Website Accessibility for Small Business: ADA Compliance Guide 2026

Do Small Businesses Need to Comply with ADA?

The short answer: yes. If your business serves the public and has a website, you're expected to make that website accessible. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) doesn't have a small business exemption for websites.

Here's what many small business owners don't realize: the ADA applies to "places of public accommodation," and courts have consistently ruled that this includes websites — whether you have a physical location or operate entirely online. A local bakery with an ordering page, a freelance photographer with a portfolio site, and an e-commerce store shipping nationwide are all covered.

The Department of Justice's 2024 rule update under ADA Title II specifically addressed web accessibility requirements for state and local governments, and the principles extend to private businesses under Title III. While there's no specific regulation that says "your website must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA," that's become the de facto standard courts use when evaluating compliance.

The practical reality: if someone with a disability can't use your website to access the same services as everyone else, you're at risk. And that risk has grown substantially — ADA digital accessibility lawsuits increased by over 300% between 2018 and 2025.

Understanding Your Lawsuit Risk

Let's talk numbers. In 2024, over 4,000 ADA website accessibility lawsuits were filed in federal courts — and thousands more were settled through demand letters that never made it to court. While large retailers and restaurant chains receive the most suits, small businesses are increasingly targeted.

⚠️ Who's getting sued?

• E-commerce stores — 65%+ of all digital ADA lawsuits
• Restaurants with online ordering — especially post-COVID digital menus
• Hotels and hospitality — booking systems are frequent targets
• Healthcare providers — patient portals and appointment scheduling
• Professional services — law firms, accountants, real estate agents

The typical demand letter settlement ranges from $5,000 to $25,000 for a small business. If it goes to court, costs jump to $50,000-$150,000+ when you factor in legal fees, remediation, and potential damages. For a small business, that can be existential.

Several "serial plaintiffs" and their law firms file hundreds of nearly identical lawsuits per year, often using automated scanning tools to identify easy targets. Your local pizza shop with a WordPress site that has missing alt text on images? That's exactly what these firms look for.

The good news: proactively making your site accessible isn't just the right thing to do — it's significantly cheaper than defending a lawsuit. Most small business sites can be brought into compliance for under $1,000, often far less.

The 10 Most Common Accessibility Issues on Small Business Websites

Based on our analysis of thousands of websites, these are the issues that appear on the vast majority of small business sites. The good news: most are straightforward to fix.

1. Missing Alt Text on Images

Every image needs descriptive alternative text so screen readers can convey the content to blind users. Product photos, team headshots, and hero images are common offenders.

Fix: Add descriptive alt attributes to every meaningful image. Decorative images get empty alt="".

2. Low Color Contrast

Light gray text on white backgrounds, colored text on colored backgrounds — these make content unreadable for users with low vision. WCAG requires a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text.

Fix: Use a contrast checker tool and ensure all text meets the 4.5:1 ratio (3:1 for large text).

3. Missing Form Labels

Contact forms, search bars, and email signup fields often use placeholder text instead of proper labels. Screen readers can't reliably read placeholder text, leaving users guessing what to enter.

Fix: Add visible <label> elements linked to each form field with the "for" attribute.

4. Keyboard Navigation Broken

If you can't tab through your entire website and interact with every element using only a keyboard, it's inaccessible to many users. Dropdown menus, modal dialogs, and custom components are frequent culprits.

Fix: Test by unplugging your mouse and navigating with Tab, Enter, Escape, and arrow keys.

5. Missing or Incorrect Heading Structure

Screen reader users navigate by headings. If you skip heading levels (H1 → H3) or use headings for visual styling rather than document structure, navigation becomes confusing and disorienting.

Fix: Use one H1 per page, then H2s for main sections, H3s for subsections. Never skip levels.

6. Links with No Context

"Click here," "Learn more," and "Read more" links make no sense out of context. Screen reader users often navigate by pulling up a list of all links on a page — and a page full of "Click here" is useless.

Fix: Use descriptive link text like "View our pricing plans" or "Read the full accessibility report."

7. No Skip Navigation Link

Keyboard users must tab through your entire navigation menu on every single page before reaching the main content. A "Skip to main content" link at the top solves this.

