ADA compliant websites.

The legal framework

Three tracks of US law shape what “ADA compliant” means for a website. Most public-facing commercial sites are touched by at least one. Many — especially school websites and multi-state businesses — are touched by all three.

ADA Title III — private-sector public accommodations

This is the lawsuit-driver. Title III prohibits discrimination by businesses that are open to the public — retail, restaurants, hotels, healthcare, professional services, entertainment, gyms, education, and the rest. The DOJ has consistently said websites of public accommodations are covered. Federal courts in the Eleventh, Ninth, and First Circuits have ruled the same. Plaintiffs’ firms file thousands of demand letters and lawsuits per year, with public industry reports running into the four-figure annual count.

ADA Title II — state and local government

The DOJ’s April 2024 final rule on ADA Title II explicitly adopts WCAG 2.1 AA as the technical standard for state and local government websites and mobile apps. Compliance deadlines are tiered: April 2026 for entities serving populations of 50,000 or more, April 2027 for smaller entities. Public school districts fall under this rule.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act

Section 504 prohibits disability discrimination by any program or activity that receives federal financial assistance — which includes most charter schools, public schools, federally-funded non-profits, and a large slice of healthcare and human services. The Department of Education and HHS both interpret Section 504 to require that public-facing digital communication be accessible to students, families, patients, and clients with disabilities. URCO’s school-website work is scoped against this layer in addition to ADA.

State laws layer on top

California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, New York’s State Human Rights Law, Colorado’s HB 21-1110, and similar statutes in other states are commonly cited in website accessibility complaints — often alongside ADA Title III for damages. State law differences matter for response strategy but the technical remediation standard remains the same: WCAG 2.2 AA.

WCAG 2.2 AA — the de facto standard

WCAG is the technical specification published by the W3C. It organizes accessibility requirements under four principles — perceivable, operable, understandable, robust (POUR) — and lists testable success criteria at three conformance levels: A (the minimum), AA (the legal benchmark), and AAA (a higher bar that is not always achievable on every page).

AA is the level that matters legally. All ADA-related rulemaking, including the DOJ Title II rule, references AA. URCO builds to AA, documents per-success-criterion conformance, and calls out where AAA is also met (color contrast, line height, link purpose) — but does not promise AAA across the board, because the standard itself anticipates that AAA cannot be met for all content.

What the four principles mean in practice

• Perceivable. Content must be available to senses the user has. Alt text on meaningful images. Captions and transcripts for video. Color contrast that holds up at 4.5:1 for normal text. Information not conveyed by color alone.
• Operable. The interface must be usable without a mouse. Every interactive element reachable and operable by keyboard. No keyboard traps. Visible focus indicators. Skip links. Adequate target sizes on touch.
• Understandable. Page language declared. Predictable navigation across pages. Form labels and error identification. Inputs with clear instructions and recovery paths when a user makes a mistake.
• Robust. Markup parses cleanly. Custom controls expose name, role, and value to assistive technology — usually through native semantic HTML or, where unavoidable, correct ARIA. Status messages reach screen readers without stealing focus.

The most common failures

From URCO’s own audits and the public lawsuit record, this is the order of failures we see most often on sites that have not been built with accessibility in mind:

1. Missing or empty alt text on meaningful images, or auto-generated alt text that describes the file rather than the content.
2. Color contrast below 4.5:1 on body text or 3:1 on large text — usually in light-gray secondary text or in marketing CTAs.
3. Form fields without programmatically associated labels — labels rendered visually but not connected to inputs.
4. Custom interactive components (modals, dropdowns, accordions, tabs) built without keyboard support or correct ARIA.
5. Keyboard traps in third-party widgets — chat bubbles, video players, cookie banners — that capture focus and don’t release it.
6. Images of text replacing real text, breaking screen readers and text resize.
7. PDFs that have not been remediated — scanned documents, untagged PDFs, missing reading order.
8. Iconography without accessible names — search icons, social icons, hamburger menus rendered with no text alternative.
9. Skip-to-main-content links missing on long-navigation sites.
10. No accessibility statement, no remediation contact path, no documented monitoring process.

How URCO builds ADA compliant websites

Every URCO build is scoped against WCAG 2.2 AA from day one — not retrofitted at the end. The production process is:

1. Pre-design audit. If we are rebuilding an existing site, we run a baseline accessibility audit against the current site so the new system measurably improves on what was there.
2. Design tokens with conformance built in. Color contrast, focus states, link underlines, and interactive target sizes are baked into the design tokens. A designer cannot ship a contrast violation by accident because the tokens themselves clear AA.
3. Semantic HTML first. Every interactive component starts as the native HTML element — <button>, <a>, <input>,<dialog> — and only adds ARIA when a pattern cannot be expressed natively. Most accessibility regressions come from custom controls; we build with native ones.
4. Automated checks in CI. axe-core runs against every PR. WAVE and Lighthouse run against the production build. Automated tools catch about 30% of WCAG issues, which is exactly why URCO does the other 70% manually.
5. Manual screen-reader testing. NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack on the actual user flows that matter — homepage, key conversion paths, form submissions. Tools see markup; humans see whether the markup makes sense to navigate.
6. Conformance documentation per success criterion. Each WCAG 2.2 AA criterion is documented as conformant, partially conformant, or not applicable. That document is what protects you in the event of a demand letter.
7. Ship the accessibility statement and contact path. A real statement listing the conformance target, known limitations, and a way for users to report issues. A site without one is missing the documentation a court would expect.

Where to go next

• ADA website compliance checklist — the full success-criterion checklist URCO uses on audits.
• ADA compliant website examples — real sites that demonstrably conform, with what each does well and where each falls short.
• Website accessibility statement template — the language to put on your /accessibility page, and what every statement must include.
• ADA website lawsuit playbook — what to do in the first seven days of a demand letter.
• Accessibility audit services — manual deep audit with a 5-business-day turnaround, or run the free instant audit at /audit.

ADA compliant websites — FAQ.