Website accessibility demand letters under the ADA

7.1What the letter claims

That your website is a place of public accommodation, or a service of one, under Title III of the ADA,¹ that specific features (images without text alternatives, forms without labels, menus that cannot be operated by keyboard, missing captions) prevented the sender's client from using it, and that this is discrimination on the basis of disability. The letter usually demands that you fix the site to a stated standard, enter a written agreement to keep it accessible, and pay the sender's attorney fees and, where state law allows, damages. How to respond to any demand letter covers verifying the sender and the shape of a written reply.

7.2What federal law provides

Title III prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services of any place of public accommodation.¹ The remedies available to a private plaintiff are those of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's public-accommodation provisions: injunctive relief, and a court's discretion to award attorney fees to the prevailing party.² No money damages to the individual. Whether a website alone is a place of public accommodation has divided the federal courts, with some requiring a connection to a physical location and others not; the Department of Justice has long taken the view that the websites of public accommodations are covered.

7.3Why state law changes the money

Several states have disability-access statutes that provide money damages per violation or per visit, and that treat an ADA violation as a violation of state law. Where the plaintiff is in one of those states, the demand will cite the state statute, and the figure in the letter is driven by it, not by the ADA. Whether a given state statute applies, and what it provides, is a question for a lawyer in that state. The state attorney general's site or the state court self-help site usually describes the statute.

7.4What to do this week

1. Run an automated accessibility scan of the site and keep the report. It will not find everything, but it finds the items most letters cite.
2. Fix the quick items now: text alternatives on images, form labels, keyboard operation of menus, contrast, captions. Keep a dated record of each fix.
3. Engage a developer or an accessibility specialist to audit against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at the AA level and to plan the rest.
4. Preserve the site as it was when the letter arrived: a dated crawl or archive, so that the before and after can be shown.
5. Notify your insurer. Some policies respond to these claims.
6. Reply in writing before the deadline: the site is being remediated to the stated standard, the dated record of fixes so far, and a proposal on fees that reflects the work done.

7.5Settling or fighting

These matters mostly settle, because the fix has to be done anyway and the fee claim is usually smaller than the cost of contesting whether a website is a public accommodation in your circuit. A settlement typically contains a commitment to reach a WCAG conformance level by a date, an accessibility statement on the site, a point of contact, and a payment toward fees and any state damages. What moves the number is evidence of remediation already done. A business that replies with a dated audit, a fix list and a timetable is in a different negotiation from one that replies with a denial. Chapter 13 covers the general decision.