Peradeo Blog · United States · Published 2026-08-28 · 6 min read
New York Website Accessibility: Inside the U.S. Lawsuit Capital and How to Stay Out of the Docket
By Vatsal Shah — Founder & CEO, IAAP WAS-Certified Accessibility Professional
Year after year, the federal courts in New York — especially the Southern and Eastern Districts — top the national charts for website accessibility lawsuit filings, frequently accounting for the largest share of the thousands of cases filed annually across the U.S. Understanding why explains what your business should do about it.
Why New York leads
- The federal ADA (Title III) supplies the underlying claim: websites of businesses open to the public must be accessible;
- The New York State Human Rights Law (NYSHRL) and, in the five boroughs, the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL) add what the ADA lacks: compensatory damages (and under the NYCHRL, potentially punitive damages) plus attorney fees. The NYCHRL is interpreted more liberally than its federal counterpart;
- An experienced plaintiffs' bar files at volume, with serial plaintiffs testing dozens of sites with screen readers;
- New York courts have generally allowed claims against online-only businesses to proceed, keeping e-commerce squarely in scope.
Who gets targeted
The filing lists skew heavily toward e-commerce — apparel, beauty, food and beverage, home goods — followed by restaurants, hotels, healthcare providers, and financial services. Company size is no shield: single-location businesses and international brands appear on the same dockets. As in California, your exposure follows your customers: if New Yorkers can buy from your site, a New York filing can name you, wherever you are incorporated.
What plaintiffs actually test
Complaints are remarkably consistent, reciting WCAG-style failures found with screen readers: images without alt text, unlabeled buttons and form fields, keyboard-inaccessible menus and modals, missing focus indicators, silent cart and checkout errors, and inaccessible store locators. The benchmark cited is almost always WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
Practical steps
- Get a professional WCAG 2.1 AA audit combining automated scans with manual NVDA/JAWS/VoiceOver testing — automated tools alone catch roughly a third of the issues plaintiffs plead;
- Fix the transactional funnel first: navigation, product pages, cart, checkout, account, and contact flows;
- Skip the overlay widget — overlay-equipped sites appear regularly in New York filings;
- Publish an accessibility statement with a working feedback channel and respond quickly to barrier reports;
- Monitor continuously — regressions after redesigns are a common trigger for repeat suits.
Selling nationwide? Pair this with our guides to California's Unruh Act and the ADA's 2026 Title II deadlines.
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
- Request a free accessibility check of your website
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.