Is Your Business Website a Lawsuit Waiting to Happen? What California Business Owners Need to Know About Web Accessibility
If your business has a website — and in 2025, almost every business does — you may be sitting on legal exposure you haven't thought about. Website accessibility litigation has grown significantly over the past decade, and California's legal landscape makes it one of the more consequential states in the country for businesses of all sizes. This isn't just a big-company problem. Small and mid-sized businesses, professional services firms, retailers, and restaurants can all face these claims.¹
Here's what you need to understand.
The Legal Framework: Three Overlapping Layers of Risk
1. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Title III
Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in the goods and services of a "place of public accommodation." In the Ninth Circuit, which covers California, courts have held that websites and apps operated by businesses with physical locations can fall within Title III when those digital tools connect customers to the goods and services of the physical business. The landmark Robles v. Domino's Pizza decision (9th Cir. 2019) established that point and rejected the argument that a lack of binding federal web-accessibility regulations insulates businesses from liability.²
For businesses without a physical location, the law is less settled. Robles did not decide whether Title III reaches purely online businesses with no brick-and-mortar nexus, and a California Court of Appeal later held that a retail website with no connection to a physical space was not a place of public accommodation under Title III.³
2. The Unruh Civil Rights Act
California's Unruh Civil Rights Act goes significantly further than the ADA in practical effect because it gives plaintiffs a state-law damages claim in addition to the injunctive-relief framework available under private ADA suits. Critically, a violation of the ADA also constitutes a violation of Unruh, which means plaintiffs in California can use an ADA accessibility theory to pursue Unruh remedies without separately proving intentional discrimination.⁴
3. The California Disabled Persons Act (DPA)
California's Disabled Persons Act provides an additional layer of protection and often overlaps substantially with Unruh in accessibility cases. Its separate existence gives plaintiffs additional pleading options, although California law bars double recovery across overlapping remedies.⁵
Why California Is Ground Zero
California remains a significant forum for website-accessibility litigation for several structural reasons.
State-law remedies create strong plaintiff incentives. When an ADA-based accessibility claim is paired with California state law, the case can become much more expensive to defend and settle than a federal ADA claim standing alone.⁴
Fee-shifting amplifies the economics. Prevailing plaintiffs may recover attorneys' fees and costs, which can make even relatively small cases economically meaningful.
Volume litigation is real. A relatively small number of law firms and plaintiffs have filed many of these suits. In practice, some claims begin with automated scans and a demand letter rather than a detailed factual investigation. That does not mean the barriers are imaginary — many are not — but it does affect how these cases are prosecuted and resolved.
State court is available. Unruh claims can be filed in California Superior Court, which gives plaintiffs a forum choice and a state-law damages vehicle that private ADA claims do not provide on their own. Website-accessibility cases are litigated there; Thurston itself was.⁶
What Does "Accessible" Actually Mean?
The de facto technical benchmark for web accessibility is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In litigation, courts have treated WCAG not as the statute itself, but as an appropriate remedial benchmark. In both Robles and Thurston, the courts approved the use of WCAG 2.0 as an equitable remedy if a website or app is found to violate the ADA. As a practical matter, many businesses and consultants now use WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the compliance target.⁷
WCAG is organized around four principles — websites must be:
Perceivable — Information and interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive
Operable — Interface components must be operable by users who cannot use a mouse
Understandable — Content and operation must be understandable
Robust — Content must be interpretable by assistive technologies like screen readers
Common issues that generate litigation include missing or inadequate alt text on images, form fields without labels, videos without captions, color-contrast failures, and websites that cannot be navigated by keyboard alone.
What a Demand Letter Looks Like
Most accessibility claims begin not with a lawsuit but with a demand letter. A typical demand letter will:
Identify the plaintiff, often as an individual who uses assistive technology
List alleged accessibility failures on your website, often with screenshots or URLs
Assert violations of the ADA and California's Unruh Act
Demand a monetary payment and a commitment to remediate
Threaten litigation if you do not respond within a short time frame
These letters can land without warning. Businesses that have never thought about accessibility suddenly face a clock and a dollar figure. The instinct to ignore a demand letter is almost always the wrong move.
Your Options When You Receive a Demand Letter
Do not ignore it. Ignoring a demand letter doesn't make the exposure disappear — it increases the likelihood of a lawsuit and forecloses early resolution.
