In 2024, US federal courts saw 2,452 ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) website accessibility lawsuits — a 13% drop from 2023's 2,749. On its own, that looks like the pressure is easing. It isn't. Plaintiffs' firms didn't file fewer cases; they filed more of them in state courts instead, where procedural rules are often friendlier to the plaintiff. Add state filings back in and the real 2024 total was over 4,000 — a higher combined figure than the federal number alone has ever shown. If your site hasn't been audited for accessibility compliance, the actual exposure is bigger than the headline federal statistic suggests, not smaller.
The lawsuits are real. The settlements are expensive. And most companies affected had no idea they were at risk.
Who's Being Sued
New York and California together accounted for roughly 40% of all 2024 filings, split across both federal and state courts, with New York's state courts in particular becoming a preferred venue for plaintiffs' firms. Lawsuits are spreading nationwide regardless — no region is fully insulated, and any business that sells or takes bookings online is a plausible target.
A particularly telling statistic: 41% of 2024's federal lawsuits — 961 cases — targeted companies that had already been sued before. These weren't new defendants. They were repeat offenders: businesses that faced accessibility litigation once and either didn't fix the underlying issue or didn't fix enough of it to avoid a second round.
What the Lawsuits Cite
The specific accessibility failures are straightforward. Missing or inadequate image alt text, poor color contrast that makes text unreadable for people with low vision, missing keyboard navigation (many users can't use a mouse), lack of closed captions for video content, and websites that simply don't work with screen readers that blind and low-vision users depend on.
One particular finding stands out: 25% of lawsuits explicitly called out "accessibility overlays" as barriers, not solutions. Accessibility overlays are third-party scripts that claim to make your site accessible automatically—click a button, add some code, and you're compliant. They don't work. They often make things worse. Courts and accessibility experts agree. If you've bought an overlay expecting it to be your compliance insurance, it's time to replace it with real fixes.
The Real Cost
Beyond the legal fees and settlements, there's the business impact. An inaccessible website isn't just a legal liability—it's lost revenue. People with disabilities represent a significant market segment. When they can't use your site, they shop elsewhere. When they feel excluded, they tell others.
The good news: fixing accessibility doesn't require a complete rebuild. It requires understanding what accessibility is, auditing for the most common failures, and fixing them. WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Level AA) is the standard courts recognize. Hitting that standard isn't expensive when you plan for it from the start.
Where WebAcumen fits in
We build and audit sites to be accessible by design, which means they work for everyone: disabled users, elderly users with declining vision, users on mobile with one hand, users over slow connections. We run WCAG audits on existing sites and flag every issue that could trigger liability. Then we fix them. The upshot: your site is legally defensible and genuinely works for everyone who visits.
If you've been contacted by a lawyer, or if you've simply realized your site might not be accessible, an audit is the first step.