Is Your Contractor Website ADA Accessible? What the Law Requires

“Can I get sued over my website's accessibility?” Yes, businesses do get sued and get demand letters over it. The law underneath those letters is less settled than they make it sound, though, and many of the fixes that matter most on a small contractor site are ones you can make or check yourself. Here is what the Justice Department says, where the courts disagree, the standard everyone measures against, and the work worth doing this month.

What the law says, and what it leaves open

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities by businesses open to the public, which the ADA calls public accommodations. The Justice Department's guidance on web accessibility, issued March 18, 2022, says the department “has consistently taken the position that the ADA's requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges, or activities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web,” and has held that view since 1996.

What the department has not done is write a technical rulebook for businesses. The same guidance says the department “does not have a regulation setting out detailed standards,” that businesses “have flexibility in how they comply with the ADA's general requirements of nondiscrimination and effective communication,” and that existing standards, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the federal government's Section 508 Standards, “provide helpful guidance.” It also notes that its guidance documents have no legally binding effect.

You may have read about a federal rule that names WCAG 2.1 Level AA. That 2024 rule covers state and local governments under Title II, not businesses, and an interim final rule published April 20, 2026 pushed its compliance dates to April 26, 2027 for governments with a population of 50,000 or more and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones.

Then there are the courts. A June 2024 Congressional Research Service report puts it in one line: “Courts are divided on whether the parts of the ADA that govern businesses and nonprofits cover websites, and which websites they cover.” The report sorts the cases into three camps: some courts apply the ADA to websites without restriction, some hold that it covers only physical places and so not websites, and a third group applies it to websites with a connection, or “nexus,” to a physical business. A home-service company with no storefront is exactly the kind of case those approaches can treat differently, so nobody can promise you which way a court in your circuit would go.

What a lawsuit can cost

Under Title III, the CRS report explains, a private person may sue for injunctive relief, meaning an order to make the site accessible, while the Attorney General may also sue for damages and civil penalties. A private plaintiff's federal ADA claim, in other words, asks for the site to be fixed. Losing can still cost money, though: the ADA lets a court, in its discretion, award the prevailing party “a reasonable attorney's fee, including litigation expenses, and costs” (42 U.S.C. 12205).

State law can add money. In California, a violation of a person's rights under the federal ADA “shall also constitute a violation” of the Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civil Code section 51(f)), and section 52(a) makes the violator liable for actual damages and up to three times that amount, “but in no case less than four thousand dollars ($4,000),” for each offense, plus attorney's fees. California's Civil Rights Department adds that courts have applied the act's accessibility provisions to websites of businesses with physical locations, while finding that online-only businesses are not places of public accommodation under it; where a contractor who works in customers' homes falls is the same open question as above. Check whether your own state's civil rights law adds anything similar.

How common are these suits? The CRS report cites one count of at least 2,258 website accessibility suits in 2018, and another of 4,055 in 2021, with ten law firms filing three-quarters of them. It adds that most settle, and that courts may dismiss suits by web users who are not genuine customers for lack of standing.

The yardstick: WCAG 2.2

WCAG is written by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Version 2.2 was first published as a W3C Recommendation on October 5, 2023; the current text is dated 12 December 2024. Its success criteria come in three levels, A, AA and AAA, and a page meets Level AA when it satisfies every Level A and Level AA criterion. Level AA is also the level the government rule above uses, of WCAG 2.1. Version 2.2 added nine criteria, including a minimum size for things you tap or click and a rule that help, such as your contact details, keeps the same relative order on every page where it repeats.

The fixes that matter on a contractor site

A typical contractor site is a home page, a services page or two, a gallery, an about page and a contact or estimate form. These are the WCAG 2.2 criteria that site is most likely to trip, and what each one asks.

• Text for every photo (1.1.1, Level A). All non-text content needs “a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose.” For a gallery, that is a short description of the job: “Cedar privacy fence with a double gate along a sloped back yard,” not “IMG_4471.” The article on before and after photos covers the rest of the gallery.
• Contrast (1.4.3, AA). Text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background; large text (at least 18 point, or 14 point bold) needs 3:1. White words over a photo of a sunny roof are the usual failure.
• Not color alone (1.4.1, A). A form that marks required fields only in red fails. Add the word “required.”
• Labels and errors on forms (3.3.2 and 3.3.1, A). Every field needs a label or instructions, and when a form detects a mistake, “the item that is in error is identified and the error is described to the user in text.” The Justice Department's guidance singles out forms: labels tell a screen reader user what goes in each box.
• Keyboard (2.1.1, A, and 2.4.7, AA). Everything must work from a keyboard, and the keyboard focus must be visible. Test it: put the mouse away and press Tab through your estimate form, then submit it.
• Zoom (1.4.4, AA). Text must resize up to 200 percent without losing content or function.
• Tap targets (2.5.8, AA, new in 2.2). Links and buttons should be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, with exceptions such as enough spacing around a smaller target or a link inside a sentence. Crowded menus on a phone are where this fails.
• Captions (1.2.2, A). A project video with narration needs captions.
• Help in the same place (3.2.6, A, new in 2.2). If your contact details or contact form link appear on several pages, keep them in the same order relative to the rest of the page.

The W3C's free Easy Checks walk through a first review: image text, page titles, headings, contrast, visible keyboard focus, zoom, captions and form labels. The W3C is honest about their limits: “These checks cover just a few accessibility issues and are designed to be quick and easy, rather than exhaustive.” If you are rebuilding anyway, put accessibility in the brief alongside the pages in The Website Pages a Contractor Needs.

Why an overlay widget is not the fix

An overlay is a script that adds an accessibility button or tries to repair a page as it loads. One case against an overlay seller came from the Federal Trade Commission. In January 2025 it announced an order against accessiBe, whose accessWidget plug-in, the company had claimed, could “make any website compliant with WCAG.” The FTC alleged that accessWidget “did not make all user websites WCAG-compliant” and that the claims were false, misleading or unsubstantiated, and that the company had dressed up articles and reviews as independent when they were not. The final order, approved in April 2025, requires a $1 million payment and bars accessiBe from claiming its automated products can make a website WCAG-compliant unless it has the evidence.

The Justice Department's guidance is milder but points the same way: automated checkers and overlays “can be helpful tools” but “need to be used carefully,” and “a ‘clean’ report does not necessarily mean everything is accessible.” It recommends pairing automated checks with a manual one. The fix lives in the site itself: the photos' text, the colors, the form's labels, the menus.

A plan for this month

1. Run the W3C Easy Checks on your home page, one service page and your estimate form, and write down what fails.
2. Fix the cheap items first: alt text on every photo, a label on every form field, the word “required” next to required fields, captions on any video.
3. Ask whoever maintains the site to fix contrast, keyboard focus and tap sizes against WCAG 2.2 Level AA, in writing, and to check the result by hand.
4. Add a short accessibility page that says what you have done and gives an email address for anyone who has trouble using the site, so a customer can reach you before a lawyer does.
5. If a demand letter arrives, do not ignore it and do not just buy a widget; take it to a lawyer who handles ADA cases, with your list of fixes and their dates.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and vary by state; check with the agency named above or a professional for your situation.