Do not respond without counsel. What you say in response to a demand letter can affect your litigation exposure, your ability to assert defenses, and your settlement leverage. Engage an attorney before making any written response or payment.
Evaluate the claims. Not every demand letter reflects legitimate, substantial barriers. Some letters are thin on specifics or target technical issues that had minimal real-world impact. A lawyer can help you assess which claims have merit and how to respond strategically.
Consider the remediation timeline. Courts and opposing counsel generally look more favorably on businesses that are actively remediating accessibility issues. A credible remediation plan, undertaken promptly, can be a significant factor in negotiating a resolution.
Understand the economics. Defending an accessibility case through trial is expensive — often more expensive than a negotiated settlement. At the same time, caving immediately to every demand can invite repeat targeting. Strategic response matters.
Proactive Steps: Getting Ahead of the Risk
The far better position is to address accessibility before a demand letter arrives. A few practical steps:
Run an automated scan. Free and low-cost tools like WAVE and Google Lighthouse can identify many common accessibility issues quickly. Automated scans are a starting point, not a finish line.
Engage a manual audit. Thorough accessibility testing requires human review, ideally including testing with actual assistive technologies such as screen readers and keyboard-only navigation.
Publish an Accessibility Statement. An accessibility statement on your website — acknowledging your commitment to accessibility, describing your ongoing efforts, and providing a contact channel for users who encounter barriers — is a sensible best practice.
Build accessibility into your development workflow. If you're redesigning your site or adding features, require accessibility work as part of the project scope. Fixing issues during development is far cheaper than remediating them after the fact.
Document your efforts. If you do face a claim, a documented history of audits, remediation work, and good-faith compliance efforts can help your defense and your negotiating posture.
A Note on Widgets and Overlay Tools
A cottage industry of "accessibility overlay" products — plugins that claim to make any website instantly compliant — has emerged in response to litigation risk. Businesses should be cautious about treating these tools as a substitute for real accessibility work. In litigation, the question is whether disabled users can actually access the relevant goods and services, not whether a widget was installed.² ⁷
The Bottom Line
Website accessibility is not a niche technical compliance issue. It is active litigation risk for many California businesses, especially those whose websites or apps function as gateways to goods and services offered at physical locations. California's Unruh Act is what often turns an ADA accessibility issue into a materially more serious state-law dispute.¹ ² ⁴
The good news is that the risk is manageable with proactive attention. The bad news is that the window for proactive action closes the moment a demand letter hits your inbox.
If you haven't evaluated your website's accessibility, the time to do so is now — before someone else does it for you.
Apricity Law, PC is a boutique transactional law firm based in Truckee, California, serving businesses throughout the Truckee, Lake Tahoe, and Reno tri-market. If you've received a web accessibility demand letter or want to understand your exposure, we're happy to have a conversation. This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. Laws change; consult qualified counsel for advice specific to your situation.
Footnotes
Guillermo Robles v. Dominos Pizza LLC, 913 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2019); Thurston v. Midvale Corporation, 39 Cal.App.5th 634 (Cal. Ct. App. 2019); Munson v. Del Taco, Inc., 46 Cal. 4th 661 (Cal. 2009).
Guillermo Robles v. Dominos Pizza LLC, 913 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2019); Weyer v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 198 F.3d 1104 (9th Cir. 2000); Thurston v. Midvale Corporation, 39 Cal.App.5th 634 (Cal. Ct. App. 2019).
Guillermo Robles v. Dominos Pizza LLC, 913 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2019); Martinez v. Cot'n Wash, Inc., 81 Cal.App.5th 1026 (Cal. Ct. App. 2022).
Munson v. Del Taco, Inc., 46 Cal. 4th 661 (Cal. 2009); Martinez v. Cot'n Wash, Inc., 81 Cal.App.5th 1026 (Cal. Ct. App. 2022).
Thurston v. Midvale Corporation, 39 Cal.App.5th 634 (Cal. Ct. App. 2019); Tafflin v. Levitt, 493 U.S. 455 (1990); Gulf Offshore Co. v. Mobil Oil Corp., 453 U.S. 473 (1981).
Guillermo Robles v. Dominos Pizza LLC, 913 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2019); Thurston v. Midvale Corporation, 39 Cal.App.5th 634 (Cal. Ct. App. 2019).