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INFOGUIDE
The 2026 Web Accessibility Litigation Report
New data reveals the trends, risks, and lessons shaping digital accessibility compliance.
On this page
Accessibility litigation isn’t slowing down — it’s evolving
The era of accessibility as a quiet compliance issue is over. It’s now one of the fastest-rising sources of digital risk, and one of the clearest indicators of how accessible your customer experience really is. While federal filings have stabilized, the total number of accessibility lawsuits has doubled since 2020, and the legal landscape has shifted in ways that should concern every organization with an online presence.
For today’s organizations, the takeaway is clear: accessibility compliance is no longer a box to check. It’s a core business and legal imperative that directly impacts customer experience, brand reputation, and financial exposure.
Here’s what every leader needs to know:
You’re accountable everywhere your customers click.
Nearly 8 in 10 lawsuits are now filed in state courts, where laws vary and penalties can multiply quickly. If your business operates online, you’re exposed to more jurisdictions — and more risk — than ever before.
Accessibility gaps are costing you more than compliance.
The top issues driving litigation are the same barriers that block customers from completing key actions like buying a product or signing up for an account. Each inaccessible page isn’t just a legal risk, it’s lost revenue.
E-commerce and digital-first industries are on the front lines.
With 78% of lawsuits targeting e-commerce, it’s clear that online shopping experiences remain a primary source of friction. Accessibility is now a competitive differentiator that directly influences conversion and loyalty.
Quick fixes won’t protect you. Businesses using simple widgets or one-line “accessibility solutions” are still being sued. Real protection — and real accessibility — come from a comprehensive approach that combines automation, expert review, and continuous monitoring.
The message behind the data is clear: accessibility litigation isn’t just a legal trend, it’s a roadmap. The insights in this report are designed to help business leaders understand where risk is growing, what issues drive the majority of claims, and how to prepare before they become a target. Those that act now won’t just avoid lawsuits, they’ll build stronger, more trusted brands in the process.
By the numbers
102%
increase in total filings since 2020
77%
of lawsuits were filed in state courts
78%
of lawsuits targeted e-commerce businesses
Methodology
This report is based on AudioEye’s independent analysis of publicly available accessibility lawsuits filed between January and September 2025, sourced from CasePortal and federal and state court databases. Individual cases were reviewed to identify commonly cited WCAG criteria, industries, and accessibility barriers. Additional insights were drawn from AudioEye’s proprietary scan data across 100K+ websites, covering more than 40 million accessibility issues.
State courts are the new hotbed for litigation
Federal filings may have plateaued since their 2023 peak of 6,722, but the total number of claims has doubled since 2020. The biggest change is where those cases are being filed. Nearly 8 in 10 lawsuits now originate in state courts.
This shift catches many businesses by surprise. Compliance doesn’t stop at federal law, and for organizations with customers across multiple states or markets, the implications are significant. As businesses scale nationally or globally, every new audience also expands their legal exposure.
For online businesses, this means you’re accountable everywhere your customers click. A single website can simultaneously fall under multiple state and international accessibility standards, each with its own definitions of disability, enforcement processes, and statutory penalties.
The laws that matter to your business
State laws vary widely, and their penalties can add up fast. Many include minimum damages per violation, plus attorney’s fees, making settlements exponentially more expensive.
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United States Lawsuit Data
New York (43%)
Florida (19%)
Illinois (17%)
California (10%)
Minnesota (6%)
Missouri (3%)
Indiana (2%)
Wisconsin (1%)
Some state accessibility laws carry statutory damages, making violations even more costly if combined with federal accessibility claims.
Under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, defendants can be fined a minimum of $4,000 per violation, plus attorney’s fees. Fines may be reduced by $1,000–$2,000 if violations are corrected within 30–60 days.
Under New York State’s Human Rights Law, defendants may face compensatory and punitive damages, with civil penalties up to $50,000 for a first offense and $100,000 for repeat violations, plus attorney’s fees. The law also defines disability more broadly than the ADA.
Under Colorado’s HB 21-1110, defendants can be fined $3,500 per violation, plus attorney’s fees and actual damages, and may face court-ordered compliance. This law applies primarily to state and local government entities.
Beyond the states
These laws don’t exist in isolation, either. They stack with broader accessibility mandates, such as:
Section 508
Section 508 expands procurement requirements, and government contracts now require vendor accessibility.
ADA Title II
ADA Title II updates require state and local government websites to be accessible, creating ripple effects for all government vendors.
ADA Title III
ADA Title III lawsuits surge as courts consistently rule websites are "places of public accommodation," putting all consumer-facing businesses at risk.
International Laws
International accessibility laws apply to any organization that conducts business online with customers in these countries. Think of the European Accessibility Act (EAA), the Accessible Canada Act (ACA), and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) as examples.
Accessibility laws may be written by states, but your website has no borders. If you’re online, you’re already operating everywhere.
