Peradeo Blog · United States · Published 2026-10-16 · 12 min read

ADA Website Lawsuits in the USA: 2026 Data on Who Is Being Sued, Where, and Why

By Vatsal Shah — Founder & CEO, IAAP WAS-Certified Accessibility Professional

Yes. A business open to the public can be sued in the United States if its website blocks people with disabilities from using its goods or services. In the first half of 2026 that risk was not theoretical: plaintiffs filed 5,006 federal ADA Title III lawsuits between January and June, and separate trackers put digital and website cases in the thousands as well. Demand letters, which never appear on a public docket, add another layer on top.

This article is the 2026 mid-year picture: who is being named, where the cases are filed, which barriers the complaints describe, and what actually lowers risk. It is a companion to our guide on ADA website compliance requirements, including the Title II deadlines for state and local government. It is general information, not a prediction about any one company and not legal advice.

2026 at a glance

• 5,006 federal ADA Title III lawsuits were filed from January through June 2026, up 9% from 4,575 a year earlier. That Seyfarth Shaw count includes physical-access cases, not websites alone.
• UsableNet projects about 6,176 digital accessibility lawsuits for the full year — websites, apps, and video, in federal court and selected state courts — roughly 20% above 2025.
• EcomBack counted 2,045 website accessibility lawsuits in the same six months, barely above 2,014 a year earlier. The national total was flat. The map was not.
• About 68% of the companies in UsableNet’s digital set reported under $50 million in annual revenue. ADA Title III has no small-business exemption.
• E-commerce was about 79% of UsableNet’s digital filings. In EcomBack’s website set, restaurants and fashion together were more than half of all cases.
• WebAIM found detectable WCAG failures on 95.9% of the top one million home pages in 2026. Six issue types account for 96% of those errors.
• An accessibility widget was already installed on roughly one in four websites named in EcomBack’s half-year set, and on about one in five companies in UsableNet’s set.

What a web accessibility lawsuit is

These are civil claims that a website, app, or digital document keeps people with disabilities from using a business’s goods or services. Most are brought under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which covers businesses open to the public. Plaintiffs often add a state law that allows money damages — California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws are the usual examples.

The complaints are concrete. A screen reader cannot tell what a product image is. A checkout field has no label. A menu, dialog, or “add to cart” control works with a mouse and fails from the keyboard. Title III still has no single nationwide technical regulation for private websites. The Department of Justice points businesses to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and does not mandate one WCAG version for Title III. Courts and settlements still measure sites against WCAG 2.0, 2.1, or 2.2 Level AA. Title II, which covers state and local government, does name WCAG 2.1 AA. We explain that split in the ADA compliance guide.

Three counts, three different questions

Headline numbers in this area are easy to mix together. They are not. Each publisher counts a different pile of cases, so none of the totals below should be added to the others.

Seyfarth’s 5,006 is the broad federal number. It is the highest first-half total since 2021, against a prior four-year first-half average of 4,463, and it is on pace to clear 10,000 federal filings if the second half matches the first. It is not a count of website cases. Seyfarth’s last full-year website breakout was for 2025, when federal website accessibility lawsuits rose 27%, from 2,452 to 3,117, and made up 36% of the 8,667 federal Title III filings that year.

UsableNet’s higher digital projection exists because many website cases now go to state court, which a federal-only series misses. EcomBack’s 2,045 is a website-only series with its own court coverage. Read each figure against its definition.

Demand letters sit outside all three. They go straight to the business and usually stay private unless someone files. In its 2026 mid-year discussion, UsableNet estimated that companies receive on the order of two to three demand letters for every lawsuit that reaches a court. There is no public database that can confirm that ratio. Treat filed cases as the visible part of the pressure, not the whole of it.

Who is being sued

The defendants are not a list of famous brands. UsableNet’s midyear report found that companies under $50 million in annual revenue were still 68% of digital accessibility lawsuits in the first half of 2026. Companies above $50 million were 32%, and 10% of filings named companies above $1 billion. The same research describes a slow move up-market: 36% of sued companies had revenue above $25 million, compared with 33% in 2024 and 27% in 2023. Larger targets are easier to find and, in the report’s reading, more likely to settle. Smaller businesses remain the majority of names on the docket.

Title III does not exempt a business because it is small, new, or nonprofit. A shop, clinic, school, restaurant, or Canadian brand that sells to U.S. customers can be named. Headquarters is not the test plaintiffs use. Where the site does business is.

By industry

UsableNet’s digital set is dominated by online retail: e-commerce was 79% of filings, and food service was next at 14%. Everything else — healthcare, fitness, travel, banking, education — was a thin slice of that particular count.

EcomBack’s website-only series uses a finer set of consumer categories. From January through June 2026, eight industries accounted for 92.8% of its 2,045 cases:

Restaurants and fashion together were 1,158 cases, 56.6% of that series. The pattern fits the way these sites are built: menus, modifiers, reservations, size and color selectors, promo codes, and checkout. A person who cannot complete one of those steps cannot buy. Plaintiffs’ testers can check that journey in an afternoon.

