ADA

The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) is the foundational US disability-rights law. It is divided into five titles; the two that matter most for digital accessibility are Title II (state and local government) and Title III (public accommodations).

Title III and the web

The ADA itself, written in 1990, does not mention the internet. For three decades US courts have wrestled with whether Title III’s public accommodation requirement applies to websites at all, and if so, to what extent.

The settled answer in most federal circuits is now: yes, websites operated by businesses open to the public are subject to Title III, though circuits diverge on whether a “nexus” to a physical location is required.

In the absence of explicit regulation, courts have repeatedly accepted WCAG 2.x Level AA as the de facto compliance benchmark for Title III web claims. Consent decrees, settlements, and DOJ findings letters overwhelmingly point at WCAG 2.x AA. The 2024 Department of Justice rule under Title II also adopts WCAG 2.1 AA explicitly for state and local government websites — bringing public-sector practice into formal alignment with what courts had been demanding from private-sector defendants.

The litigation pattern

ADA Title III lawsuits over web accessibility have grown sharply since 2017. Federal filings have repeatedly topped 2,000 per year, with cases concentrated in the Second and Ninth Circuits (New York and California federal courts respectively). A small number of plaintiff firms file the majority of cases, almost all of which settle within 90–180 days.

Settlements typically require:

• WCAG 2.x AA conformance, monitored by a third-party auditor.
• Posted accessibility statement.
• Staff training.
• Modest damages (often under $20,000), but plaintiff attorney’s fees can reach six figures even in early-settling cases.

State law supplements (California’s Unruh Act, New York’s NYCHRL) often sit on top of the ADA claim, adding statutory damages.

What “ADA compliance” actually means in practice

There is no such thing as an official “ADA-compliant” badge a vendor can issue. The DOJ does not certify websites. Genuine compliance work looks like:

1. Audit against WCAG 2.x AA with a credentialed auditor.
2. Remediate findings.
3. Maintain a posted accessibility statement with a real contact.
4. Train procurement, design, and engineering staff.
5. Test new releases before they ship.

Any vendor selling “instant ADA compliance” — almost always overlay products — is overstating what their tool can do. Overlay tools are a documented litigation magnet, not a defence.