ADA and your website: what the law actually says.

A 1990 law that governs the modern web

The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed in 1990, before the commercial web existed, and its text speaks of “places of public accommodation” — language written for shops, theatres and restaurants. It does not mention websites. The bridge from that physical language to the web was built case by case in the courts over the following decades, with Robles v. Domino’s Pizza among the anchor decisions.

One nuance that most vendor guides skip, and that matters if you are weighing risk: the federal appeals circuits have not settled on a single answer. Some require a nexus between the website and a physical location before Title III attaches; others read “public accommodation” more broadly. Robles is a Ninth Circuit decision, not a national rule. What this means in practice is that where you are sued can change the legal test applied to you — which is a question for counsel, not for a scanner.

Title II and Title III are not the same

This distinction is the single most useful thing on this page, because a great deal of confused marketing collapses the two.

Title II covers state and local government entities. Here the law is now specific: on 24 April 2024 the DOJ published a final rule adopting WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for the web content and mobile apps of these public entities. That is a concrete, written regulation with dates attached — and those dates moved in April 2026, which is covered in section 04 below.

Title III covers private businesses open to the public. Here there is no regulation naming a WCAG version — legislative attempts have failed, and the DOJ has not issued a Title III web rule. Instead, WCAG 2.1 Level AA operates as the de facto benchmark: it is what DOJ settlement agreements reference and what courts apply. So a private business is not held to a named regulation, but is in practice measured against WCAG 2.1 AA when a claim arrives.

Which WCAG version — and the mistake to avoid

You will see confident claims that the ADA “requires WCAG 2.2”. Be careful with those. The DOJ’s 2024 Title II rule adopts WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and Title III case law and settlements reference 2.1 AA as well. WCAG 2.2 is the newer version of the standard — but the US legal framework has not yet moved to it.

The deadlines that are real

Deadline pressure is the most common way this topic gets mis-sold, so here is what is actually dated — and what changed four days before it was due to bite.

The DOJ’s 2024 Title II rule set staggered compliance dates for public entities based on the size of the population they serve. The original dates were 24 April 2026 and 26 April 2027. On 20 April 2026 — four days before the first one took effect — the DOJ published an Interim Final Rule extending both by roughly a year. Public entities serving 50,000 or more people now have until 26 April 2027; entities serving fewer than 50,000, and special district governments, until 26 April 2028. The IFR took effect immediately.

Three things did not change, and they matter more than the new dates. The substantive requirement is still WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The DOJ stated it fully anticipates implementing the regulation at the new deadline, so this is a reset clock, not a cancelled one. And the extension only moves the technical-standard dates — it does not suspend Title II’s underlying non-discrimination and effective-communication obligations, which have supported web accessibility claims for years without any technical standard. Private plaintiffs can still sue during the extension period.

One important carve-out: the separate HHS Section 504 rule from May 2024, which imposes parallel web and mobile accessibility requirements on recipients of HHS funding, kept its original first compliance date of 11 May 2026. HHS did not match the DOJ’s extension. If you receive HHS funding, the DOJ news does not apply to you. As always, confirm the exact date for a specific entity against the current Federal Register text rather than any vendor’s summary — including this one.

What actually drives a lawsuit

Litigation volume here is substantial, and 2025 reversed a two-year dip. Seyfarth Shaw counted 3,117 federal-court website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, up 27% from 2,452 in 2024. That is 36% of all 8,667 federal ADA Title III filings that year, against 28% in 2024. UsableNet, which also tracks key state courts in New York, California, Florida and Illinois, put the 2025 combined total at 4,928 and projects roughly 6,000 for 2026 — with about 80% of filings aimed at e-commerce.

But the barriers named in these complaints are rarely exotic. They cluster on a short list — and it is the same short list that automated scanning across the top million home pages finds year after year.

The uncomfortable part for our own industry: installing an accessibility widget does not make you immune. Plaintiffs have sued businesses that were already running one — UsableNet found that roughly 22.6% of first-half 2025 filings targeted sites with an overlay installed, and reports that the presence of a widget has not proven to be a meaningful deterrent. A widget can improve the experience for visitors who use its controls, but it cannot repair the underlying markup a screen reader actually encounters, and courts look at whether the site is usable, not at what tool is installed.

This is not only our opinion. In January 2025 the Federal Trade Commission required an accessibility overlay vendor to pay $1 million to settle allegations that it misrepresented its AI product’s ability to make any website WCAG compliant; the final order, approved in April 2025, bars the company from making such claims without evidence to support them. Treat any “lawsuit-proof” or “guaranteed compliant” claim — from us or anyone else — as the clearest possible signal to read the contract closely.

Where to start

Establish where you stand before anyone sends you anything. A free scan gives you a dated baseline against WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA and a prioritised issue list, with each finding labelled by whether a developer, a content editor or the widget addresses it. Fix the clear items, publish an accessibility statement that describes your real state and how to report a barrier, and plan a human audit of your most important flows. If a demand letter ever does arrive, a dated record of continuing effort is worth far more than a badge.

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