Does a small business website have to be ADA compliant?

Is website ADA compliance required? For businesses that serve the public, the Department of Justice says yes in principle. In its March 2022 guidance on web accessibility, the DOJ states that the ADA's requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges or activities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web. Title III of the ADA covers businesses open to the public, such as medical and dental offices, law firms, salons, restaurants, hotels and repair shops.

What the DOJ has not done is publish a rule with a technical standard for private business websites. The same guidance says the department does not have a regulation setting out detailed standards and that businesses have flexibility in how they comply, while pointing to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the federal Section 508 standards as helpful guidance.

WCAG is the set of web accessibility guidelines published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). According to the W3C, WCAG 2.0 was published in 2008, WCAG 2.1 in 2018 and WCAG 2.2 in October 2023. Each version is backward compatible, so content that meets 2.2 also meets 2.1 and 2.0, and the W3C encourages using the latest version.

WCAG success criteria are rated at three levels: A, AA and AAA. Level AA is the common target. For comparison, the DOJ's April 2024 rule for state and local governments under Title II adopts WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with compliance dates in 2027 and 2028 depending on population served. That rule does not cover private businesses' own websites, but it shows which standard the federal government chose when it did set one.

Small businesses get sued because these cases are easy to file and many sites have common, detectable problems. Seyfarth Shaw's ADA Title III blog counted 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits filed in federal court in 2025, up 27% from 2,452 in 2024. New York (1,021) and Florida (961) led, followed by Illinois (585). The authors attribute the rebound largely to new plaintiffs' firms entering the space, and note that plaintiffs can find alleged barriers without leaving home.

Those counts are federal cases only. Seyfarth notes it still sees a significant number of demand letters and state court lawsuits, especially against businesses with physical locations, which are not in the totals. Most of these claims start with automated scans or a tester using a screen reader, so the most visible, common barriers are the ones that draw attention.

Start with the barriers that stop people from completing the tasks your site exists for: finding information, contacting you and booking. These are also among the most common issues automated checkers flag. Work page by page in order of importance: homepage, contact page, booking or intake flow, then your top service pages. Fixing the templates your site is built on (header, footer, navigation menu, form styles) often clears an issue across every page at once.

• Alt text: add short, meaningful descriptions to images that carry information, and mark decorative images so screen readers skip them.
• Keyboard access: make sure every menu, button, form and booking widget works with the Tab and Enter keys, with a visible focus outline.
• Form labels and errors: give every field a visible label and make error messages specific and readable by screen readers.
• Color contrast: make text readable against its background, including buttons and text over photos.
• Headings and structure: use real heading levels in order so screen reader users can scan the page.
• Video and audio: add captions to videos and transcripts to audio content.
• Link text: replace "click here" with text that says where the link goes.
• Third-party tools: test booking widgets, chat tools and payment forms, since you are responsible for the experience even when a vendor built it.

Overlay widgets (scripts that add an accessibility toolbar to a site) do not fix the underlying code, and they should not be treated as a substitute for accessible design and content. A toolbar that lets visitors enlarge text or change colors does nothing about a booking button a keyboard cannot reach, an image with no description or a form field with no label. Those problems live in the page itself, and they are what screen reader users and automated scans run into. If you use an overlay, treat it as an extra and fix the site itself.

Accessibility is easiest to maintain when it is part of normal work. Run an automated scan with a free tool such as WAVE or Lighthouse to find obvious issues, then do a manual check: move through key pages with only a keyboard and try a screen reader such as NVDA or VoiceOver on your booking or contact flow. Fix the issues, then add accessibility checks to the steps your team follows when publishing new pages, photos or videos. Publish an accessibility statement with a way for visitors to report problems, and respond quickly when someone does.

A hotel or event venue should pay close attention to booking flows. A health practice should check its intake forms and patient portal links. A law firm or accounting practice should check downloadable PDFs, which are often missed.

Monvell's Development team builds and audits websites against WCAG 2.2 Level AA and fixes issues in the code and content, and adds accessibility checks to the publishing steps your team already follows.