You received an ADA website accessibility demand letter. What now?

This guide is general information for small-business owners, not legal advice. Accessibility lawsuits are legal matters — involve a lawyer early. What follows is the practical sequence experienced owners and accessibility professionals recommend.

First: don't panic, and don't ignore it

A demand letter typically alleges that your website discriminates against people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), lists barriers a tester found (often using automated tools), and proposes settlement terms. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away — these letters commonly precede lawsuits. You are not alone: UsableNet counted 2,019 federal ADA digital-accessibility lawsuits in the first half of 2025, and over a thousand e-commerce cases targeted companies with under $25M in revenue. This is now a routine small-business problem, not a sign you did something uniquely wrong.

Step 1: Preserve everything

Save the letter and any attachments, note the deadline it sets, and don't delete or "tidy up" anything related to your website yet. Forward the letter to your business insurer — some policies respond to these claims — and to a lawyer who handles ADA defense; many offer a first consultation on exactly this fact pattern.

Step 2: Don't rush into the two classic mistakes

• Don't just pay instantly without advice. Settlement may be right, but the terms (and any release) matter, and your lawyer can often improve them.
• Don't slap on an overlay widget and call it fixed. According to UsableNet, 69% of companies sued in H1 2025 were already using an accessibility widget or overlay. A widget neither fixes most underlying barriers nor demonstrates real remediation — and the FTC fined the category's best-known vendor, accessiBe, $1 million in 2025 over its compliance claims. A letter answered with "we installed a widget" is a weak position.

Step 3: Find out what's actually wrong with your site

Before you can remediate — or negotiate credibly — you need the real list of problems. Start with a scan of your homepage (our free mini-audit runs the standard axe-core checks in your browser), then get the whole site audited: every template and page type, with issues ranked by severity. Automated tools detect only a subset of issues (Deque estimates axe-core finds ~58% of WCAG issues automatically), so a serious response also works through a manual checklist: keyboard navigation, focus visibility, form labels, meaningful image descriptions, and checkout or booking flows.

Step 4: Fix in priority order, and document it

Work the fix list from most severe to least, starting with the pages and flows the letter named and the ones every customer needs (home, product, cart, checkout, contact). Keep dated records: audit reports, fixes shipped, and re-scan results. A documented, good-faith remediation effort is both the ethical answer and the strongest practical evidence that you're taking the barriers seriously.

Step 5: Keep it fixed

Redesigns and new content reintroduce barriers all the time. Periodic re-scanning (that's what our $19/month monitoring is for) and a quick accessibility check whenever you change templates will keep you from receiving the same letter twice.

Sources

• UsableNet, H1 2025 ADA Digital Accessibility Lawsuit Report — 2,019 federal filings; 69% of sued companies using a widget/overlay; 1,103 e-commerce suits against companies under $25M revenue.
• US Federal Trade Commission, 2025 — order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million over deceptive accessibility-compliance claims.
• Deque Systems — axe-core automated detection estimate (~58% of WCAG issues detectable automatically).