Online businesses have more reach than ever — but that reach comes with legal obligations that many e-commerce owners have not fully addressed. A growing wave of federal lawsuits targets online stores whose websites cannot be used by people with disabilities. These claims are real, the statutory damages are real, and courts have repeatedly rejected the argument that the ADA only applies to physical spaces. If your online store has not been audited for accessibility, you are carrying legal risk you may not know about.

Why Online Stores Are Being Sued Under the ADA

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. § 12182) prohibits discrimination by places of public accommodation. When the ADA was passed in 1990, Congress was thinking about restaurants, hotels, and retail stores. But the statute’s language is broad, and plaintiffs’ firms have successfully argued — in circuit after circuit — that it applies to commercial websites operated by businesses that serve the public.

The Eleventh Circuit, which covers Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, has held that the ADA applies to websites with a sufficient nexus to a physical location. The First and Seventh Circuits have gone further, finding the ADA can apply to websites even without a brick-and-mortar connection. The result: if you sell products or services to the public through a website, Title III likely applies to you.

The Department of Justice reinforced this position in 2024 by issuing a final rule explicitly requiring web content to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA for state and local government entities, and signaling that the same standard applies to Title III businesses. Plaintiffs’ attorneys cite this regulatory backdrop to support claims against online retailers.

What WCAG 2.1 Level AA Actually Requires

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), are the technical standard that courts and regulators use to assess whether a website is accessible. WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the most commonly referenced standard in ADA litigation. It organizes requirements under four principles:

• Perceivable: Content must be presented in ways users can perceive. This means alt text for images, captions for video, and sufficient color contrast so text can be read by users with low vision.
• Operable: All functionality must be accessible via keyboard navigation alone. Users who cannot use a mouse — due to motor impairments, for example — must be able to browse products, fill forms, and complete purchases using only a keyboard.
• Understandable: Forms and navigation must be predictable and clearly labeled. Error messages must explain what went wrong and how to fix it.
• Robust: Content must be coded in a way that assistive technologies like screen readers can reliably interpret it.

Screen readers — software that converts on-screen text to audio — are the most commonly involved technology in ADA website claims. A blind shopper using a screen reader may be completely unable to use your store if product images lack alt text, form fields lack labels, or modal dialogs cannot be closed with a keyboard.

The Most Common Triggers for ADA Website Lawsuits

Serial plaintiffs and their attorneys typically run automated accessibility scans against websites and then file complaints based on the results. The violations most likely to trigger a lawsuit include:

Missing or Unlabeled Form Fields

Checkout forms are the highest-risk area on any e-commerce site. If fields for shipping address, payment information, or account creation are not programmatically labeled — meaning the label is associated with the input field in the underlying code, not just visually positioned near it — a screen reader cannot announce what information is expected. A blind customer trying to check out hears only “edit text” or nothing at all, making the purchase impossible to complete.

Images Without Alt Text

Every product image, banner, and button graphic needs an alt text attribute that conveys the image’s meaning to a screen reader user. Missing alt text on product photos means blind customers cannot understand what they are considering purchasing. Decorative images should have empty alt attributes so screen readers skip them rather than reading out file names like “IMG_3847.jpg.”

Keyboard Navigation Failures

Navigation menus that open on hover, dropdowns that cannot be accessed with Tab and Enter keys, and modal dialogs that trap keyboard focus are common failures. If a user cannot reach the cart, apply a discount code, or confirm an order using only a keyboard, the website fails WCAG operability requirements.

Insufficient Color Contrast

WCAG 2.1 Level AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Many retail websites use light gray text on white backgrounds for secondary information like pricing notes, shipping estimates, or form instructions. These fail the contrast requirement and affect users with low vision or color blindness.

The Legal Landscape: Serial Plaintiffs and Demand Letters

ADA website litigation has a well-established plaintiff-side model. A small number of law firms and individual plaintiffs file large volumes of cases, many of them in the Southern District of Florida, the Southern District of New York, and the Northern District of California. Many cases settle before any substantive litigation for amounts ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 or more, plus an agreement to remediate the website.

Businesses that settle once often receive follow-up demand letters months later, either from the same plaintiff or others. Without a documented remediation plan and ongoing compliance program, a single settlement does not provide lasting protection. Courts have also awarded attorneys’ fees under the ADA’s fee-shifting provision (42 U.S.C. § 12205), which makes defendants responsible for the plaintiff’s legal costs even on claims that settle.

Several courts have dismissed ADA website claims on standing grounds — finding that plaintiffs who do not intend to return to the website lack standing to seek injunctive relief. The Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez has been cited to challenge whether plaintiffs have suffered a concrete injury. But these defenses are fact-intensive and expensive to litigate.

Four Practical Steps to Reduce Your Exposure

1. Conduct a WCAG 2.1 Audit

Automated tools like axe, WAVE, and Lighthouse can identify many common WCAG failures quickly and at no cost. But automated tools catch only about 30–40% of accessibility issues. A thorough audit also requires manual testing with a screen reader (NVDA, JAWS, or VoiceOver) and keyboard-only navigation testing. Focus first on checkout, account creation, contact forms, and product browsing — these are the highest-litigation areas.

2. Fix Core Issues Before Cosmetic Ones

Prioritize violations that block task completion — unlabeled form fields, keyboard traps, missing skip navigation links, and images without alt text. These are the failures most likely to appear in demand letters and complaints. Color contrast and focus indicator issues are important but less likely to be the basis for a lawsuit on their own.

3. Document Your Compliance Efforts

Publish an accessibility statement on your website describing your compliance target (WCAG 2.1 Level AA), your ongoing remediation process, and a contact method for users to report issues. Courts have recognized good-faith remediation efforts as relevant to the appropriateness of injunctive relief. Documentation of audit dates, issues identified, and fixes applied demonstrates that accessibility is an active priority, not an afterthought.

4. Build Accessibility Into Development Cycles

The most cost-effective approach is integrating accessibility testing into every development sprint rather than treating it as a one-time audit. Platform updates, new product pages, checkout redesigns, and marketing pop-ups can all introduce new accessibility failures. Automated CI/CD testing with tools like axe-core can catch regressions before they reach production.

How Revision Legal Helps

Revision Legal’s internet law attorneys work with e-commerce businesses on ADA website compliance, responding to demand letters, and defending accessibility litigation. If your business has received a demand letter or wants to assess its legal exposure before one arrives, early legal review is significantly cheaper than defending a lawsuit after it is filed.

To speak with one of our e-commerce and compliance attorneys, contact Revision Legal through our website or call (855) 473-8474.