | Highest; the right choice for sites with checkout, booking or patient portals |
On overlays specifically: in January 2025 the Federal Trade Commission announced an order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its automated product could make websites conform to accessibility guidelines; the FTC's release describes the allegations and the order. I do not print numbers about overlay lawsuits I cannot source, and I do not need to: the complaint cites findings in the page code, and an overlay leaves the page code alone.
Fixing the pages is the middle path most small businesses take, and it addresses everything an automated complaint cites. A full audit is where the fixes go next once the letter is handled, especially for sites where a visitor completes a transaction.
Why New York and California, and what damages change
Federal Title III's remedies are an injunction and attorney's fees. That is enough to sustain the practice, since the fee is paid by the defendant, but it is not what drives the number in the demand.
New York's State Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law allow damages for discrimination in public accommodations, and complaints filed in the Southern District of New York attach them as pendent claims. California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, Civil Code section 52, sets a minimum of $4,000 in statutory damages per violation, and under Civil Code section 51(f) an ADA violation is also an Unruh violation. Plaintiffs multiply that figure across visits, which is the arithmetic behind a California demand.
The data reflects it. Of the 887 federal dockets in the last 12 months, the Southern District of New York holds 250, per the New York page. California's federal count is lower than New York's because many California accessibility claims are filed in state court under Unruh, which Suitcast covers only partially through curated sources, as the data page explains.
For an owner outside those states, the exposure is different in kind: an injunction and fees, not damages. That does not make the letter ignorable, but it changes what a fair settlement looks like, and a lawyer who has handled these matters will price it accordingly. It also means the same fix list applies everywhere; the findings do not change with the state, only the price of them.
Limitations
Federal dockets only, for the counts. Suitcast's numbers come from CourtListener's RECAP index, so they include federal filings and curated state filings with a source, and state court coverage is partial. New York state court and California state court accessibility cases are undercounted, and the firm numbers above are federal counts.
The query behind the 887 is a text search for ADA cases that mention screen readers, WCAG, visual impairment or alt text, so it can miss a website case that uses different wording and can include a physical access case that mentions a website. The methodology page documents the query and the review process, and the data page shows the coverage note next to every count.
Automated testing catches only a portion of WCAG. A clean automated scan does not mean a screen reader user can complete your checkout, and a scan does not determine whether any site meets any standard. The scan shows what a complaint would cite; it does not stop anyone from filing. The not legal advice page says this in full, and the scanner policy describes what the scan loads.
The circuit split summary above is a summary. Decisions arrive monthly, and the DOJ's position on private websites could change with a new rule. Ask your lawyer about the current state in your circuit before relying on any general statement.
The companion guides cover CIPA demand letters about tracking scripts, the other letter type owners receive, and which tracking scripts appear most in website privacy lawsuits. The pricing page covers weekly re-scans for owners who want a dated record that the fixes held.
Suitcast identifies risk indicators. It is not legal advice and does not determine compliance.
Last updated September 13, 2026.