You received a website accessibility demand letter. What to do in the next 48 hours
Do not ignore it, and do not pay or sign anything today. The deadline in the letter is set by the sender, not by a court, and a lawyer can usually get more time.
Talk to a lawyer who handles accessibility claims. That is the one step nothing on this page replaces.
Meanwhile, check the claims yourself. Most letters describe a handful of standard failures, each of which maps to a WCAG success criterion you can test in minutes.
Do not rush to install an accessibility widget. It does not fix what the letter describes, and sites that already had one are sued regularly.
What the letter is
In the United States, a website accessibility demand letter is usually sent on behalf of a person who says they could not use your site because of a disability, under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It asks you to fix the site and to pay a sum, and it threatens a lawsuit if you do not.
These letters are common and often sent at scale. In 2025, 8,667 ADA Title III lawsuits were filed, more than 5,000 of them over websites. Defence lawyers report seven to ten demand letters for every lawsuit, and most single-plaintiff cases settle for between $5,000 and $20,000. E-commerce is the most targeted sector by a wide margin, and most targets are businesses with under $25 million in revenue.
In the EU the equivalent arrives under the national law implementing the European Accessibility Act. In Germany it takes the form of an Abmahnung, a formal warning letter with a cease-and-desist declaration attached. Our German guide explains that procedure step by step.
The first 48 hours
- Write down the deadline and keep the letter and its envelope or email.
- Do not reply yourself. A friendly "we've fixed that now" can be read as an admission. Let your lawyer write the first response.
- Do not sign any declaration or agreement that came with the letter. They are often drafted more broadly than the complaint.
- Find a lawyer who handles accessibility claims and send them the letter. Ask specifically whether the deadline can be extended.
- Check the claims yourself, in parallel, as described below, and keep a dated record of what you find and what you fix.
What the letter usually claims, translated
Demand letters are often templated. The same complaints come up again and again, and almost all of them are failures an automated scan can find, because that is usually how they were found in the first place.
| The letter says | WCAG criterion | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| "Images lack alternative text" | 1.1.1 Non-text content (A) | Product and banner images have no alt, or an alt that is just a file name |
| "Links and buttons are not labelled" | 2.4.4, 4.1.2 (A) | Icon links (cart, account, social) and icon buttons have no text a screen reader can announce |
| "Form fields are not labelled" | 1.3.1, 3.3.2, 4.1.2 (A) | Search, newsletter or checkout fields with only a placeholder, or nothing at all |
| "Insufficient colour contrast" | 1.4.3 Contrast (AA) | Light grey text on white: prices, footers, placeholders |
| "The site cannot be used with a keyboard" | 2.1.1 Keyboard (A) | Menus, swatches or pop-ups that only respond to a mouse |
| "The page language is not identified" | 3.1.1 Language of page (A) | No lang attribute on the page |
Run the free check on the page the letter names. It lists each confirmed failure with the criterion it breaks, so you can put the result next to the letter and see which claims hold and which do not. Then try the checkout with the keyboard alone (Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter): automated tools cannot test that.
Why a widget will not get you out of it
Overlay widgets add a toolbar to the page. They do not change the markup that the letter, and the plaintiff's scan, describe. Industry trackers counted 983 sites with an overlay already installed among 3,948 US digital accessibility lawsuits in 2025, close to one in four. In 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission fined the best-known overlay vendor $1 million for claiming its product made sites compliant.
Fix and document
Whatever your lawyer advises on the claim itself, fixing the site helps you, and a dated record of the fixes helps more:
- Fix what blocks a purchase first: unlabelled checkout fields, images without text alternatives, icon links with no name, contrast on prices and buttons.
- Record what you checked and fixed, with dates. A record showing you tested and remediated on your own initiative is one of the most useful documents your lawyer can have.
- Publish an accessibility statement that is honest about what you have fixed and what remains. Our free generator writes one from your answers.
- Re-check after every theme or app update. Settling one claim does not stop a second plaintiff testing the same page.
Limen's Fix Pack ($99) lists every occurrence with its line and the code to fix it on Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware, WordPress or plain HTML. The Evidence Pack ($249) adds a dated, fingerprinted record of the audit, for exactly the documentation step above.
Sources
- Americans with Disabilities Act, Title III; UsableNet, ADA website lawsuit tracker (2025 filings)
- Defence-bar estimates of demand letters per lawsuit and typical settlement ranges, as reported in 2025 to 2026 industry analyses
- Overlay figures: 2025 analyses of 3,948 US digital accessibility lawsuits by accessibility vendors and consultancies; these are industry sources, not official statistics
- Federal Trade Commission settlement with accessiBe, final order April 2025
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
This article is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer–client relationship. It describes general practice as of 4 October 2026. If you have received a demand letter, speak to a lawyer in your jurisdiction.