An ADA demand letter has a way of ruining a perfectly good morning. One day your website is just your website, and the next you’re holding a letter claiming it discriminates against people with disabilities, citing the Americans with Disabilities Act, and hinting politely or no at a lawsuit if you don’t pay up.
Your first instinct will probably be to do something. Fix it. Explain it. Call whoever sent this and clear up the misunderstanding.
That instinct is exactly the problem. What you do in the first hour can either protect you or hand the other side more leverage.
So before you touch anything, here are three things not to do.
The first hour, in short
- Don’t call the sender. Anything you say can be used to strengthen their position. If you don’t have an attorney, finding one is the real task of the first hour.
- Don’t change the site yet. Fix it but capture the record first. It takes an hour, not a month.
- Don’t install an accessibility overlay. 66 of July 2026’s 262 lawsuits were against sites that already had one.
- Do run the free test: unplug your mouse and try to buy something from your own store.
This is a volume business
Demand letters are the quiet majority of ADA website claims. 3,948 ADA website lawsuits were filed in 2025, up 23.84% from 2024 and that count excludes the thousands of private demand letters sent each year, which often settle with no public record at all. In states like Pennsylvania and California, many are never filed with the courts despite requirements to do so.
And it’s concentrated in very few hands. Of the 262 ADA website lawsuits recorded in July 2026, just 12 plaintiffs accounted for more than half of all filings 50.76% and 9 law firms accounted for 82.06%.
That is not a coincidence. It is a business model built on standardized, copy-and-paste claims and the expectation that a fast settlement is cheaper than a fight. Knowing that should lower your panic and raise your care. The letter is probably not personal. It is also not something to improvise around.
1. Do not contact the sender yourself
It feels reasonable. You want to sound cooperative, ask what they actually want, maybe smooth things over before it escalates. Resist it.
The person or firm on the other end does this for a living. Anything you say an admission that the site “probably does have some issues,” an offhand apology, a number you’d “be willing to consider” can be used to strengthen their position and weaken yours.
Communication should go through an attorney who handles ADA website claims. Not because you’re hiding anything, but because framing matters, and an attorney knows how to frame it.
If you don’t have one, finding one is the real task of the first hour not calling the sender.
2. Do not change the site before you’ve documented it
The opposite reflex is just as tempting: go into the site tonight, fix the obvious problems, and act like nothing happened. If they check again, the issues will be gone, and this all goes away. Right?
Not quite. Two things are getting mixed up.
Fixing your site is right, and you should do it. Nothing here argues against that.
Fixing before you’ve captured the record is the mistake. The moment you change pages, you lose the record of what the site looked like when the letter arrived the record you need to evaluate the claims, brief your attorney, and show what you fixed and when.
Three things worth knowing about what remediation does and doesn’t achieve: fixing the issues doesn’t automatically void a claim, changing your template doesn’t erase past inaccessibility, and you can receive further claims from different plaintiffs while you’re mid-remediation.
So: document first, then fix.
The case that shows what documentation is worth
In Jones v. Moscot.com, LLC (No. 1:25-cv-01843, in the federal district court for the Southern District of New York), a visually impaired plaintiff sued an eyewear retailer over the usual list of barriers missing alt text, poorly structured content, inaccessible interactive elements.
Moscot didn’t argue that accessibility doesn’t matter. It showed its work. It had engaged an accessibility consultant, Level Access, in May 2023 nearly two years before the suit and had been auditing, testing and remediating ever since. When the complaint arrived it reviewed the specific allegations and fixed the single low-severity issue its investigation found.
Its first argument, that the plaintiff had no standing, lost. Its second won. The court applied the mootness doctrine a defendant must show the problem is fully addressed and unlikely to recur and found the burden met, contrasting Moscot’s evidence with “some conclusory assertion” of compliance. What it had was a consultant contract, an audit report and a record of what had been fixed.
The plaintiff put nothing up against it and that was decisive. In the court’s words, he “does not offer any declarations or exhibits in response.” The case was dismissed in March 2026, without prejudice, which means the plaintiff was not permanently barred from bringing the claim again.
Our full write-up of the decision goes into the reasoning.
Why this matters at hour one. What carried the day wasn’t good intentions. It was evidence audit reports, remediation records, third-party validation, and a monitoring process showing the barriers wouldn’t come back. A company that quietly patched its site the night the letter arrived, with no record of before or after, would have had none of it.
Three caveats, plainly. This is a single district court decision, not a rule that applies everywhere. It worked because the accessibility work was genuine and years old not a paper trail assembled after the fact. And it turned on the plaintiff not answering: the same court has pointed to cases where the identical motion failed because the plaintiff came back with competing evidence.
3. Do not install an accessibility overlay
When you search for a fast fix, you’ll find companies promising that a single line of code an “accessibility widget” or overlay will make your site compliant overnight. It’s marketed as the easy button for exactly this situation.
It isn’t. Installing one plainly does not keep you from being sued: in July 2026, 66 of the 262 ADA website lawsuits 25.19% were filed against sites that already had an accessibility widget installed. In April 2025 the Federal Trade Commission approved a final order requiring overlay vendor accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims about what its product delivered.