The two taxonomies answer different questions. “E-commerce, 79%” says the defendant sells online. “Restaurants, 29%” says what that online business sells. A restaurant with online ordering can sit in both.

By website platform

EcomBack’s half-year platform table is the clearest public breakout of where the sued sites are built. It counts how often a platform was identified, not how risky a platform is per store. A platform with more stores will show up more often even if each store is no worse than average.

Shopify overtook custom-coded sites in this series for the first time, up from 653 cases (32.4%) in the first half of 2025. WordPress moved the other way, from 403 cases to 265. Neither shift means a platform is accessible or inaccessible out of the box. Themes, apps, plugins, custom code, and the content a merchant publishes decide whether a screen reader user can buy. Two stores on the same platform can have opposite results. If you sell on Shopify or publish on WordPress, the audit still has to cover your theme, your apps, and your checkout — not the vendor’s marketing page.

Where the cases are filed

A few states still hold most of the volume, and the leader depends on which courts you count. Seyfarth’s federal Title III list includes physical-access suits, which is why California is far ahead there. EcomBack’s website-only list puts Illinois first for the first time.

Three shifts matter if you sell across state lines:

• Illinois grew fast. EcomBack’s website count there went from 237 to 463, up 95%, and Illinois became that series’ top state at 22.6% of filings. Seyfarth’s federal count also put Illinois third, at 505, with one firm — Equal Access Law Group — responsible for 336 of them.
• New York’s federal number fell, and that is not the same as “New York got quiet.” Seyfarth’s authors wrote that federal judges there have applied stricter standing rules in website cases, and that plaintiffs are filing in state court instead. UsableNet’s digital count, which includes those state filings, still puts New York first. Our New York guide covers why the state and city human rights laws keep that docket attractive: they can add damages the ADA does not.
• California remains a damages state. Federal courts there have been reluctant to hear the state-law damages claims, which is one reason Seyfarth’s huge California federal number and EcomBack’s smaller website number tell different stories. The Unruh Act still turns an ADA violation into a claim for at least $4,000 per violation plus fees. Details are in our California Unruh guide.

Indiana is the new name on both lists (116 federal Title III cases; 105 website cases, up from 28 in EcomBack’s prior-year half). Minnesota’s federal docket is extraordinarily concentrated: Seyfarth reported that one firm, Throndset Michenfelder, filed 121 of the state’s 124 federal Title III cases.

Government sites are a different track. Private Title III suits are not how Colorado enforces HB21-1110, and they are not the Department of Justice’s Title II rule. A business that also sells to a state or local government can face both.

Why the volume stays high

This is a concentrated practice, not thousands of unrelated customers each finding a lawyer. Seyfarth’s mid-year note said the higher federal total lines up with newer plaintiffs’ firms arriving on the Title III scene. The website-only numbers show the same shape:

EcomBack counted 225 plaintiffs behind all 2,045 website suits, and 32 firms. Thirty people filed more than half. When one firm doubles its output or opens a new state, the national chart moves. That is what Illinois looked like in the first half of 2026.

UsableNet has also pointed to the enforcement gap. Title III still has no binding web standard, federal enforcement of private websites is limited, and private plaintiffs fill that space. Jason Taylor, UsableNet’s chief innovation officer, put the same point in the firm’s 2026 commentary: when federal enforcement is slow, private filings are what businesses actually feel.

A prior settlement does not close the door. UsableNet reported that about a quarter of 2026 digital lawsuits named companies that had already faced a similar claim. A settlement with one plaintiff does not bind the next firm, and a public complaint tells other firms the business has been found before. Fixing the barrier named in one letter, and leaving the rest of the site alone, is how organizations get sued twice.

The barriers complaints describe

The pleadings are repetitive because the failures are repetitive. Across 2026 website complaints, the same problems dominate: missing or useless alternative text, forms and checkouts without labels or error text, controls that need a mouse, focus that disappears, and text that fails contrast. Those are also the failures automated scans are best at seeing — and WebAIM’s 2026 scan of the top million home pages shows how common they still are.

WebAIM detected WCAG failures on 95.9% of those home pages, up from 94.8% in 2025, reversing six years of small improvements. The average page had 56.1 detectable errors, up 10.1% from 51. The researchers were explicit that this is a floor: only automatically detectable failures were counted, so full WCAG 2 A/AA conformance is certainly below the remaining 4.1%. Six categories still account for 96% of every error the scan found.

WebAIM tied the backslide to heavier pages — more elements, more images, more third-party code — which makes the same six failures easier to reintroduce. Automated checks will not catch the rest of what lawsuits plead: a keyboard trap inside a dialog, a focus outline that exists in CSS and vanishes on the page, a “Read more” link that does not say which article, an error that is only a red border. We wrote up those gaps in what automated accessibility scans miss.

