Accessibility is about creating a website that works for everyone.

All website owners should test their websites for accessibility and not rely on third party vendors or developers to ensure compliance. We highly recommend the Utah State University's WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, the most recognized free website accessibility evaluation tool available today.

In order to achieve compliance all pages of your website should have a WAVE evaluation rating of zero errors and zero contrast errors. Alerts and other results need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis as some may be important while others may be cautionary.

"New York leads the country in ADA Title III lawsuits for many reasons, but there’s one sure way to avoid them all: make your website and all digital content accessible." Equidox, Nina Overdorff, February 24, 2021

That is still true. In 2025 New York had more Federal website accessibility lawsuits than any other state.

While ADA compliant websites might once have been thought of as "just a nice thing to do", and of course it is much more than that, United States Federal courts across the country from New York to Texas, California to Florida have ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act (the "ADA") requires website owners to make their websites accessible to those with visual and hearing impairments.

The ADA may sound familiar as it is the same Federal law, passed in 1990, that requires access ramps, doors wide enough for wheelchair access and accessible parking spaces that you see at businesses, theaters, local government buildings, parks and other public places in your neighborhood. As a Federal law the ADA applies to everyone in every state, county, city, town and village in the United States. The only lawful exceptions are for religious institutions and clubs that are not open to the public (private clubs).

While websites cannot provide physical devices for disabled access like wheelchair ramps and special parking spaces Federal courts have ruled that websites are required to provide their digital equivalents.

For example, website owners need to provide their websites with the computer code necessary for screen readers used by the blind and visually impaired to "read" the words in the site and to convey what images "show" without disabled users being able to see them. Websites are required to have colors that do not interfere with the site being clear to those suffering from color blindness and to have closed captioning for videos for the deaf or hearing impaired.

There are many additional standards and guidelines to implement which require actual human interpretation of a specific website's unique content and construction of the computer code that assistive technologies make use of.

Thousands of Federal ADA website accessibility lawsuits continue to be filed every year against entities large and small and from coast-to-coast. In 2025, 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits were filed in Federal court, a 27% increase over 2024 (Seyfarth Shaw, ADA Title III). Counting state courts as well, one tracker recorded 3,948 website lawsuits in 2025 (EcomBack). It has been described as a "flood" and an "onslaught". Businesses, non-profits and even small government website owners are affected. New York led the country in 2025 with 1,021 Federal website accessibility lawsuits, followed by Florida and Illinois, and not just in their big cities but in outlying and rural areas too.

In summary, the legal argument is that just as brick and mortar buildings must provide public accommodation for all visitors, websites must do the same.

There may not be laws directly addressing ADA compliance, but there are guidelines. Websites are considered ADA compliant when they adhere to all of the guidelines established by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). These are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Levels A and AA. The current version is WCAG 2.2, published by the W3C in October 2023. Courts and settlement agreements commonly measure websites against WCAG Level AA, and in 2024 the U.S. Department of Justice adopted WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the required standard for state and local government websites. Adirondack Website Design builds to WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

According to the ADA and the courts, website owners are required to know the law and abide by it without any notification from those who may sue them.

Taking down a non-compliant website may be a preventative measure if your organization can live without a website. Most entities that interact with the public cannot afford to be without a website in this day and age.

Law firms use programs to crawl websites for these and other missing elements. When they find them, which they inevitably do, the owner of that website is at risk for a lawsuit for non-ADA compliance.

For entities who are being secretly investigated by law firms or are being sued for having a non-compliant website the damage is already done and taking their website down will not help. The ADA provides that damages are incurred in the past tense, for having been previously denied access, not that they may be denied access in the future.

This page continues to provide key bullet points for quick reference, including links to sources which provide greater detail and depth, and will then explain the issues in more detail to help you understand what website accessibility is, why it should be important to you and your business and of some of the various requirements to make your website ADA compliant and accessible to people with disabilities. You can always contact us to get a quote to create a website for you or to reconfigure your existing website for ADA compliance.

“Bottom line: If your website or app is not ADA compliant, you’re tempting fate and ultimately delaying the inevitable. The risk of being sued is real, as the number of lawsuits filed for inaccessible websites keeps growing.” DBS Interactive | Cyndi Masters | 02-20-2019

Making Your Website ADA Compliant

The best way to ensure your website is ADA compliant is to either have your website developed with accessibility baked in from the beginning or to have an in-depth, page-by-page website accessibility audit completed by Adirondack Website Design. We're up to date on the latest guidelines and can develop your website in full compliance or we can identify all non-compliant elements in your current website (as long as it's not made with a DIY editor like Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Weebly, GoDaddy, etc.) and correct them.

If you think you’re not vulnerable to a lawsuit because you run a small company or your business doesn’t have a physical address, you’re mistaken. Defendants across a broad spectrum of sectors have been targeted by ADA non-compliance lawsuits. The list includes everything from major corporations to well-known universities, celebrities, charities, and yes, small businesses.

Besides, being ADA compliant has its benefits. It makes good business sense, you add value to your brand, open your website up to a whole new set of visitors and you don’t have the constant financial threat of a possible lawsuit hanging over you. Further, as the population ages, the number of visitors will continue to grow.

There are currently four website accessibility standards;

• W3C WCAG
• W3C WCAG 2.2
• WAI-ARIA
• ADA Section 508

There are also many guidelines, technical specifications and checklists;

• Essential Components of Web Accessibility
• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) Overview
• Techniques for WCAG 2.2
• WebAIM Checklist
• Mozilla ARIA Specifications
• ... and many more

As you can see, making a website accessible involves a great deal of work and cannot be achieved by any one solution. As stated by renowned ADA accessibility consultant Edward Wald:

"... true accessibility goes much deeper than basic design or supplementary apps.", “You cannot simply address accessibility on top of existing application code and expect the issues to be fixed,” he says. "It starts with the wireframe and extends to how the site or app is coded. Accessibility incorporates everything from how the copy is written and the site designed to how it is tested for various users’ experiences".

We hope this page has been informative and provided some guidance into the complexities of website accessibility. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out to us and we will be glad to answer them.