Most ADA website lawsuits follow the same script. A small number of law firms file hundreds of similar claims each year, built around the same handful of accessibility failures, found through the same automated scans, and resolved through the same settlement process. Recognizing that pattern will not make a lawsuit impossible, but it tells you exactly where your exposure sits and what to fix first. For Canadian businesses with US customers, the pattern applies just as much as it does south of the border.
Why the Filings Keep Climbing
The Americans with Disabilities Act does not name a specific technical standard for websites. Courts and the US Department of Justice have filled that gap by treating Title III, which covers places of public accommodation, as extending to commercial websites. The Department of Justice’s own Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA confirms that an inaccessible website can exclude people with disabilities from a business’s goods and services just as much as physical barriers can. That interpretation solidified further in 2019, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Robles v. Domino’s Pizza that a restaurant’s website and app fell under Title III because they served as a gateway to a physical location. Nearly every filing since has leaned on that same reasoning.
Once courts accepted that websites count as places of public accommodation, plaintiffs’ firms had a repeatable formula: scan a site, find failures against WCAG, send a letter, offer to settle before the matter reaches a courtroom. Restaurant websites alone accounted for 614 ADA lawsuits in the first half of 2025, close to a third of all filings in that period.
The Pattern Behind Most Filings
Serial filers do not comb the internet at random. They run automated accessibility scanners across thousands of sites at once and prioritize the ones that surface the most obvious, easiest-to-document failures. The list of triggers is short, and it barely changes from case to case:
- Missing alt text on product, menu, or gallery images
- Low-contrast text that fails WCAG’s minimum contrast ratio
- Form fields with no visible or programmatic label
- Navigation menus that cannot be reached or operated by keyboard
- No way to skip repeated navigation blocks before reaching page content
None of these are obscure technical edge cases. They are exactly the failures an automated scan surfaces in minutes, which is precisely why they show up in filing after filing.
Who Actually Gets Targeted
The assumption that lawsuits only chase large retailers does not hold up. Ecommerce and retail sites account for approximately 77% of digital accessibility lawsuit filings in the United States, and 67% of those target businesses with less than $25 million in annual revenue. This is a small and mid-size business pattern, not a large enterprise one.
For Canadian businesses, the exposure does not stop at the border. A store based in Toronto or Vancouver that ships to US customers, accepts US payment cards, or simply draws meaningful US traffic is not automatically shielded from ADA claims. Cross-border commerce is often enough on its own to put a business inside a plaintiff firm’s scanning radius.
What a Demand Letter Usually Looks Like
Most claims never reach a courtroom because the process is built to resolve before they do. A typical letter references specific pages on the site, cites the WCAG failures an automated tool identified, requests a response within a short window, and proposes a settlement figure to close the matter without litigation. The letter rarely states that a widget or a single fix would fully resolve the underlying issue; it is written to move a business toward a quick settlement, not to explain what genuine remediation would entail. Businesses that respond quickly, with a documented plan rather than silence, tend to resolve these faster and for less.
What Actually Reduces the Risk
No single tool removes ADA exposure, and any product that claims otherwise is worth questioning closely; that overclaim is exactly what led to the FTC’s 2025 order against an accessibility overlay provider. What actually reduces risk is a combination: source-code remediation for the structural issues that trigger most claims, a user-facing toolbar that closes common usability gaps immediately, a properly completed accessibility statement, and a documented, ongoing effort to keep improving. With 95.9% of homepages still showing detectable WCAG 2 failures, most sites have real work to do either way.
Our page on what accessibility overlays can and cannot do covers the honest line between the two in more depth.
AccessPro adds user-facing accessibility features. It does not replace the source-code remediation required for full WCAG conformance. Our partner team connects clients with developer remediation when the structural fixes matter most, alongside the toolbar that gives visitors real controls from day one.
If you are unsure where your site’s actual exposure sits, talk to our team and we can help you figure out what to prioritize first.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a qualified professional for guidance specific to your situation.