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ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuit Statistics (2018–2025)

A sourced reference on digital accessibility litigation in the United States: how many website accessibility lawsuits are filed each year, which businesses get targeted, what settlements and exposure actually cost, and how common accessibility failures really are across the web. Every figure below is attributed to its original source and links out to it.

For information only: This page summarizes publicly reported statistics and is not legal advice. Figures are estimates compiled by third parties using different methodologies, so counts vary between sources. Consult a qualified attorney for guidance specific to your organization.

Federal Website Accessibility Lawsuit Filings by Year

The most-cited running count of U.S. federal website accessibility litigation comes from the Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III blog (opens in new tab), which tracks lawsuits filed in federal court under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The counts below are Seyfarth Shaw's federal figures. Plaintiffs filed roughly 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in federal court in 2025 — a 27% increase over 2024 — after a peak of 3,255 in 2022.

These federal numbers understate total activity. When state-court filings (such as California Unruh Act and New York State cases) are added, UsableNet (opens in new tab) reports combined annual totals in excess of 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits. The chart below shows the federal-only series so the year-over-year trend is measured consistently.

Federal website accessibility lawsuits filed per year (Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III)

Note: Seyfarth Shaw did not publish comparable federal website-accessibility counts for every intervening year; the years shown are the figures reported in its annual reviews. 2022 is the peak; 2025 is the most recent full year.

Federal website accessibility lawsuits filed per year, 2018 to 2025, as reported by the Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III blog.
YearFederal filingsNotes
20182,258Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III
20212,895Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III
20223,255Peak year
20232,794Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III
20242,452Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III
20253,117+27% year over year

Source: Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III blog (federal filings). State-court filings are not included in this table.

Who Gets Sued: E-commerce and Retail Dominate

Filings are heavily concentrated in one sector. According to UsableNet's year-end research (opens in new tab), e-commerce and retail websites account for more than 70% of website accessibility lawsuits. The reason is structural: online stores expose many testable, transactional user flows — product search, add-to-cart, checkout, account creation — and each is a place where an inaccessible control (an unlabeled button, a keyboard-trapping modal, a low-contrast field) can block a real user and become the basis of a claim.

Why online stores draw claims

Retail sites are public, high-traffic, and full of forms and interactive components. The most common automated findings — missing alt text, low contrast, missing form labels, empty links — cluster exactly in product listings and checkout flows.

Concentration by geography

Federal filings cluster in a few jurisdictions — New York and Florida lead by volume, with Illinois a distant third — reflecting where plaintiff-side firms are most active rather than where accessibility problems are worst.

Settlement and Exposure Ranges

There is no single “price” for a website accessibility claim. Outcomes depend on how the matter arrives (a demand letter versus a filed suit), the size of the business, the jurisdiction, and how quickly the site is remediated. The ranges below reflect commonly reported outcomes; they are not guarantees, and individual results vary widely.

Pre-suit demand letters: ~$5,000–$25,000

Many claims begin as a demand letter rather than a filed lawsuit. These frequently resolve in the low five figures, often paired with a commitment to remediate the site within a set timeframe.

Filed federal lawsuits: ~$20,000–$100,000

Once a suit is filed, resolution typically includes both a monetary settlement and plaintiff attorney's fees, plus an agreement to bring the site into conformance. Reported settlements commonly land in this range for small and mid-sized businesses.

Larger enterprises: six figures and up

High-traffic brands and complex applications can see six-figure resolutions, particularly where multiple properties or repeat claims are involved, and where remediation is extensive.

California Unruh Act: $4,000 statutory minimum per violation

California's Unruh Civil Rights Act provides for statutory damages with a minimum of $4,000 per violation. Because each affected visit can be counted, exposure can compound quickly, which is one reason California is a frequent venue for accessibility claims.

How Common Are Accessibility Failures? The WebAIM Million

Each year WebAIM runs an automated analysis of the home pages of the top 1,000,000 websites. In its 2025 WebAIM Million report (opens in new tab), 94.8% of those home pages had detectable WCAG 2 failures — meaning fewer than 1 in 20 top home pages passed even the automatically testable checks.

94.8%

of the top 1,000,000 home pages had detectable WCAG 2 failures in WebAIM's 2025 analysis.

Automated testing detects only part of the WCAG picture — roughly the machine-testable subset — so the true rate of pages with some barrier is higher still. The most common detected failures year after year are low-contrast text, missing alternative text, empty links, missing form input labels, and empty buttons. These are the same issues most often cited in accessibility complaints, which is why an automated WCAG check is a reasonable first line of defense.

Disability Prevalence: About 1 in 4 US Adults

Accessibility is not an edge case. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (opens in new tab), about 1 in 4 US adults live with a disability. That includes people with vision, hearing, mobility, and cognitive disabilities — many of whom rely on assistive technology such as screen readers, keyboard navigation, and browser zoom to use the web.

~1 in 4

US adults live with a disability (CDC). Accessible design serves a large share of every site's potential audience.

The technical baseline that most laws point to is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) (opens in new tab) published by the W3C. In the US, the Department of Justice has also adopted a Title II web accessibility rule (opens in new tab) requiring state and local government web content to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, a signal of where the broader legal baseline is heading. For background on the underlying law, see ADA.gov (opens in new tab) or our ADA website compliance guide.

Methodology & Sources

Every statistic on this page is drawn from a named third-party source. The figures come from organizations that use different methodologies — Seyfarth Shaw counts federal court filings, UsableNet counts federal plus state filings, and WebAIM runs automated tests — so numbers are not directly interchangeable. We report each figure against the source that published it.

California's Unruh Civil Rights Act statutory-damages minimum of $4,000 per violation is established by California Civil Code sections 51 and 52. Because filing counts are compiled by private organizations from court records, small differences between sources are expected.

See How Your Own Site Measures Up

The failures that show up in these statistics — low contrast, missing alt text, unlabeled form fields, empty links — are exactly what an automated scan detects. Run a free scan against WCAG 2.2 Level AA to see where your pages stand, with a score and prioritized fixes in seconds. Want the full picture first? Visit the ADA compliance checker or read the settlement cost breakdown.

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