ADA Compliance Checker

Check if your website meets ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) accessibility requirements. ADA Title II now requires WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance for state and local government websites, and Title III increasingly applies to private businesses.

What Is ADA Compliance for Websites?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. Title III of the ADA covers "places of public accommodation" — and since 2010, the Department of Justice has taken the position that websites fall under this definition. The DOJ's landmark 2024 final rule made this official for state and local government websites, requiring WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance by specific deadlines based on population served.

For private businesses, the enforcement picture is driven by litigation. Over 4,000 ADA website accessibility federal lawsuits were filed in 2023 alone — a number that has climbed every year since 2018. Industries targeted most aggressively include retail (38% of cases), food and restaurant (18%), and healthcare. Plaintiffs often work with serial litigation firms that file dozens of cases per month against businesses with identifiable accessibility barriers.

WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the accepted technical standard for ADA compliance. It organizes accessibility into four principles: Perceivable (users can perceive all information), Operable (all functionality works without a mouse), Understandable (content and interfaces are clear), and Robust (content works with current and future assistive technologies). Meeting Level AA means passing all Level A and Level AA success criteria — 50 specific requirements in total.

ADA Compliance Checklist: 10 Requirements

The following table covers the ten most frequently cited WCAG 2.1 success criteria in ADA litigation, ranked by enforcement priority:

Use our free website accessibility scanner to automatically check these requirements against your live site. The scanner runs axe-core rules and maps results directly to WCAG success criteria.

8 Steps to ADA Compliance

Reaching compliance is a process, not a one-time fix. Most organizations find it takes 4–12 weeks for an initial remediation cycle, depending on site complexity. Here is the proven sequence:

1. Run an automated scan — Start with our free checker to get a baseline score and list of automated failures. This takes under 60 seconds.
2. Prioritize critical issues — Focus first on missing alt text, broken keyboard navigation, and form label failures. These represent the highest lawsuit risk and the easiest wins.
3. Conduct a keyboard-only audit — Unplug the mouse. Navigate the entire site using only Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, and arrow keys. Every interactive element must be reachable and operable.
4. Test with a screen reader — Use NVDA (free, Windows) or VoiceOver (built-in, Mac/iOS) to navigate key user journeys. Listen for missing announcements, illogical reading order, or confusing button labels.
5. Fix color contrast failures — Use a contrast checker to verify all text meets 4.5:1 (normal) or 3:1 (large text). Adjust brand colors as needed — this often requires design system updates.
6. Add captions to all video content — Auto-generated captions are not sufficient for compliance; have them reviewed and corrected by a human.
7. Document your remediation — Maintain an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) using the VPAT 2.4 template. This demonstrates good-faith effort and is valuable in litigation defense.
8. Implement continuous monitoring — Accessibility regressions happen with every content and code update. Set up automated monitoring to catch new issues before they become legal targets.

Why Accessibility Overlays Don't Work

Accessibility overlays — JavaScript widgets that claim to automatically fix accessibility issues — have become one of the most controversial topics in the disability advocacy community. Products like accessiBe, UserWay, and AudioEye have been widely marketed as "one-click compliance" solutions. They are not.

In 2021, over 400 disability advocates, accessibility professionals, and organizations signed an open letter urging the web community to avoid overlay products. The core problem: overlays intercept assistive technology interactions in ways that frequently make the user experience worse for screen reader users. A WebAIM survey found that 26.7% of screen reader users said overlays made sites harder to use.

Courts have rejected the overlay defense. Multiple companies have been sued for ADA violations despite having overlay products installed, with courts finding that the overlay did not constitute compliance. The DOJ's guidance similarly does not recognize overlays as an acceptable substitute for genuine remediation. Fixing the underlying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is the only defensible path to compliance.

ADA Lawsuit Statistics 2023–2025

The enforcement landscape has intensified significantly over the past five years. Understanding the litigation trends helps organizations properly assess their risk exposure:

• Over 4,000 federal ADA Title III web accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2023 — up from approximately 2,100 in 2018, representing a 96% increase
• Settlements for small businesses typically range from $10,000 to $50,000, with legal fees adding another $20,000 to $75,000
• Larger companies face settlements of $50,000 to $150,000 plus mandatory remediation and monitoring consent decrees
• Retail accounts for 38% of cases; food and restaurant for 18%; healthcare, entertainment, and hospitality make up most of the remainder
• A small group of serial plaintiffs and their law firms file the majority of cases — targeting sites with identical, well-documented barriers
• State-level claims under the Unruh Civil Rights Act (California) and similar statutes can add $4,000 per violation in statutory damages

The pattern is clear: sites with easily detectable, automated failures (missing alt text, broken keyboard nav, unlabeled forms) are targeted first because the violations can be documented at scale with automated tools — the same tools plaintiffs use before filing.

How to Use This ADA Checker

Enter your domain in the form above and click "Check ADA Compliance." The tool scans your website using axe-core, an industry-standard accessibility testing engine used by development teams at Google, Microsoft, and Deque Systems. Results are mapped to WCAG 2.1 success criteria with a pass/fail/manual-review status for each.

Automated scanning catches approximately 30–40% of WCAG issues. The remaining 60–70% require manual testing — particularly issues related to logical reading order, meaningful alternative text quality, cognitive accessibility, and assistive technology compatibility. For a comprehensive compliance program, pair automated scanning with manual keyboard testing and screen reader evaluation.

For ongoing monitoring rather than one-time checks, see our monitoring plans which run weekly or daily automated scans and alert you when new accessibility regressions appear after site updates.

Frequently Asked Questions