ADA Title III
The US civil rights law. It requires equal access for people with disabilities but does not describe what an accessible website looks like. Enforcement is through complaints and lawsuits.
ADA website compliance, without the legalese.
The Americans with Disabilities Act is a civil rights law, not a web spec. Courts and the Department of Justice use WCAG Level AA as the working yardstick for websites. This page connects the two, in the order people actually ask about them.
What Title III says about websites.
Title III of the ADA bars discrimination in places of public accommodation. The Department of Justice treats websites of covered businesses as those places, whether or not there is a storefront, because the service is open to the public. There is no federal website regulation with a checkbox list, which is exactly why the courts reached for an existing technical standard.
In practice, that standard is WCAG, usually Level AA. Settlements, consent decrees, and demand letters name it constantly. If you have received a letter, or you want to get ahead of one, the question is not whether the ADA applies in the abstract. The question is whether your site measurably works for people using assistive technology.
ADA, WCAG, and Section 508, compared.
Three names come up in every conversation about web accessibility. They are not interchangeable.
WCAG 2.2 AA
The technical standard. Written by the W3C, it defines testable success criteria. Courts, regulators, and procurement contracts use it as the benchmark for what accessible means. See the AA checklist.
Section 508
The US federal procurement rule. It incorporates WCAG for federal agencies and their vendors. If you sell to the government, it applies to you. If you only serve the public, ADA Title III is your rule.
What demand letters mention first.
Accessibility attorneys and testers run the same checks we do, at scale. These are the items that appear first in demand letters and automated complaints:
Content barriers
- Images with no alt text, or useless alt text
- Text contrast below 4.5:1
- PDFs and documents that are not tagged
Form barriers
- Inputs with no associated label
- Errors shown only by a red outline
- Checkout steps that time out with no warning
Navigation barriers
- Menus and dialogs that trap keyboard users
- No way to skip repeated navigation
- Focus hidden under sticky headers and chat widgets
Policy barriers
- No accessibility statement or contact for access issues
- No privacy policy, or no data-request path
- Cookie banner that blocks the page it sits on
What an audit does, and does not do.
What it does
It finds the gaps between your site and WCAG 2.2 AA, confirms each finding by hand, and hands you a dated, ranked fix list. That is the record you work from, with your own advisors, to remediate in the order that matters most.
What it does not do
It is not legal advice and it is not a shield. No report, scan, or conversation with us creates an attorney-client relationship, and no audit can guarantee you will never face a claim. Review findings with your counsel before acting.
Common questions.
Does the ADA apply to my website?
If your business is a place of public accommodation in the United States, the Department of Justice's position is that your website falls under Title III, whether or not it has a physical storefront. Most cases settle or are decided with WCAG Level AA as the working benchmark.
Do I need to worry about Section 508?
Only if you sell to or work with the US federal government. Section 508 is a procurement rule that incorporates WCAG for federal agencies and their vendors. Private businesses follow ADA Title III instead; state laws sometimes layer on their own accessibility rules.
Will a WCAG audit keep us from getting sued?
No audit can promise that. What a dated, human-verified report gives you is evidence of what you knew and the fixes you prioritized, which is a stronger position than an untested site. Courts look at effort and remediation, not just a clean scanner screenshot.
Find your gaps before someone else does.
Run the free scan now, or book the full two-pass audit and get the ranked fix list within two business days.