ADA website compliance services, with a WCAG 2.2 AA audit and the fixes it finds

Who needs ADA website compliance services?

Sometimes accessibility comes up because a demand letter arrived. Sometimes a customer couldn’t book online, a contract asks for WCAG conformance, or an owner wants the site right before either happens. Size changes what the work involves:

• Established local businesses: usually one location, with the owner making the call. In California, a business with a physical location can also answer to state law: the state’s Civil Rights Department says courts have applied the Unruh Act’s accessibility rules to websites of businesses that have physical locations.
• Multi-location and regional businesses: several locations on one site, each with its own pages, forms and booking. A failure in a shared template repeats on every location page, and one fix in that template clears it everywhere.
• National businesses: more pages, more forms and more people adding content, across the whole US. The work has to hold up while the site keeps changing.

If your site is small and you’d rather start on your own, the W3C’s Easy Checks are a sensible first step, and we’ll tell you so on the call. For the rest of the work on a site, see web design, and our guide to website design cost gives the market’s build ranges level by level.

What does ADA website compliance mean for a business website?

The Americans with Disabilities Act bars businesses open to the public from discriminating against people with disabilities. The Justice Department’s guidance on web accessibility, published in March 2022, says the law’s requirements reach the goods and services those businesses offer on the web. It also says the department has no regulation setting detailed standards for those sites: businesses have flexibility in how they comply, but they still have to comply.

In practice, it means someone using a screen reader, captions, voice control or a keyboard instead of a mouse can use the site the way anyone else does. ADA.gov gives examples of the barriers that get in the way: poor color contrast, color used alone to carry information, images without text alternatives, videos without captions, forms without labels or clear instructions, and pages that only work with a mouse.

Does the law require your website to be accessible?

For businesses open to the public, the Justice Department’s guidance says the ADA applies, even without a set technical standard. It points to two documents as helpful guidance: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and the federal Section 508 Standards.

Public bodies have a firmer rule. In 2024 the department adopted WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the standard for the websites and mobile apps of state and local governments. An interim rule published on April 20, 2026 moved the compliance dates: April 26, 2027 for governments with a total population of 50,000 or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones and special district governments.

State law can add more. California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act covers every business establishment, requires businesses to comply with the ADA, and allows damages of at least $4,000 for each offense plus attorney’s fees, according to the state’s Civil Rights Department. We’re not lawyers, and nothing here is legal advice: if a letter has arrived, talk to one.

How do the ADA, Section 508 and WCAG differ?

The three get mixed up because they overlap. Two are laws, and the third is the technical standard that the rules and guidance under both laws point to.

WCAG versions build on each other. The W3C says content that conforms to WCAG 2.2 also conforms to 2.1 and 2.0, so an audit to 2.2 Level AA covers the 2.1 AA the government rule names and the 2.0 AA in the Section 508 Standards. Version 2.2 added nine success criteria, among them a minimum size for the buttons and links you click or tap, a keyboard focus that other content doesn’t hide, and help that appears in the same place from page to page.

What does an accessibility audit check?

Two kinds of test: what software can measure, and what takes a person. The scanner runs on a page from every template and catches failures such as missing image text, empty links and buttons, missing form labels and low-contrast text. Then a person works through the pages:

• Keyboard: every link, menu, form and button reached and used from the keyboard alone, with the focus always visible and never trapped.
• Headings: one main heading per page, and the rest in order.
• Images: text that describes each image carrying meaning, empty text on decorative ones, and no pictures of words where live text can do the job.
• Forms: a label on every field, required fields marked in words, and errors that a screen reader announces.
• Contrast and color: text at a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, or 3:1 for large text, and no information carried by color alone.
• Zoom and phone width: text that can be enlarged without breaking the page, and pages that work on a phone without scrolling sideways.

Why isn’t a scanner enough on its own?

Because software can only test what it can measure. The W3C says evaluation tools can’t determine whether a site is accessible, only help with it, and that human judgment is required. A scanner can see that an image has text attached; it can’t tell whether that text describes the image. Chrome’s Lighthouse scores a page on its automated audits, weighted by how much each failure affects users, and leaves manual checks, such as whether the tab order is logical, out of the score.

