Does the ADA really apply to my website?

Courts have repeatedly treated commercial websites as places of public accommodation under Title III, and thousands of federal suits are filed on that basis every year. There is no small-business exemption in practice; small e-commerce stores are frequent targets.

Is there an official ADA certification for websites?

No. Anyone selling a certification or guaranteed compliance is overpromising; the FTC has already acted on such claims. What exists is the WCAG benchmark and your documented conformance work against it.

How fast can I reduce my risk?

The top five checklist items cover the failures cited in most demand letters and are typically fixable in days, not months. Scan first so you know which apply, fix in order of severity, and keep the dated record.

ADA compliant website checklist

There is no official ADA certification for websites; courts and the Department of Justice use WCAG 2.1 AA as the benchmark. That means ADA compliance is a property you maintain, not a badge you buy, and the fastest way to reduce risk is to fix the failures that appear in virtually every demand letter.

This checklist is ordered by legal exposure: the items at the top are the ones serial plaintiffs' testers hit first, because they are easy to detect and hard to defend.

The checks plaintiffs' testers run first

Demand letters overwhelmingly cite the same failures: images without alt text, buttons and links a screen reader announces as unnamed, forms that cannot be completed with a keyboard, missing focus indicators, and low-contrast text. These are cheap to detect with automated tools, which is exactly why testers use them: every one of them is verifiable in minutes and reads clearly in a complaint.

Why an overlay widget makes it worse

Overlay vendors sell one-line-of-code compliance; the FTC fined a leading vendor $1M for that claim, and plaintiffs' firms now name overlays in complaints as evidence a defendant knew about accessibility and chose a cosmetic fix. Fix your actual markup. If you currently run an overlay, plan its removal as part of remediation.

Documentation is the deterrent

Serial plaintiffs optimize for easy settlements. A site with a dated scan history, a visible accessibility statement, and evidence of ongoing fixes is a materially worse target than one with nothing, because it undercuts the complaint's narrative and raises the plaintiff's cost. Continuous monitoring is both the maintenance mechanism and the paper trail.

Compliance checklist

Every meaningful image has descriptive alt text
Every button and link has an accessible name (no unnamed icon buttons)
The entire checkout or lead flow completes with keyboard only
Keyboard focus is visible on every interactive element
Text contrast meets 4.5:1, including text over hero images
Form fields have labels and text-based, specific error messages
Videos have captions
The site works at mobile width without horizontal scrolling
Page language is declared; headings follow a logical order
No accessibility overlay widget standing in for real fixes
An accessibility statement is published with a working contact route
Scans run on a schedule and results are kept as dated evidence

Frequently asked questions

Does the ADA really apply to my website?: Courts have repeatedly treated commercial websites as places of public accommodation under Title III, and thousands of federal suits are filed on that basis every year. There is no small-business exemption in practice; small e-commerce stores are frequent targets.
Is there an official ADA certification for websites?: No. Anyone selling a certification or guaranteed compliance is overpromising; the FTC has already acted on such claims. What exists is the WCAG benchmark and your documented conformance work against it.
How fast can I reduce my risk?: The top five checklist items cover the failures cited in most demand letters and are typically fixable in days, not months. Scan first so you know which apply, fix in order of severity, and keep the dated record.