Where to start:
Get a Clear Picture of Your Current Risk. Use AudioEye’s free Site Scanner to identify high-impact accessibility issues on your website. Understanding your baseline is the first step toward improvement.
Predictable barriers drive accessibility lawsuits
Accessibility lawsuits don’t happen in a vacuum. They follow predictable, fixable barriers that stop users from completing key actions, such as buying a product or booking a service.
What’s important for business leaders to understand is that these barriers don’t just create compliance risk; they create conversion risk. Each broken form, unlabeled button, or inaccessible navigation flow is a direct hit to revenue and brand trust. Every barrier that prevents a customer from taking action is also a potential lawsuit waiting to happen.
Across hundreds of cases, the same issues appear again and again:
Keyboard navigation (88%)
Users can’t navigate or interact with key site features without a mouse. This is critical for screen reader users and people with motor impairments.
Fix: Ensure every clickable element (links, buttons, menus, forms) can be reached using Tab and Enter keys. Add visible focus indicators.
Landmarks (88%)
Missing structural tags prevent screen reader users from jumping between sections like header, menu, and main content.
Fix: Use semantic HTML (<header>, <nav>, <main>, <footer>) or ARIA landmarks.
Screen reader compatibility (74%)
Content, forms, and buttons fail to read correctly, breaking the experience entirely.
Fix: Test with screen readers like NVDA. Label all form fields and ensure headings follow logical order.
Buttons and link descriptions (63%)
Vague labels like “Click Here” leave screen reader users guessing.
Fix: Use descriptive text that clearly explains purpose or destination.
Alt text (39%)
Missing image descriptions block visual context for users with visual disabilities.
Fix: Add meaningful alt text for content-bearing images; mark decorative images as alt="".
Our 2025 Digital Accessibility Index confirms these findings:
80%
of pages had links that lack clear, descriptive text, making navigation harder for screen reader users
75%
of pages failed to provide alternative text for all images, creating barriers for users with a visual disability
62%
of pages had input fields or buttons that were not properly labeled for screen reader users
“Every accessibility issue is worth fixing, but some carry a higher degree of risk. If you have high-severity issues on your site that stop people from buying your products or contacting your business, that’s what gets you sued in court. And you’re going to end up losing or settling.”
— David Moradi | CEO, AudioEye
The takeaway for business leaders is simple: accessibility failures aren’t just code problems; they’re customer experience problems. The same barriers that frustrate users drive lawsuits, lost conversions, and declining trust.
As accessibility expectations rise globally, these patterns show where risk — and opportunity — converge. Businesses that address these issues early see fewer claims, stronger engagement, and higher conversion rates across all users.
Where to start:
Prioritize the barriers most likely to stop key user actions like purchase or account signup.
Audit your current accessibility tools — know what they detect, what they fix, and what they miss.
Combine automation and expert human testing to achieve full WCAG coverage and reduce exposure.
E-commerce leads the way in accessibility litigation
In 2025, e-commerce accounted for 78% of all accessibility lawsuits.
The reason is simple: Most accessibility lawsuits start with a customer who couldn’t complete a purchase. People with disabilities don’t stop shopping — they just stop shopping with you.
5 Year
Legal battle
200+
court filings
$5.15 Million
total cost
Case Study
When Fighting Costs $5 Million
What began as a routine accessibility lawsuit in 2020 escalated into a five-year legal battle with over 200 court filings, ultimately costing Fashion Nova $5.15 million. This is the second-largest accessibility settlement on record. While most accessibility cases settle for five figures within months, Fashion Nova's decision to fight transformed a single-plaintiff claim into a class action lawsuit.
This case demonstrates how quickly litigation costs can spiral. Proactive accessibility costs far less than reactive legal defense.
The cost of inaction
For companies of any size, the financial and operational toll of inaccessibility is steep:
Settlements: $25,000–$50,000 per case
Legal fees: roughly $20,000
Executive distraction: often exceeding $20,000 in time and resources
Remediation costs: sites must still be fixed as part of any settlement, incurring additional costs
Worse, these costs don’t include what’s hardest to measure: lost customers, broken trust, and reputational damage.
The good news: Accessibility is the one compliance investment that pays you back — in customer experience, brand equity, and measurable revenue.
“Testing out a new site is always a gamble. Forms are unlabeled, submit buttons stay dimmed, and I can’t complete checkout. I don’t contact support — I just leave.”
— Jessica Phillips, screen reader user
The buyer’s journey through an accessibility lens
Every broken form field, unlabeled button, or missing image description isn’t just an accessibility issue — it’s a lost sale. And when frustration builds, customers with disabilities don’t give up quietly. They file lawsuits, share their experiences, and take their business to competitors who make it easier to buy.
Some businesses see accessibility as a hollow investment, but a Forrester Research study found that businesses saw $100 return for every $1 spent on accessibility. The irony is that people initiating the lawsuits would rather be customers in the first place! People with disabilities often pursue litigation as a last resort.