An overlay installed the week a demand letter arrives does nothing about the barriers the letter describes, and you will still have to fix them. Here’s the fuller case.
Instead: slow down and get organized
Here’s what the first hour should actually look like.
Capture the site exactly as it stands
Before anyone changes a single line of code, capture the current state screenshots, screen recordings, saved copies of the live pages, with dates. This is your baseline.
You can’t evaluate a claim that “the checkout button isn’t reachable” if the checkout button has already been quietly rebuilt. And as the Moscot case shows, the record of what you had, what you changed and when is the thing with real value later.
This is a capture, not a freeze. It takes an hour, not a month once the record is saved, get on with fixing what’s broken.
Work out which claims you can reproduce
A demand letter usually lists specific barriers. Go through each one and work out which you can actually reproduce and which you can’t.
Some claims will be real and fixable. Some will be vague, boilerplate, or copied from a template and not applicable to your site at all. Knowing the difference is the foundation of any sensible response, and it tells your attorney what they’re really dealing with. Our website accessibility checklist is a useful reference while you work through the list.
Then unplug your mouse and try to buy something
This is the most honest test you can run, and it costs nothing.
Set the mouse aside and use only your keyboard Tab and Shift+Tab to move, Enter and Space to activate, arrow keys to choose, Esc to close things and complete a real task: find a product, add it to the cart, and get through checkout.
Watch for these as you go:
- Can you see where you are? There should be a visible focus outline on every control you land on.
- Can you reach the menu, and open and close it?
- Can you get out of a popup or cookie banner, or does focus get stuck?
- Can you select a product option size, color without a mouse?
- Can you complete checkout, including every form field and the final button?
If you can’t finish that purchase without a mouse, neither can a keyboard-only or screen-reader user. You’ll learn more about your site’s real accessibility in five minutes than any widget will tell you, and you’ll understand your own exposure before you talk to anyone.
This test finds real problems, but not all of them. A keyboard pass tells you nothing about missing alt text, unclear labels or color contrast and missing alt text is the first barrier most demand letters name. Automated scans won’t close that gap either they catch only 30–40% of barriers, and the rest surface through manual auditing and testing with assistive technology users.
The bottom line
An ADA demand letter is a serious thing, but it is not an emergency that requires you to act rashly in the next sixty minutes. It is also not something to leave in a drawer. The worst outcomes tend to come from the reflex responses calling the sender, patching the site before you’ve recorded it, slapping on an overlay not from the letter itself.
Take a breath. Preserve what you have, understand what’s really being claimed, and get the right help before you respond.
Where we come in
Once the record is preserved, the question becomes what’s actually on your site. We audit manually at the code level, test with real assistive technology users, tell you which claims in the letter hold up, and fix what’s genuinely broken the work that resolves the underlying problem rather than papering over it.
Get your free accessibility audit and we’ll tell you where your site actually stands. If you’ve already received a letter, say so when you book and we’ll prioritize it.
Frequently asked questions
What is an ADA demand letter?
A pre-litigation letter, usually from a law firm, claiming your website is inaccessible to people with disabilities in breach of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and typically proposing a settlement to avoid a lawsuit.
Do I have to respond to an ADA demand letter?
A demand letter is not a court filing, so it does not come with a court deadline. That is not the same as having no deadline the letter itself usually sets one, and ignoring it is rarely wise, because it can be
followed by an actual lawsuit. Have an attorney who handles ADA website claims read it before you respond or decide not to.
Should I just pay the settlement and move on?
That’s a decision for you and your attorney. Paying resolves one claim; it does not fix your website, and an unfixed site can attract further claims from different plaintiffs.
Will fixing my website make the demand letter go away?
Not automatically. Remediation is necessary and it can influence how the matter resolves, but a claim generally concerns your site’s condition at the time the barriers were encountered.
Can I be sued by someone else while I’m fixing my site?
In practice, yes we see separate claims brought by different plaintiffs while remediation is still under way, which is why finishing the work matters as much as starting it.
Does an accessibility widget or overlay protect me?
No. Installing one does not keep you from being sued: 66 of the 262 ADA website lawsuits filed in July 2026 25.19% were against sites that already had a widget installed. The Federal Trade Commission approved a final order in April 2025 requiring overlay vendor accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims about its product.
Has any business successfully got an accessibility case dismissed?
Yes. In Jones v. Moscot.com, LLC (S.D.N.Y., March 2026), the court dismissed on mootness grounds after the defendant showed it had engaged an accessibility consultant nearly two years before the suit, ran an ongoing audit and remediation program, and documented all of it. The dismissal was without prejudice, the court rejected the defendant’s separate standing argument, and the plaintiff submitted no evidence in response. It is one district court decision, not a general rule.
How do I know if my website is actually inaccessible?
Start with a keyboard-only test of your checkout, as described above. For a real answer you need a manual audit, because automated scans catch only 30 to 40% of barriers.
This article is general information, not legal advice. EcomBack is a web accessibility firm, not a law firm. If you have received a demand letter or lawsuit, consult a qualified attorney about your specific situation. Accessibility and litigation risk vary by jurisdiction and circumstance.