Fix: Add a visually hidden link as the first focusable element that jumps to the main content area.

8. Auto-Playing Media

Videos or audio that play automatically are disruptive for screen reader users (whose audio output gets buried) and distressing for users with cognitive disabilities or PTSD.

Fix: Never autoplay media with sound. If video autoplays, ensure it's muted with visible controls.

9. Missing Focus Indicators

Many sites remove the browser's default focus outline (the blue ring around focused elements) for aesthetic reasons. This makes keyboard navigation nearly impossible since users can't see where they are on the page.

Fix: Never remove focus outlines. Style them to match your brand instead: outline: 2px solid #yourColor.

10. PDFs and Documents Not Accessible

Menus as PDF images, contracts as scanned documents, and forms as flat PDFs are completely inaccessible to screen readers. If critical information is locked in inaccessible documents, you have a problem.

Fix: Use tagged PDFs, provide HTML alternatives, or convert essential documents to web pages.

What You Can Fix Yourself (Today)

You don't need to hire an accessibility consultant to make meaningful progress. Here's a prioritized checklist you can work through right now:

✅ Quick Wins (30 minutes or less)

1. Run your site through RatedWithAI's free scanner to get a baseline score
2. Add alt text to every image on your homepage and key landing pages
3. Check color contrast on your primary text using WebAIM's Contrast Checker
4. Add labels to all form fields (contact form, search bar, email signup)
5. Replace generic link text ("Click here") with descriptive text
6. Ensure your site has a clear heading hierarchy (one H1, sequential H2s/H3s)

🔧 Medium Effort (1-2 hours)

7. Add a "Skip to main content" link at the top of every page
8. Test keyboard navigation: Tab through your entire site without a mouse
9. Ensure focus indicators are visible on all interactive elements
10. Add captions to any videos on your site
11. Set the language attribute on your HTML tag (<html lang="en">)

🎯 Deeper Work (Half day)

12. Review and fix all PDF documents or provide HTML alternatives
13. Test with a real screen reader (NVDA is free for Windows, VoiceOver is built into Mac)
14. Ensure all custom components (dropdowns, accordions, tabs) are keyboard accessible
15. Add ARIA labels to complex interactive elements that need additional context

Platform-Specific Accessibility Tips

Most small businesses use website builders or CMS platforms. Here's what to watch for on each:

WordPress

WordPress powers over 40% of all websites, and accessibility varies wildly depending on your theme and plugins.

• Choose a theme tagged "Accessibility Ready" in the WordPress theme directory
• Install the WP Accessibility plugin for quick fixes (skip links, focus outlines, toolbar)
• Use the block editor (Gutenberg) — it produces better semantic HTML than most page builders
• Avoid page builders that generate excessive div nesting (bad for screen readers)
• Set alt text on every image in the media library — WordPress makes this easy
• Test your contact form plugin (Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7 have decent accessibility)

Shopify

Shopify has made significant accessibility improvements in recent years, but themes and apps can introduce issues.

• Use Shopify's Dawn theme or themes built on it — they're designed with accessibility in mind
• Add alt text to all product images (Products → Edit → Image alt text)
• Test your checkout flow with keyboard-only navigation
• Be cautious with third-party apps — they often inject inaccessible widgets
• Use Shopify's built-in SEO features — they overlap significantly with accessibility (headings, alt text, structured data)

Wix

Wix has an Accessibility Wizard built in that catches many issues, but drag-and-drop design freedom can create structural problems.

• Run the built-in Accessibility Wizard (Site Settings → Accessibility)
• Set heading levels manually — Wix won't always assign them logically based on visual size
• Add alt text through the image settings panel for every image
• Enable the Wix Accessibility Panel to check for issues during editing
• Be aware: absolute positioning in Wix can cause reading order issues for screen readers

Squarespace

Squarespace templates generally produce clean, semantic HTML, but some design patterns need attention.