ADA.gov says the same of automated checkers: they can help but need using with care, and a clean report doesn’t necessarily mean everything is accessible. It suggests pairing them with a manual check. The WebAIM Million found detected failures on 95.9% of the top million home pages in February 2026, an average of 56.1 errors a page, and WebAIM itself says a page with no detected errors isn’t necessarily accessible.

Do accessibility overlays make a site compliant?

Be wary of any overlay sold as doing that. An overlay is a plug-in added to a site that tries to find and fix accessibility problems automatically. ADA.gov counts automated checkers and overlays among the tools that can help, and says they need to be used carefully. The FTC went further with one vendor: its final order against accessiBe, approved in April 2025, requires the company to pay $1 million over claims that its plug-in could make any website conform to WCAG. The order bars it from claiming an automated product can make a site conform, or keep it conforming over time, without evidence, and it covers reviews made to look independent.

We fix the site’s own code, so the pages work with assistive technology without anything layered on top.

What changes on your site during remediation?

The fixes go where the failures start. On a site we build or rebuild, that’s usually a template, so one change reaches every page made from it. The usual changes:

• Headings: text styled to look like a heading becomes a real one, in order.
• Images: text written for each image that carries meaning, and words moved out of pictures into the page wherever live text can do the job.
• Color: text colors adjusted to pass 4.5:1, or 3:1 for large text, and the edges of buttons and fields to pass 3:1, as close to your brand as the ratios allow.
• Forms: labels tied to their fields, required fields marked in words, and errors described in text.
• Keyboard: menus, accordions and pop-ups that open, close and pass focus correctly from the keyboard.
• Target size: buttons and links large enough to click or tap, as WCAG 2.2’s minimum target size criterion asks.

Anything outside the site’s own code, such as a booking widget, a chat window or a payment form from another company, is that company’s to fix, or it gets swapped for a tool that passes. If your site runs on another platform today, moving it into our system comes first, and the proposal says what that involves.

How do you check your own website?

The W3C’s Easy Checks are a good first pass:

1. Page titles: each page has its own title that says what it is.
2. Image text: every image that carries meaning has a text alternative.
3. Headings: the page has headings, and they follow in order.
4. Contrast: text stands out clearly from its background.
5. Keyboard: put the mouse aside and press Tab. You should reach every link and control in a sensible order, and always see where the focus is.
6. Forms: each field has a label, and errors say what went wrong.

The full list adds zooming text to 200%, moving or flashing content, and captions and other alternatives for video and audio. The W3C is clear that these checks aren’t a full evaluation: a page can seem to pass them all and still have significant barriers.

How likely is a lawsuit over your website?

It depends on where you are, and federal filings went up in 2025. Seyfarth Shaw’s count of federal court filings found 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, up 27% from 2,452 in 2024, and 36% of all ADA Title III suits filed in federal court that year. New York had 1,021, Florida 961 and Illinois 585. California had 4 in federal court. The count leaves out demand letters and suits filed in state courts, which Seyfarth says it still sees in significant numbers, especially against businesses with physical locations.

No audit or fix can promise you won’t be sued. What the work does is make the site usable for the people the law protects. If a letter has arrived, talk to a lawyer about it, and fix the site either way.

What should you ask ADA website compliance companies?

• Do people test the site, or only software? The W3C says tools can only assist, so ask what a person checks.
• Which standard, and which version? Content that meets WCAG 2.2 Level AA also meets 2.1 and 2.0 at that level.
• What changes in the code? Ask whether the fixes go into the site itself or into a plug-in added on top.
• What do they promise? Be wary of a promise of compliance or of protection from lawsuits. The FTC’s accessiBe order was over a claim that a tool could make any site conform.
• What happens when the site changes? New pages and images can bring new failures, so ask how the site stays checked after the work ends.

How does a site stay accessible as it changes?

Each new page, photo, PDF or embedded tool can bring a failure with it, and the standard itself moves: WCAG 2.2 arrived five years after 2.1. A care plan doesn’t always cover accessibility. Websults’ entry plan, for example, lists software updates, a monthly backup, uptime monitoring, basic security checks and 30 minutes of content or design updates, and nothing on accessibility, so ask whoever looks after your site whether accessibility checks are part of theirs.

Once a site we build is live, a monthly plan keeps it running, and your proposal sets what that plan includes.

If accessibility is on your list, book a 15-minute call. Bring the letter, complaint or contract that raised it, if there is one, and we’ll say what an audit would cover.