Can you be sued over an inaccessible website? The ADA and the European Accessibility Act

How many website accessibility lawsuits are filed?

According to Seyfarth Shaw, which tracks every ADA Title III case in federal court, plaintiffs filed 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in federal courts in 2025, up 27% on 2024. They made up 36% of all 8,667 federal Title III lawsuits that year (Seyfarth Shaw).

Those figures miss state courts, where many claims are now filed. Trackers that add New York and California state cases put the 2025 total at around 4,900 to 5,000. Many defendants are small and mid-sized online shops, restaurants and service businesses, and some are sued more than once by different plaintiffs.

Federal filings concentrate where the law is most favourable to plaintiffs: in 2025, New York (1,021), Florida (961) and Illinois (585) led. California had only four federal website cases, because plaintiffs there mostly sue in state court under the Unruh Act.

More figures and the states to watch: ADA website lawsuits 2026 on SafeLaunch.

Does the ADA apply to my website?

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination by ‘public accommodations’: businesses open to the public, such as shops, restaurants, hotels and service providers. The Department of Justice said in its March 2022 guidance that this includes their websites, while leaving businesses flexibility in how they make them accessible.

Courts largely agree where the website is connected to a physical place. In Robles v. Domino’s Pizza (2019), the Ninth Circuit held that the ADA applied to Domino’s website and app because they connected customers to its restaurants, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. Whether an online-only business is covered is less settled and varies between federal circuits, which is one reason plaintiffs choose where to file.

For state and local governments, the rule is now explicit. A 2024 DOJ regulation under Title II requires their websites and apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. In April 2026 the DOJ extended the deadlines by a year, to 26 April 2027 for larger public entities and 26 April 2028 for smaller ones.

What standard does my site have to meet?

For private businesses there is no detailed federal technical rule. In practice, courts, settlements and demand letters measure websites against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), published by the W3C, at Level AA. Version 2.1 is the most common reference; version 2.2, published in 2023, adds a few criteria, such as minimum target sizes and alternatives to dragging.

In the EU, the European Accessibility Act points to the harmonised standard EN 301 549, which incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA for web content. Meeting WCAG 2.2 AA covers both.

What does a lawsuit actually cost?

ADA Title III itself only allows private plaintiffs to win an order to fix the site, plus their legal fees. That is why most cases settle: defending one usually costs more than fixing the site and paying the plaintiff’s fees.

State law raises the stakes. California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act treats any ADA violation as a violation of state law, with minimum statutory damages of $4,000 for each one. New York’s state and city human rights laws also allow damages.

A settlement normally requires you to fix the site to WCAG AA within a set time, often with ongoing testing. Fixing the problems first is cheaper, and it does not depend on anyone suing you.

What does the European Accessibility Act require?

The European Accessibility Act, Directive (EU) 2019/882, has applied since 28 June 2025. For digital businesses it covers consumer services such as e-commerce, consumer banking, e-books, electronic communications and parts of passenger transport, including the websites and apps through which those services are offered.

It applies to any business offering those services to consumers in the EU, wherever the business is based. Micro-enterprises providing services, meaning those with fewer than 10 staff and annual turnover or balance sheet of €2 million or less, are exempt from the service requirements.

Covered services must meet the accessibility requirements, publish information on how they meet them, and fix problems that national market surveillance authorities identify. Each EU country sets its own penalties, and some allow consumer groups to bring complaints.

Do accessibility overlay widgets protect me?

No. Overlays are scripts that add a toolbar or claim to repair a site automatically. They cannot fix the underlying code reliably, and many disabled users find they get in the way of their own assistive technology.

In April 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission finalised an order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million. The FTC said accessiBe’s claims that its widget could make any website compliant with WCAG were false, misleading or unsubstantiated. Sites with overlays installed continue to be sued.

Spend the money on fixing the markup instead: labels, buttons, contrast and focus. Those changes help every user and are what a court or regulator will look at.

How do I lower my risk quickly?

Start with the journeys that make you money: sign-up, checkout, booking and contact. Try each with only the keyboard, then with your phone’s or computer’s built-in screen reader. If you cannot finish, a blind customer cannot either.

Run an automated checker over your main pages. It will catch the obvious problems, such as missing alt text, missing labels and low contrast, which are also the easiest for anyone else to find. Fix those first, then do the manual checks that automated tools miss.

Finally, publish an accessibility statement that says which standard you aim for, what you know is not yet fixed, and how people can report a problem. Respond quickly when they do.

The full list of checks: website accessibility checklist: WCAG 2.2, ADA and EAA.