About 1 in 4 American adults live with a disability. An inaccessible website turns that many customers away at the door, and increasingly, it invites a demand letter. We build to WCAG 2.2 AA, test with automated tools and by hand, and fix what the scanners find. Nobody can sell you compliance in one click. We sell the work instead.
Both problems come from the same source. A customer using a screen reader lands on your site and meets unlabeled images, a menu that only works with a mouse, text they can't distinguish from the background. They leave, silently, the way every lost visitor does, except this one had money to spend and nowhere accessible to spend it. Labeling those images is exactly what we cover in image alt text for ADA compliance.
The second problem announces itself: a demand letter. Web accessibility lawsuits and demand letters hit small and mid-sized businesses by the thousands every year, and the businesses targeted are rarely the ones who refused to comply. They're the ones who never knew there was anything to comply with.
Neither problem fixes itself, and both have the same fix.
Unlabeled image, no alt text
Screen reader: blankMenu requires a mouse
Keyboard: trappedText contrast 2.1:1
Below 4.5:1Error with no instruction
Submit blockedCertified mail
Demand letter
Filed by the thousands every year, mostly against businesses that never knew.
The Americans with Disabilities Act became law in 1990, before business websites existed, so it never spelled out web rules for private companies. Courts filled the gap: they've repeatedly treated business websites as places of public accommodation covered by the ADA, which is how companies end up sued over websites a statute never explicitly mentioned. In 2024, the Department of Justice formalized web accessibility rules for state and local governments, pointing at the standard everything else already orbits: WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the internationally recognized specification for accessible websites. When courts settle these cases, WCAG conformance is what the settlements require.
So the honest summary: there's no rulebook with your business's name on it, there is a standard everyone is measured against, and waiting for perfect legal clarity has been the losing strategy for a decade.
One more honest note: we're web builders, not attorneys. We build and document to the standard; for legal questions about your exposure, talk to your lawyer, and we'll happily work alongside them.
1990
ADA becomes law
Before business websites existed
Courts
Websites = public accommodation
Applied repeatedly, case by case
2024
DOJ formalizes web rules
State and local government, pointing at WCAG
Today
WCAG is the measuring stick
What settlements require
Accessibility built in, not bolted on: color contrast that works for colorblind users, alt text on every image, full keyboard navigation, captions and transcripts, and semantic page structure that screen readers can actually follow. Built into new sites from the first wireframe.
Most sites don't need a rebuild; they need their barriers found and removed. We audit your current site against WCAG, produce a prioritized fix list in plain language, and work through it, worst barriers first.
Two kinds of testing, because one is not enough. Automated tools, including Google Lighthouse and accessiBe's continuous monitoring, run continuously and catch the machine-detectable problems. Then a person reviews the things machines cannot judge: whether alt text actually describes the image, whether the tab order makes sense, whether a form error tells you what to do. Automated testing catches only a fraction of accessibility issues. The rest is manual, which is where most of the industry stops and where the actual work lives.
Your site gets a published accessibility statement and a documented record of the standard you build to and the monitoring you run. If a question ever comes, you're not a business that ignored accessibility. You're a business with receipts.
The first payoff is the market: roughly a quarter of US adults live with a disability, and an accessible site serves customers your competitors' sites turn away, along with their families and an aging customer base that benefits from every one of the same features.
The second payoff is findability. Semantic structure, alt text, and navigable layouts help screen readers and search crawlers for the same reason: both are machines interpreting your page. We won't repeat the industry's favorite overclaim that accessibility is a magic ranking button. The truth is better: much of the accessibility work is technical SEO work wearing a different name, so one investment does two jobs.
The third payoff is the one you hope never to need: documented, monitored, standards-based work is the difference between an accusation that sticks and one that doesn't.
The market
1 in 4
US adults, plus their families and an aging customer base
Findability
2 jobs
One investment: accessible to people, readable by machines
Defensibility
Documented
Standards-based work with a paper trail, monitored monthly
You've seen the pitch: install one plugin, add one overlay toolbar, instantly compliant. The record says otherwise. Businesses relying on overlay widgets have themselves been sued, because a toolbar floating over an inaccessible site doesn't make the site accessible, any more than a wheelchair sticker on the door builds the ramp.
So here is our honest version. We run accessiBe too, for its monitoring and the reader controls it layers on. What we never do is the thing the FTC fined accessiBe for in 2025: sell that widget as the compliance. On our builds the compliance lives in the site itself, the structure, the markup, the design decisions, done by hand. The widget rides on top of a site that is already accessible without it.
Anyone selling you compliance in one click is selling you comfort, not protection.
"Install one plugin, instantly compliant"
"Overlay toolbar = ADA done"
Overlay-only businesses still get sued
Compliance lives in structure and markup
Automation is for monitoring, not compliance
There's no federal regulation that spells out web rules for private businesses, but courts have repeatedly applied the ADA to business websites, and thousands of lawsuits and demand letters are filed on that basis every year. Practically: it isn't spelled out, and it's still enforced. For your specific exposure, ask your attorney; for the technical work, that's us.
WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, is the internationally recognized standard for web accessibility, published by the W3C. It defines testable requirements: contrast ratios, keyboard operability, text alternatives for images, and dozens more. When settlements and regulations reference an accessibility standard, WCAG is the one they reference, which makes it the standard worth building to.
Usually it can be remediated. We audit against WCAG, prioritize the barriers, and fix them in place. A rebuild only enters the conversation when the site's underlying structure fights accessibility at every turn, and if that's the case, we'll show you specifically why rather than asking you to take it on faith.
Accessibility isn't a direct ranking switch, and anyone claiming it is oversells. What's true: many accessibility fixes, semantic structure, alt text, clean navigation, are also technical SEO fixes, so the work strengthens how machines read your site while it opens the site to more people. One effort, two returns.
Contact your attorney first; the legal response is theirs to guide. What we handle is everything the letter is about: the WCAG audit, the remediation, the monitoring, and the documentation showing the work was done. We can coordinate directly with your counsel, and the audit that starts that process is free.
Accessibility is built into every new site we design at no separate charge. Remediating an existing site depends entirely on the barriers it has, so we scope it after the free audit shows us the fix list, and you see the list before you see a price. Ongoing monitoring is part of our maintenance programs.
The free audit includes an accessibility check against WCAG: what's blocking real customers, what a plaintiff's scan would flag, and what fixing it involves. Better you see the list first.