Accessibility barriers can appear at every step — from ad to checkout:
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common accessibility issues in each stage of experienced at each stage of digital marketing funnel
The result: Every friction point increases abandonment and legal exposure.
The broader business risk
While e-commerce leads in total claims, no industry should see this as someone else’s problem. The same accessibility gaps that stop a shopper from completing checkout can stop a patient from scheduling care, a student from submitting an application, or a citizen from accessing public information.
As more industries digitize customer experiences, accessibility litigation will continue to expand. Finance, healthcare, government, and education are already seeing increased enforcement, and the trend is accelerating.
Accessibility lawsuits are not just a retail problem. Any organization that serves customers online is at risk if accessibility isn’t built into its web and mobile experiences.
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Federal vs State Data Trends
Test your checkout experience
Try completing a purchase using only a keyboard or screen reader. If you can’t, neither can your customers.
Use trusted guidance
Explore AudioEye’s E-commerce Accessibility Best Practices Guide to strengthen every stage of your online buying experience.
Insight #4
Incomplete accessibility solutions create legal exposure for businesses
A surprising insight came from the 2025 lawsuits: 38.5% of businesses that got sued already had an accessibility solution in place.
Or at least, they thought they did.
In most cases, these businesses were relying on incomplete accessibility solutions — usually widgets or toolbars that promised instant compliance(opens in a new tab) but delivered little more than a false sense of security.
When lawsuits came in, plaintiffs were able to show that key site actions like forms, checkout, and navigation were still inaccessible, even with a widget in place.
Why some solutions fail where others succeed
Even the best automated tools can only detect about two-thirds of accessibility barriers. And of those issues, they can only fix about half. That means roughly two-thirds of accessibility issues still require human expertise to identify and solve.
The result is a dangerous gap: organizations believe they’ve achieved compliance because automated reports look clean, but the barriers most likely to trigger lawsuits — like inaccessible pop-ups and broken keyboard navigation — often sit outside automation’s reach.
That’s where human expertise becomes essential. Not as a replacement for automation, but as the only way to ensure that all parts of a site work for real users and assistive technologies. Without that layer, businesses are left with compliance gaps in their most critical pages and user flows — and that’s where most lawsuits start.
The gold standard
Automation plus human expertise
True accessibility (and real legal protection) comes from a combination(opens in a new tab) of automation and human expertise.
Intelligent automation detects and fixes common issues instantly, helping teams scale faster. Expert audits and custom code-level fixes address the deeper, more complex barriers automation can’t reach. Together, they create a proven approach to compliance — one that delivers up to 300–400% more legal protection than incomplete or widget-based solutions(opens in a new tab).
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Ask about valid claim rates
When evaluating vendors, don’t just compare feature lists. Ask about valid legal claim rates. This metric shows how often a vendor’s customers are named in accessibility lawsuits that include verifiable accessibility violations. It’s one of the clearest indicators of whether a solution actually reduces your risk.
At AudioEye, our combination of intelligent automation, expert testing, and custom accessibility fixes helps us deliver a valid claim rate under 10% — nearly 70% lower than other industry solutions.
Where to start:Invest in a comprehensive approach that pairs automation with human expertise (because real protection is always cheaper than a lawsuit). Choose a solution that combines intelligent automation, expert testing, and custom accessibility fixes to achieve lasting accessibility and measurable legal protection.
The path to protection
The rise in state-level lawsuits, the recurrence of predictable accessibility barriers, and the failure of one-click “solutions” all lead to the same conclusion. Real accessibility, the kind that protects your brand and empowers your customers, requires commitment, expertise, and accountability.
Every inaccessible experience is both a legal liability and a lost opportunity. The same barriers that drive lawsuits prevent real people from engaging with your business, buying your products, and trusting your brand.
People with disabilities do not want to take you to court. They want to participate as customers, students, patients, and citizens. Accessibility gives them that right.
For business leaders, the path forward is clear:
Treat accessibility with the same rigor as privacy, security, or brand safety.
Build a strategy that combines intelligent automation, expert oversight, and continuous improvement.
Measure progress not only by compliance checkboxes, but by how many more people can engage with your digital experiences.
The companies that do this will not just stay out of court; they will stand out in the market. True accessibility is not only protection. It is progress. It is trust. It is growth.
Your next move
1. Scan your site for risk
Run a free accessibility scan to identify high-impact violations that may expose you to legal action or frustrate your users.
2. Prioritize the issues that appear in litigation
Focus first on issues that stop transactions like keyboard navigation, unlabeled buttons, missing alt text, and screen reader incompatibility.
3. Engage experts for continuous compliance
Choose a solution that combines automation with human expertise to keep your site accessible as it evolves.
Ready to get started?
Talk to an expert to get custom guidance.
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