ADA Title III & Business
ADA Website Demand Letters: What They Are and What to Do
A demand letter alleging a website is inaccessible usually arrives without warning, cites the ADA, and proposes a settlement figure. It is not a court filing and it is not a finding of liability. It is a claim, and the sensible first move is to find out whether it is accurate.
This page explains how these letters generally work. It is not legal advice, and ADA Site Monitor is not a law firm.
Sources
Key takeaways
- A demand letter is a claim, not a judgment: talk to your own counsel before you talk to the sender.
- Title III has no technical standard: the ADA applies to public accommodations, but no regulation sets WCAG for private business websites.
- WCAG 2.1 AA is still the practical benchmark: it is what courts, settlements and testers reference.
- Evidence matters more than intent: dated testing records show a documented effort; a receipt for a widget does not.
What is an ADA website demand letter?
A letter, usually from a law firm on behalf of a named individual, asserting that a website presented barriers to somebody with a disability and that this violates the ADA. It typically lists example defects, references WCAG, and proposes a payment plus a commitment to remediate. Some are thorough. Some are generated from an automated scan of hundreds of sites with the business name merged in.
In detail
The distinction matters because the generated kind often cites findings that are inaccurate, already fixed, or produced by a scanner misreading a page. You cannot tell which kind you have by reading the letter. You find out by testing the pages it names.
Does ADA Title III set a technical standard for websites?
No. The 2024 DOJ web rule at 28 CFR § 35.200 applies to Title II: state and local government. Title III covers private businesses open to the public, and there is no equivalent regulation naming a version of WCAG for them. The ADA itself still applies to those businesses, which is the basis these claims are brought on. Our guide on Title II versus Title III sets out the difference properly.
In detail
The absence of a regulation is not the comfort it first sounds like. It means there is no safe harbour to point at, so the reference point in practice becomes WCAG 2.1 Level AA, because that is what testers measure against and what remediation commitments tend to name.
What should a business do when one arrives?
Four things, in order. Send it to your own attorney before responding to anyone. Preserve the site as it is long enough to test what the letter describes. Have the named pages tested against WCAG 2.1 AA by somebody independent, so you know which allegations hold. Then let counsel decide how to respond, informed by evidence rather than by the letter's own account of your website.
In detail
Do not quietly change the pages before they have been recorded, and do not assume that installing a widget resolves anything. A dated test report is evidence; a plug-in subscription is a purchase. What helps is a record showing the issues you found, the order you addressed them in, and an independent verification that the fixes held.
What does testing give you that the letter does not?
An accurate list. An independent assessment tells you which of the cited defects are real, which are scanner artefacts, which were already resolved, and what else exists that the sender never looked at. That last category is the one that matters for the next letter.
ADA Site Monitor tests and monitors; it does not build, host or fix websites, and it does not sell certificates, because nobody can honestly certify ADA compliance. What an initial assessment plus monthly monitoring produces is a timestamped record of a documented, continuing effort. Under our Quiet Client rule your name never appears in our marketing.