First, the disclaimer that matters: I am not a lawyer and none of this is legal advice. I build websites, and accessibility is part of building them properly. If you have received a demand letter, talk to an attorney, not to your web designer.
With that said, California business owners ask me about this constantly, usually after a letter arrives or a competitor gets one. Here is the honest picture.
Why California Specifically
The federal Americans with Disabilities Act does not award damages to private plaintiffs. California law does, and that changes everything.
- Civil Code section 51(f) makes a violation of the ADA automatically a violation of California's Unruh Civil Rights Act.
- Civil Code section 52(a) sets statutory damages at a minimum of $4,000 per violation, plus attorney's fees.
So a federal claim that would win an injunction and nothing else becomes, in California, a claim with a floor on the damages and a mechanism to pay the lawyer who brought it. That is the entire reason California is an outlier.
The numbers reflect it. EcomBack, which tracks both federal and state filings, counted 3,948 website accessibility suits in 2025, with 787 in California, close to 20% of the national total. Seyfarth, counting federal filings only, recorded 3,117 for the year with just 4 in California, which tells you where California plaintiffs actually file: state court, under Unruh.
What the Law Actually Requires
There is no federal regulation that says "websites must meet standard X." What exists instead is a body of case law, settlement agreements and Department of Justice guidance that has converged on one benchmark: WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with 2.2 AA now current.
The Ninth Circuit, which covers California, has held that a website with a sufficient nexus to a physical place of business can fall under Title III. In 2022 the same court declined, in Martinez v. Cot'n Wash, to extend Title III to a business with no physical location at all, so the boundary is still contested. Your risk profile depends on facts a lawyer should look at, not on a blog post.
The Overlay Problem
If you have been sold an accessibility widget, the little icon that opens a panel of contrast and font-size controls, this section is for you.
In January 2025 the Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over deceptive claims, including that its AI-powered overlay could make any website WCAG compliant, and over undisclosed paid reviews. The order is about deceptive marketing, not a court holding that overlays fail the ADA. But it is the clearest official signal available that the claims made for these products outran what they deliver.
Alongside that: EcomBack found 983 of the 3,948 accessibility suits filed in 2025 targeted websites that already had an accessibility widget installed. Roughly one in four. Whatever a widget does for some users, it demonstrably does not stop the letters arriving.
The reason is structural. An overlay is JavaScript that runs on top of your page after it loads. It cannot rewrite bad heading structure, it cannot invent meaningful alt text for a photo it has never seen, it cannot make a form field it did not build announce itself correctly, and it cannot fix a checkout flow that traps a keyboard user. Those problems live in the markup. They get fixed in the markup.
What Actually Fails on Real Sites
WebAIM's 2026 analysis of the top one million home pages found 95.9% had detectable WCAG failures, averaging around 50 errors per page. The distribution is the useful part, because it is remarkably consistent:
| Problem | Share of pages | Difficulty to fix |
|---|---|---|
| Low contrast text | 83.9% | Easy, a colour decision |
| Missing image alt text | Very common | Easy, writing |
| Empty or unclear links | Very common | Easy, copy |
| Unlabelled form inputs | Very common | Easy, markup |
| Missing document language | Very common | One line of HTML |
Notice that none of these are hard. The most common accessibility failures on the internet are cheap, boring fixes that got skipped. That is genuinely good news if you are worried about cost.
What to Actually Do
- Run a free automated check. WAVE, axe DevTools or Lighthouse in Chrome will surface contrast, alt text, labels and heading problems in about a minute. Automated tools catch maybe a third of real issues, but that third is where most claims start.
- Fix contrast first. It is the most flagged issue on the internet and it is a colour decision, not a rebuild.
- Write real alt text. Describe the image's purpose. Decorative images get an empty alt attribute, which is correct, not lazy.
- Label every form field. A placeholder is not a label. This one directly affects whether a screen reader user can contact you at all.
- Try your own site with the keyboard. Tab through it. If you cannot reach the phone number, open the menu, or get out of a popup without a mouse, neither can a good share of your visitors.
- Check your headings. One h1, then h2s and h3s in order. No skipping levels to get a font size you liked.
- Add captions to video. Auto-captions edited for accuracy are acceptable. Unedited auto-captions on technical content usually are not.
- Write an accessibility statement with a real contact method for reporting a problem, and answer it when someone does.
Do not reply on your own, do not quietly delete the page, and do not assume it is a scam because it looks like a form letter. Call an attorney who handles these. Separately, have your site actually fixed, because in almost every settlement the remediation is part of the deal and you will be paying for it either way.
My Position on This
I build to WCAG 2.1 AA as a matter of course, because most of it is just competent HTML: real headings, labelled forms, contrast you can read on a phone in sunlight, keyboard navigation that works, alt text that says something. I do not install overlays and I do not sell compliance guarantees, because no honest person can guarantee compliance with a standard that is partly judgment and partly case law.
What I can tell you is whether your current site would fail a basic automated check today, and what it would take to fix. That much is free.
For the wider picture on what a site needs to do well, this covers the fundamentals, and if your site is old enough that accessibility was never considered, these are the signs it is time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the ADA apply to websites?
Courts have generally applied Title III of the ADA to the websites of businesses open to the public, though they have not agreed on the details. The Ninth Circuit, which covers California, has held that a website with a sufficient connection to a physical place of business can fall under Title III. A 2022 Ninth Circuit decision, Martinez v. Cot'n Wash, declined to extend it to a business with no physical location, so the picture is not uniform. I am not a lawyer and this is general information, not legal advice.
What are the penalties for an inaccessible website in California?
California's Unruh Civil Rights Act sets statutory damages at a minimum of $4,000 per violation under Civil Code section 52(a), and section 51(f) makes an ADA violation automatically an Unruh violation. That combination, plus recoverable attorney's fees, is why California sees a disproportionate share of accessibility claims.
Do accessibility widgets and overlays make a site compliant?
They do not make a site compliant on their own, and they are not a substitute for fixing the underlying code. In January 2025 the FTC ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over deceptive claims about its AI overlay's ability to make sites WCAG conformant. EcomBack's tracking found 983 of 3,948 accessibility suits in 2025 were filed against sites that already had a widget installed. A widget may help some users; it does not remove the legal exposure the vendor's marketing implies.
What standard should my website meet?
WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the practical benchmark. It is what settlement agreements, government procurement rules and most professional audits reference. WCAG 2.2 AA is the current version and adds a small number of criteria on top.
How common are these lawsuits?
Common enough to take seriously. Seyfarth counted 3,117 federal ADA Title III website filings in 2025. EcomBack, which tracks state cases as well, counted 3,948 across federal and state courts, with California accounting for 787 of them, about 20% of the total. Most cases settle rather than going to judgment.
What is the most common accessibility problem?
Low contrast text. WebAIM's 2026 analysis of the top million home pages found 95.9% had detectable WCAG failures, with low contrast on 83.9% of pages, followed by missing image alt text and unlabelled form inputs. These are the cheapest problems to fix and the most frequently flagged.
Send me your site and I will run an accessibility check and tell you plainly what it flags. To repeat the important part: I am not an attorney, this is general information about web development and not legal advice, and if you are facing a claim you need a lawyer, not a designer.