• Squarespace automatically generates alt text from image filenames — but rename files descriptively before uploading
• Use the built-in accessibility panel to review page structure
• Avoid full-width background videos without text alternatives
• Test forms — Squarespace's built-in forms have good label support
• Choose templates with clear visual hierarchy and sufficient contrast

Budget-Friendly Accessibility Solutions

Small businesses don't have enterprise budgets, and they shouldn't need them. Here's a realistic breakdown of what accessibility costs:

Approach	Cost	Best For
DIY with free tools	$0	Simple sites (5-20 pages)
Automated scanning + DIY fixes	$10-50/mo	Ongoing monitoring
Freelance accessibility audit	$500-2,000	One-time comprehensive review
Agency remediation	$5,000-25,000	Complex sites, e-commerce
Enterprise accessibility platform	$10,000+/yr	Large organizations

💡 Our recommendation for small businesses:

Start with a free accessibility scan to understand where you stand. Fix the quick wins yourself (alt text, contrast, form labels). Then use an affordable monitoring tool to catch issues as they arise. Most small business sites can achieve solid WCAG 2.1 AA compliance for under $100/month — a fraction of what a single demand letter would cost you.

⚠️ A warning about accessibility overlays

You may have seen "one-line-of-code" accessibility widgets that promise instant compliance. These overlay tools (like accessiBe, UserWay, and similar) are controversial in the accessibility community. The National Federation of the Blind has publicly criticized them, and several lawsuits have been filed against companies using them — arguing that overlays don't actually make sites accessible. Our recommendation: fix the underlying issues instead of layering a band-aid on top.

Automated Testing: What It Catches (And What It Misses)

Automated accessibility testing tools — including RatedWithAI — can detect about 30-40% of WCAG violations. That might sound low, but the issues they catch are the most common and most easily fixable ones.

✅ What automated tools catch:

• Missing alt text on images
• Insufficient color contrast
• Missing form labels
• Empty links and buttons
• Missing document language
• Duplicate IDs
• Missing ARIA attributes
• Heading level violations

❌ What requires manual testing:

• Alt text quality (is it actually descriptive?)
• Keyboard navigation flow (logical tab order)
• Screen reader experience
• Meaningful content structure
• Focus management in dynamic content
• Custom component behavior
• Cognitive load and clarity
• Touch target sizing on mobile

The best approach is a combination: use automated tools for regular scanning and catch the easy stuff, then supplement with periodic manual testing. Even spending 15 minutes tabbing through your site with a keyboard each month will catch issues that no scanner can.

Making Accessibility an Ongoing Practice

Accessibility isn't a one-time fix — it's an ongoing practice. Every time you add a blog post, update a product page, or change your design, you could introduce new accessibility issues. Here's how to build accessibility into your workflow:

Set up automated monitoring

Use a tool like RatedWithAI to scan your site regularly and alert you when new issues appear. Catching problems early is far cheaper than fixing them after a demand letter arrives.

Create a content checklist

Before publishing any new content, check: Does every image have alt text? Are headings in order? Are links descriptive? Is the color contrast sufficient? Make this part of your publishing workflow.

Test with real users when possible

Nothing replaces feedback from actual users with disabilities. Organizations like Knowbility and Fable connect businesses with disability testers. Even occasional testing provides invaluable insights.

Document your efforts

Keep an accessibility statement on your website describing your commitment, standards you're following, and how users can report issues. This demonstrates good faith and can be helpful if you ever face legal scrutiny.

Stay informed

WCAG 2.2 was published in 2023, and WCAG 3.0 is in development. Follow the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) for updates. Laws and standards evolve, and staying current is part of responsible business practice.

The Bottom Line

Website accessibility isn't just about avoiding lawsuits — though that's a compelling reason on its own. It's about reaching the 1 in 4 adults in the US who live with a disability, improving your SEO (Google rewards accessible sites), and providing a better experience for all your customers.

The barrier to entry is lower than most people think. Start with a free scan, fix the easy issues, and build from there. You don't need to be perfect on day one — you need to be making progress.

Check your website's accessibility score

Get a free AI-powered accessibility audit in under 60 seconds.

Scan Your Site Free →

Related Guides

ADA Compliance Checklist 2026

Step-by-step checklist for full ADA website compliance.

How to Fix Common WCAG Failures

Practical fixes for the most frequent accessibility violations.

ADA Lawsuit Settlements 2026

Recent cases and what they mean for your business.

E-commerce Accessibility Guide

Complete ADA compliance guide for online stores.