Website Accessibility: Why It Starts on Day One and Keeps Going After Launch
Website accessibility lawsuits rose 27% in 2025. Here is why accessibility belongs in every new build, why live sites need regular audits, and why overlays are not the fix.
Clay Johnston · 5 min read
The short version
- Website accessibility means people with disabilities can use your site, including people who use screen readers, keyboards, or zoom.
- Federal lawsuits over inaccessible websites rose 27% in 2025, to 3,117 cases. Many more businesses get demand letters that never reach court.
- 95.9% of the top million home pages have WCAG failures. Most come from six common errors.
- Building accessibility in from the start costs less than fixing it later. Live sites still need regular audits.
- Overlays and widgets don’t fix the code. The FTC fined one overlay company $1 million over its compliance claims.
Most website owners don’t know their accessibility score. Plenty find out from a demand letter.
These lawsuits have climbed for years, and they hit companies that never thought to check. At Sprung Interactive, we’ve helped more than 200 websites find and fix their accessibility problems, many of them after a letter like that showed up. It matters on a brand-new build, and it matters on a site that’s been live for years.
What is website accessibility?
Website accessibility means people with disabilities can use your site. Think of someone who is blind and uses a screen reader, software that reads the page out loud. Or someone who can’t use a mouse and gets around with the Tab key. Someone zoomed in to 200%. Someone who can’t tell red from green.
The rulebook is WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, published by the World Wide Web Consortium. The current version is WCAG 2.2. Level AA is the target most businesses aim for, and meeting 2.2 AA also meets 2.1 AA, the level many laws and contracts still name.
The rules are practical: text needs enough contrast to read, every image needs a text description, and every form field needs a label. And anything you can click has to work with a keyboard too.
Why are accessibility lawsuits going up?
The ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, bars businesses from shutting out people with disabilities. The Department of Justice has said that applies to websites. The law doesn’t name a technical standard for private businesses, so courts and settlements usually point to WCAG.
Plaintiffs’ firms have noticed. Seyfarth Shaw counted 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025 (opens in a new tab), up 27% from 2,452 in 2024. Those are only the cases filed in federal court. Many more businesses get demand letters and settle quietly, so the real number is higher.
Small businesses get sued too. Online stores, restaurants, and local service companies show up in these cases, and most had no idea their site had problems.
What do most websites get wrong?
Almost everything, if the numbers are right. The WebAIM Million (opens in a new tab) tests the home pages of the top one million websites every year. In February 2026, 95.9% of those home pages had detectable WCAG failures, with an average of 56.1 errors per page.
| Error | Share of home pages |
|---|---|
| Low contrast text | 83.9% |
| Missing alt text | 53.1% |
| Missing form labels | 51.0% |
| Empty links | 46.3% |
| Empty buttons | 30.6% |
| Missing page language | 13.5% |
Most of those errors are the same handful of mistakes, and six types make up 96% of everything WebAIM found. Low contrast text tops the list, on 83.9% of home pages. Next comes missing alternative text, which most people call alt tags, on 53.1%. Alt text is a short description of an image that a screen reader reads out loud. Without it, a blind visitor hears “image” or a file name like IMG_4471.jpg and has to guess.
Missing form labels, empty links, empty buttons, and a missing page language round out the list. Each one is a small fix on its own. Across a whole site, they add up fast.
Why build accessibility in from the start?
Fixing it after launch costs more than building it in, because the problems sit in the design and the templates. A color palette that fails contrast means a redesign. A custom menu that only works with a mouse gets rebuilt. Templates repeat the mistake on every page.
When accessibility is part of the plan from day one, those decisions get made once. Designers pick colors that pass. Developers use the right HTML so screen readers understand the page. Testing with a keyboard and a screen reader happens during the build, while changes are still cheap.
It does slow development down a little. Every component gets checked, every form gets labels, and every image gets real alt text. That time is worth spending. A site that passes WCAG works for more of your customers, and it leaves a plaintiff’s firm a lot less to work with.
Why audit a site that’s already live?
A site that passes at launch can still fail later. Someone uploads a photo without alt text, and a new plugin adds a pop-up that traps keyboard users. A redesigned page switches to light gray text on white. Each change is small, and nobody tests for it.
Standards move too. WCAG 2.2 became the current version in October 2023 and added new requirements, such as minimum sizes for clickable targets and rules for drag-and-drop. A site built to an older version can fall behind without a single line of code changing.
An accessibility audit shows where you stand. Automated scanners catch some issues. The rest takes a person with a keyboard and a screen reader. Want to try it yourself? Put your mouse in a drawer and try to buy something on your own site with only the Tab key. Bring snacks.
Can an accessibility overlay fix it?
Overlays are widgets that add a toolbar to your site or claim to fix a site with one line of code. They don’t change the code underneath, and many screen reader users switch them off because they get in the way.
In 2025, the FTC finalized a $1 million order against accessiBe, an overlay company, over claims that its product could make any website WCAG compliant. Overlays don’t stop lawsuits, either. Plenty of sites that use one still get sued. Fixing the site itself is what works.
How Sprung handles accessibility
On every new build, we design and develop to WCAG 2.2 Level AA from the first wireframe. Colors get checked for contrast, forms get labels, images get alt text, and we test with keyboards and screen readers before launch.
For live sites, we run accessibility audits against the same standard. We test with automated tools, keyboards, screen readers, and zoom, and we confirm every issue by hand. You get a plain-English report sorted by impact. Then we fix the issues, or hand the list to your team, and retest. That’s how we’ve helped more than 200 websites, from small business sites to national brands.
Want to know where your site stands?
Start with the pages that matter most: your home page, your contact form, and your checkout. We’ll show you what’s blocking people and what to fix first.
Request an accessibility audit, and we’ll get back to you within one business day.
Frequently asked questions
What is WCAG?
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the standard published by the World Wide Web Consortium. The current version is WCAG 2.2, and Level AA is the target most businesses aim for.
Does the ADA apply to websites?
The Department of Justice says yes. The ADA doesn't name a technical standard for private businesses, so courts and settlements usually point to WCAG.
What are alt tags?
Alt tags, more accurately called alt text, are short descriptions of images that screen readers read out loud. Without them, a blind visitor hears a file name or nothing useful. Missing alt text shows up on 53.1% of the top one million home pages.
Will an accessibility overlay protect my business from lawsuits?
No. Overlays don't fix the code underneath, and sites that use them still get sued. In 2025, the FTC finalized a $1 million order against accessiBe over claims that its product could make any website WCAG compliant.
How often should we audit our website for accessibility?
After any redesign or major new feature, and on a regular schedule after that. New content, plugins, and design changes can bring barriers back without anyone noticing.
Written by Clay Johnston
Founder of Sprung Interactive in Minneapolis. Building for the web since 1995 and still answering his own email. More about Clay
