ADA & Accessibility Compliance
Your Site Might Need ADA Compliance Remediation
Key Takeaways
- Website accessibility lawsuits are filed against small businesses, not just large ones, and a demand letter is expensive whether or not it has merit.
- Roughly one in four US adults lives with a disability. An inaccessible site is turning away customers before the legal question comes up.
- Most local business sites fail on the same handful of things: contrast, missing alt text, forms without labels, and navigation that breaks without a mouse.
- We audit against WCAG 2.1 AA, remediate, and document what was done and when.
- Frequently paired with a website build or a care plan. Get in touch to scope it.
3 Markets
30 Days
Month-to-Month
Why This Lands on Small Businesses
The uncomfortable version: a large share of web accessibility claims target small businesses, because small businesses are the ones with unremediated sites and no legal department.
A demand letter typically arrives citing specific failures on specific pages. Whether or not it goes anywhere, responding costs money and time, and the fastest way to make it stop is to fix the site.
Fixing it beforehand is cheaper than fixing it under a deadline. That is most of the argument.
The better argument
About one in four American adults has a disability. Some use screen readers. Many more simply need larger text, better contrast, or the ability to navigate without a mouse.
If your booking form cannot be completed with a keyboard, you did not lose a lawsuit. You lost a customer, and you never found out.
This is closer to a conversion problem than a legal one, and it happens to also be the right thing to do.
What Usually Fails
Color contrast
Light grey text on white. It looked elegant in the mockup and it is unreadable for a significant number of people.
Missing alt text on images
A screen reader announces “image” and moves on, which is also how a search engine sees it.
Forms without proper labels
Placeholder text is not a label. It vanishes when typing starts.
Keyboard navigation breaks
Menus that only open on hover, and modals that trap focus with no way out.
Video without captions
Which also costs you the majority of social viewers who watch with sound off.
Headings used for size rather than structure
An H4 chosen because it looked right makes the page unnavigable by screen reader.
Link text that says "click here"
Meaningless out of context, and out of context is exactly how a screen reader reads a link list.
We Can Help
What We Do
Audit. Automated scanning plus manual testing, because automated tools catch roughly a third of real issues. Keyboard navigation and screen reader testing have to be done by a person.
Remediate. Fix what the audit found, in priority order, starting with anything blocking a core task like contacting you or booking.
Document. A record of what was audited, what was fixed and when. If a demand letter ever arrives, documented good-faith remediation matters.
Maintain. Accessibility regresses. New pages, new plugins and new content reintroduce problems. Ongoing checks fold into a care plan.
A word on overlay widgets
You have probably seen the accessibility overlay tools that promise instant compliance from a single line of JavaScript.
We do not recommend them as a primary solution. They do not fix the underlying code, the accessibility community broadly objects to them, and businesses using them have still received demand letters. Some sit on top of the real problems and make screen reader behavior worse.
Fix the site. If an overlay helps as a supplement afterward, perfect.
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Is my small business legally required to comply?
This page is not legal advice and we are not attorneys. In practice, businesses serving the public are frequently treated as covered, claims are routinely filed against small businesses, and the practical question is usually about exposure rather than certainty. Talk to a lawyer for your specific situation.
What standard do you work to?
WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which is the standard most commonly referenced in settlements and regulatory guidance.
Can you guarantee I will not get sued?
No, and be very skeptical of anyone who does. Documented good-faith remediation substantially improves your position. Nobody can promise immunity.
How long does remediation take?
Two to six weeks for a typical local business site, depending on page count and how much of it is custom.
Will this hurt how my site looks?
Rarely in any way that matters. Most fixes are invisible: alt text, labels, heading structure. The visible one is usually contrast, and a slightly darker grey is not a design tragedy.
Does accessibility help SEO?
Yes, incidentally. Alt text, heading structure, descriptive links and captions are all things search engines and AI assistants use to understand a page.