A widget does not stop the lawsuit

Installing an overlay or accessibility widget is not a defense. EcomBack found a widget already on the site in 496 of its 2,045 first-half website lawsuits — 24.3%, up from 458 (22.7%) a year earlier. UsableNet’s broader digital set put the share at about 20%. The two samples differ; the conclusion does not. Plaintiffs look at the checkout, the menu, and the buttons. A panel that changes text size or contrast does not add a label to a field or give an icon button a name.

Widgets can also get in the way. Some inject controls that interfere with the screen reader the plaintiff is using, which is the opposite of a fix. Use a tool if it helps a visitor adjust display settings. Do not treat it as the conformance program. The work that changes the legal facts is in the theme, the templates, and the content.

What a case can cost

There is no single price. It depends on the court, the state claims, how long the case runs, and what has to be fixed. Under federal Title III, a private plaintiff cannot collect money damages. They can ask a court to order the barriers removed and can recover reasonable attorney’s fees and costs. Your own defense counsel is separate from that. State law is where damages enter.

Settlement amounts are often confidential, so any “typical settlement” figure you see in marketing is a rough industry anecdote, not a court statistic. Budget for three things at once: legal fees, the technical remediation, and the chance of a second claim if the first fix was narrow. If a letter has already arrived, have counsel read it before anyone on the web team writes back. In parallel, preserve the page as it was and start confirming whether the barriers described are actually there.

How to lower the risk

Nothing here is a promise that a particular plaintiff will pass you by. The pattern in the 2026 data is narrower than “make the whole internet perfect.” Find the detectable barriers, fix the journeys people use to buy or book, and keep those fixes from rotting after the next theme or campaign.

1. Scan, then read the scan. Start with an automated pass for contrast, missing alt text, unlabeled fields, empty links, and empty buttons. Those six categories are 96% of what WebAIM detects, and they are common in complaints. A green score is the start of the list, not the end of it.
2. Test the money path by hand. Keyboard only, then a screen reader (NVDA or JAWS on Windows, VoiceOver on Apple): home, menu or catalog, product options, cart, checkout, account, and contact. Automated tools do not complete a purchase.
3. Fix shared components first. A bad button, modal, or product card is one defect and fifty pages. Plaintiffs name the page they happened to open.
4. Publish an accessibility statement that someone monitors. Say which WCAG level you are working toward, what you know is still broken, and how to reach a person. An unread inbox does not help.
5. Retest after launches. New themes, apps, pop-ups, and AI-generated landing pages put the same six failures back. Keep a short record of what you tested and what you changed. That record is what counsel can actually use.
6. Skip the overlay-as-compliance plan. The 2026 filings already include hundreds of sites that had one.

WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the practical target for a business site unless a contract or a government rule that applies to you names a different version. WCAG 2.1 AA still satisfies the ADA Title II rule and the older 2.0 AA laws. Testing to 2.2 AA covers both.

Frequently asked questions

Can you be sued over website accessibility in the United States?

Yes. Businesses open to the public are sued under ADA Title III, often with a state damages law alongside it. Seyfarth counted 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, and 2026 digital filings are on pace to set a higher combined federal-and-state total. Courts still disagree on some standing and nexus questions, so the same fact pattern can land differently by jurisdiction.

Do small businesses have to make their websites accessible?

Title III has no revenue or employee cutoff. In UsableNet’s first-half 2026 data, about 68% of sued companies were under $50 million in annual revenue. Size changes how you staff the work. It does not remove the claim.

Which states see the most website cases?

California, Florida, Illinois, and New York, plus a fast-growing Indiana and a concentrated Minnesota docket. Seyfarth’s federal Title III list puts California first (2,426 in the first half of 2026). EcomBack’s website list puts Illinois first (463). UsableNet’s digital count, including state courts, puts New York first. Use the series that matches the question you are asking.

What do the complaints actually allege?

The same short list: missing alternative text, unlabeled forms, empty links and buttons, keyboard barriers, missing focus, and low-contrast text. WebAIM’s 2026 scan found those patterns on a large share of the most-visited home pages on the web. They are fixable in code and content. They are not fixed by a toolbar.

Will an accessibility widget prevent a lawsuit?

No. EcomBack found a widget on 24.3% of the websites in its first-half 2026 lawsuit set. UsableNet found one on about 20% of sued companies in its digital set. Pair any display tool with testing, code-level fixes, and a way for visitors to report a barrier.

What does an ADA website case cost?

Federal Title III plaintiffs can seek an order to fix the site and their attorney’s fees, not damages. California’s Unruh Act adds at least $4,000 per violation. New York’s state and city human rights laws can add damages as well. Defense costs and the remediation itself are on top. Settlement figures vary and are often confidential.

How Peradeo can help

Peradeo is a web accessibility company based in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Our IAAP-certified specialists audit websites and web applications against WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 AA using real assistive technologies (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver), remediate the issues hands-on as developers, and prepare the compliance documentation — including VPAT® / Accessibility Conformance Reports and accessibility statements — that regulators and procurement teams ask for.

• Learn more about our web accessibility audit & remediation services
• Speak with an expert — book a 30-minute call

This article is provided for general information only and is not legal advice. Requirements change over time — consult a qualified lawyer for advice about your specific obligations.