Guide
Is my website ADA compliant?
If you have a business website in the United States, accessibility is worth taking seriously. Thousands of website accessibility lawsuits are filed every year, and most target small and mid-sized businesses, not big brands. The good news: most problems are easy to fix. This is a practical checklist, not legal advice.
What the law actually says
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses open to the public to be accessible to people with disabilities. It was written before the web, and there is still no federal regulation spelling out exactly what a private business website must do.
In practice, courts and settlements measure websites against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, level AA. The Department of Justice adopted the same standard for state and local government websites in its 2024 rule. If your site meets WCAG 2.1 AA, you're in a strong position.
A checklist you can run yourself
Images have alt text describing them, so screen readers can announce them. Decorative images can have empty alt text.
Text contrasts with its background: at least 4.5:1 for normal text. Light grey on white is the most common failure.
Everything works with a keyboard. Press Tab through your site: can you reach and use every link, button and form field, and can you see where you are?
Form fields have labels, not just placeholder text that disappears when you type.
Headings are in order (one H1, then H2s, then H3s), so the page structure makes sense when read aloud.
Links say where they go. "Get a quote" rather than "click here".
Video has captions, and nothing flashes more than three times a second.
The page still works zoomed to 200%, and color is never the only way information is shown.
Free tools to test with
WAVE from WebAIM highlights errors directly on your page. Lighthouse, built into Chrome's developer tools, gives an accessibility score and a list of issues. Automated tools catch roughly the obvious half of problems; the keyboard test above catches much of the rest.
The quickest wins for a small business site
If you only have an hour, do these. Add alt text to every meaningful image, especially photos of your work. Darken any light grey text until it passes a contrast checker. Give every form field a visible label. Make sure your phone number is real text, not part of an image, so screen readers and phones can use it.
Check your buttons and links with the keyboard. If you can't see where the focus is when you press Tab, ask whoever built the site to add a visible focus outline. Replace "click here" links with words that say where they go.
Those changes fix the issues most commonly cited in demand letters, and they make the site easier to use for everyone, including customers on a small phone in bright sunlight.
The overlay trap
You will see widgets that promise instant ADA compliance with one line of code. Be careful. They don't fix the underlying code, disability advocates widely criticize them, and businesses using them have still been sued. Fixing the site itself is the only reliable route.
If you receive a demand letter
Don't ignore it, and don't reply in a hurry either. Talk to a lawyer who handles ADA website claims; many letters follow a template, and the right response depends on your situation.
Start documenting what you're doing to fix the site: an audit, a list of issues, and dates they were fixed. Showing genuine, ongoing effort matters. Installing an overlay widget at this point is not a substitute for fixing the site.
Keeping it accessible after launch
Accessibility isn't a one-time fix. Every new photo needs alt text, every new page needs proper headings, and every new form needs labels. Build it into how you update the site: when you add a photo of a finished job, write one sentence describing it.
Run WAVE or Lighthouse on your main pages every few months, and again after any redesign. Most regressions come from small additions, like a new banner in low-contrast colors or a popup that can't be closed with the keyboard.
How we build for accessibility
Every site we build uses real headings, labeled forms, alt text on photographs, visible keyboard focus and readable contrast, and respects visitors who ask their device for reduced motion. You can see the designs in our free builder.
If you already have a site and aren't sure where you stand, the checklist above is the right place to start. For anything involving a legal demand letter, talk to a lawyer.