The pattern hasn't changed in a decade. A plaintiff's firm runs an automated crawler across thousands of small-business websites. The crawler flags missing alt text, unlabeled forms, low contrast, and PDFs. The firm sends identical demand letters asking for $8,000 to $15,000 to go away. Most small businesses pay. A few fight. The ones that fight spend $50,000 to $250,000 in legal fees to win an injunction they could have bought with $5,000 of remediation work.
In 2024 the US crossed 4,500 filings for the first time, and the target profile is now disproportionately SMBs under $25M revenue. California, New York, and Florida account for roughly 85% of filings. California is the worst because it treats ADA Title III violations as per-se Unruh Act violations with $4,000 statutory minimum per visit, and plaintiffs can stack visits.
The ADA Litigation Risk Score scores the 12 signals that matter.
The signals plaintiff firms target first
1. Missing alt text. This is the #1 finding in over half of 2024 demand letters. Automated crawlers count missing alts and use that count as the lead complaint.
2. Unlabeled form inputs. Contact forms, checkout, search. Top-3 trigger.
3. PDFs linked from the homepage. Unremediated PDFs are a heavy risk. Scanned-as-image PDFs, PDFs without structure tags, PDFs where the reading order is wrong. Plaintiffs love PDFs because nobody remediates them.
4. Videos without captions. YouTube auto-captions are not considered WCAG-compliant. You need either a manually-corrected caption track or a professionally captioned version.
5. Missing accessibility statement. The lack of an /accessibility/ page is a weak signal for plaintiffs but a strong defense when you have one. A published statement with WCAG 2.1 AA conformance level, contact email, last-updated date, and known limitations is documented good-faith effort.
6. Accessibility overlay / widget use. I'll say this carefully: overlays do not provide legal safe harbor. Multiple 2022-2024 rulings held overlay installations insufficient as a defense. If you have accessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye, or similar, fix the underlying WCAG issues first. Treat the widget as a layer, not a substitute.
7. Modal keyboard traps. Can't be scanned programmatically with certainty. Manually: open each modal, press Escape, press Tab — focus should not escape the modal until Escape is pressed or it closes normally.
8. Missing HTML lang attribute. Required for screen-reader pronunciation. Single-line fix.
9. Missing skip-navigation link. Keyboard-only users need a way to skip past the nav on every page.
10. Heading structure. Exactly one H1 per page. Then H2, H3, H4 in descending order without skipping.
11. Low contrast. The audit does a quick inline-style scan for light-grey-on-white patterns. For a full audit run the WCAG Accessibility Audit which tests actual rendered contrast.
12. Jurisdiction risk lens. California Unruh Act stacks state damages on top of federal ADA. New York state + NYC Human Rights Law both apply. Florida is the #2 filing state. Select your state in the tool for weighted scoring.
What reduces demand-letter targeting
Plaintiff firms are pragmatic. Their crawler runs across thousands of sites; they pick the ones with the most easy complaints. You reduce targeting by removing the easy complaints.
- Fix alt text on every image. Can be done in a weekend.
- Fix form labels. Every input needs either a
<label for="...">, anaria-label, or anaria-labelledby. - Remove or remediate PDFs. If it can be an HTML page, make it one. If it must be a PDF, remediate with CommonLook, Axes4, or Foxit at $50-$200 per document.
- Publish /accessibility/. Template further below. Takes an hour.
Doing just these four reduces your automated-crawler flag count by roughly 80% in my experience, which moves you out of the top-of-list targets.
The /accessibility/ page
Your accessibility statement is the single most underused defensive tool. Here's the pattern that works, distilled from what I've seen hold up:
# Accessibility Statement
[Your Business Name] is committed to making our website usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. We aim to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance.
## Conformance level
This site targets WCAG 2.1 AA. We audit regularly and publish updates here.
## Known limitations
[Honest list. Examples: Some older PDF documents may not be fully tagged.
Third-party embedded widgets may have their own accessibility issues we cannot fully control. We are working on these.]
## How to report an issue
Email accessibility@[your-domain].com or call [phone]. We aim to respond within 5 business days.
## Last updated
[Date]
Key elements: specific conformance target (not "WCAG-compliant"), honest limitations list (claiming full compliance when you have PDFs is worse than acknowledging the gap), a contact method, a dated update. Juries and plaintiffs treat a dated accessibility statement differently from a site with nothing.
What this tool is not
It is not a full WCAG 2.1 AA audit. For that, run the WCAG Accessibility Audit which does contrast ratio checks, ARIA landmark validation, and focus-order inspection. This litigation-risk tool is specifically focused on the signals that drive demand-letter targeting.
It is also not legal advice. If a demand letter arrives, don't ignore it, don't respond without counsel, save the envelope, inventory your current state, and start remediation immediately. A single lawyer-hour at the start is always cheaper than an escalation later.
Related reading
- WCAG Accessibility Audit — full 40-signal WCAG 2.1 AA scan
- WCAG Fix Generator — auto-generates remediation patches by severity
- Why the WCAG Audit Exists — the deeper case for web accessibility as both a legal and ethical matter
- Mega Security Analyzer — pairs well with this for overall site hardening
Fact-check notes and sources
- Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III 2024 Year-End Report — 4,500+ federal filings and state claims.
- UsableNet ADA Digital Accessibility Lawsuit Report 2024 — target-industry and target-revenue band data.
- WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 published success criteria (W3C).
- Robles v Domino's Pizza (9th Cir. 2019) — established that commercial websites are places of public accommodation under Title III.
- Gil v Winn-Dixie (11th Cir. 2021) — reversed but still influential on the distinction between websites and "nexus" sites.
- California Civil Code § 51 (Unruh Act) — $4,000 per-visit statutory minimum.
- New York State Human Rights Law + NYC Human Rights Law.
- Various 2022-2024 overlay-sufficiency rulings (Murphy v Eyebobs LLC, etc.).
This post is informational, not legal advice. It does not establish an attorney-client relationship. ADA Title III law, state accessibility statutes, and WCAG case law evolve; consult qualified counsel for any demand letter, lawsuit, or compliance-sensitive decision. Mentions of accessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye, EqualWeb, CommonLook, Axes4, Foxit, Rev.com, 3PlayMedia, Otter, YouTube, Seyfarth Shaw, UsableNet, Robles v Domino's, Gil v Winn-Dixie are nominative fair use. No affiliation is implied.
