ADA Audit Pro

Who's getting sued over website accessibility, and why.

ADA website lawsuits are rising again, and most of them target the same kinds of businesses for the same kinds of barriers. Here's what the latest data shows, and what you can do about it before a demand letter arrives.

3,117federal website accessibility lawsuits filed in 2025
+27%increase over 2024
~6,000+federal and state filings projected for 2026

Federal count from Seyfarth Shaw's review of federal court filings. The 2026 projection is UsableNet's, based on combined federal and state filings, and isn't directly comparable. Data as of September 2026.

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Lawsuits by industry

Nine out of ten digital accessibility lawsuits in 2025 targeted online stores and food businesses. What they have in common: customers depend on the website to buy something, and when a barrier blocks that, it's easy to demonstrate.

Share of 2025 digital accessibility lawsuits, from UsableNet's 2025 year-end report.

Share of 2025 digital accessibility lawsuits by industry
IndustryShare of lawsuits
E-commerce and retail
70%
Food and beverage
21%
Healthcare
2.5%
Entertainment
2%
Travel and hospitality
1.5%
Banking and finance
1.2%
Education
0.8%
Real estate
0.5%

Why each industry gets sued

Lawsuits follow barriers. These are the patterns I see most often when testing sites in each industry.

E-commerce and retail

Online stores have the most places for things to go wrong: product filters, image carousels, size and color pickers, pop-ups, carts and checkout. Most stores also run several third-party apps, and each one can add new barriers. When a customer using a screen reader or keyboard can't complete a purchase, that's the exact kind of barrier that shows up in complaints.

What I test for you: Search, filters, product pages, cart, checkout, account pages and every app on your storefront.

Restaurants, food and beverage

Restaurant sites are often built quickly from templates, with menus posted as images or PDFs, online ordering handled by third-party widgets, and location finders built on maps. Any of these can stop someone from reading the menu or placing an order.

What I test for you: Menus, PDF documents, online ordering, reservations, location pages and gift card purchases.

Healthcare

Appointment booking, patient portals and intake forms are essential services. Organizations receiving federal funding also face Section 504 web accessibility requirements, with the first deadline now set for May 11, 2027.

What I test for you: Booking flows, portal logins, forms, error messages, session timeouts and patient PDFs.

Entertainment and media

Video without captions, media players that can't be controlled with a keyboard, and ticketing flows with seat maps are common barriers.

What I test for you: Video players, captions, ticket purchases and seat selection.

Travel and hospitality

Booking engines rely on date pickers, room and seat selectors, and maps, which are some of the hardest components to make accessible.

What I test for you: Search, date pickers, booking steps, maps and payment.

Banking, finance, education and real estate

Banks have secure logins, timeouts and statements in PDF. Schools and universities run learning platforms full of documents and video. Real estate sites depend on listing search, maps and photo galleries.

What I test for you: Logins, timeouts, forms, PDFs, learning platforms, listing search and image galleries.

What a claim can cost

Published settlements and legal reports give a rough picture. Even a claim that ends with no damages can cost thousands in legal fees, and the website still has to be fixed afterwards.

A small business audit costs $999. The average reported demand letter settlement is about five times that.

Illustrative averages from published court records and litigation reports, compiled by Accessibility.build. They aren't predictions or legal advice.

Reported average costs by type of resolution
How it endsReported averagePublished range
Demand letter settlement$5,000$1,000 to $25,000
Out-of-court settlement$30,000$5,000 to $150,000
Legal defense, no damages$30,000$5,000 to $125,000
Court judgment$85,000$10,000 to $500,000
Class action settlement$400,000$50,000 to $6 million

Where lawsuits are filed

Federal website lawsuits are concentrated in a few courts. New York and Florida alone accounted for more than 60% of 2025 federal filings, and Florida's count nearly doubled from the year before.

Where a case is filed isn't limited to where a business is located. Plaintiffs often file where they live, so a business anywhere in the US can be named in these courts if its website is available to customers there.

California shows few federal filings because many California claims are filed in state court instead, which these numbers don't include.

States with the most federal website accessibility lawsuits, 2025
StateFederal filings
New York1,021
Florida961
Illinois585
Minnesota162
Pennsylvania137

Five things business owners should know in 2026

  1. Widgets aren't a defense

    About 20% of companies sued in the first half of 2026 were using an accessibility widget or overlay, according to UsableNet. In 2025 the FTC required one overlay company to pay $1 million over misleading claims about what its product could do.

  2. Getting sued once makes it more likely again

    More than 1,400 of the digital accessibility lawsuits filed in 2025 targeted companies that had already faced a claim before, according to UsableNet. Settling without fixing the site leaves the door open.

  3. Class actions are raising the stakes

    In July 2026, a federal court certified a nationwide class of people with visual disabilities in a case over the Ralph Lauren website. Separately, Fashion Nova agreed to a proposed $5.15 million class settlement over claims its site didn't work with screen readers, which the company denies and which still awaits court approval.

  4. Public entities have more time, but not forever

    The Department of Justice extended its ADA Title II deadlines for state and local government websites to April 26, 2027 for larger entities and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones, with WCAG 2.1 AA as the standard. That extension is being challenged in court, and it doesn't affect private lawsuits against businesses.

  5. Selling to Europe adds another layer

    Since June 2025, the European Accessibility Act has required many e-commerce, banking and digital services sold to EU customers to meet accessibility standards based on WCAG.

How I help you get ahead of it

Plaintiffs' firms test websites with a keyboard and a screen reader. So do I, before they do, and I show you exactly what to fix.

  • Manual testing of real journeysNot just your homepage. I test the paths customers actually use: search, booking, ordering, checkout.
  • A certified testerDHS Trusted Tester for Section 508, with 5 years of hands-on audit experience.
  • Fixes your developers can useEvery issue comes with its location, who it affects, the WCAG criterion and how to fix it.
  • Proof of progressA free retest confirms your fixes, and gives you a documented record of the work you've done.
  • Clear, fair pricing$999 for a small business audit, custom quotes for larger sites, and no long contracts.
  • Fast when it mattersReceived a demand letter? Tell me and I'll prioritize your audit. Because I'm based in India, I often work while you sleep.

Find your barriers before someone else does.

Get a free 3-minute video of your homepage tested with a keyboard and screen reader. No sales call, no login needed.

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Sources and notes

Data compiled by Accessibility.build (CC BY 4.0) from these sources, updated September 2026:

Federal and state lawsuit counts come from different datasets and shouldn't be added together. This page is general information, not legal advice. No audit can guarantee you won't receive a claim; for legal questions, talk to an attorney.