Most small business owners find out about web accessibility the hard way. A demand letter arrives claiming their website can’t be used by people with disabilities, along with a request for a few thousand dollars to make the problem go away. It happens to restaurants, dental offices, boutiques and contractors every week, and California is one of the busiest states for these claims.
If you serve the public, the ADA very likely covers your website. The fixes are usually straightforward, and they make the site easier to use for every visitor, not only those with a disability.
What ADA compliance means for a website
The Americans with Disabilities Act was written in 1990, before business websites existed, so it never spells out technical rules for them. Courts and the Department of Justice have filled that gap. The DOJ has said publicly that businesses open to the public need accessible websites, and when cases go to court, judges almost always measure a site against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at level AA.
In practice, your site should work for someone who:
- Uses a screen reader because they are blind or have low vision
- Navigates with a keyboard instead of a mouse
- Needs larger text or stronger color contrast
- Is deaf or hard of hearing and relies on captions
Why California businesses should pay extra attention
California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act lets plaintiffs claim a minimum of $4,000 in statutory damages per violation, plus attorney fees. That makes California websites an attractive target, and a large share of the country’s web accessibility lawsuits are filed in California and New York.
Many of these claims go after small businesses rather than big brands, because small sites tend to have obvious problems and their owners rarely fight back. Settling one claim often costs more than fixing the website would have.
The most common problems we find
WebAIM’s yearly review of the top one million home pages keeps finding detectable accessibility errors on roughly 95 percent of them. The same few issues show up again and again:
- Low color contrast. Light gray text on a white background looks modern, but many people struggle to read it.
- Missing image descriptions. Without alt text, product photos and image buttons are silent to screen reader users.
- Empty links and buttons. An icon with no label is read out as “button,” with no clue what it does.
- Forms without labels. Placeholder text that disappears once you start typing doesn’t count as a label.
- Keyboard traps. Menus, pop-ups and sliders that can’t be reached or closed without a mouse.
- Videos without captions.
A self-check you can do today
You don’t need special software to get a first read on your site:
- Tab through every page. Can you reach every link, button and form field, and can you always see where you are?
- Zoom to 200 percent. Does the text still fit, or does the layout fall apart?
- Check your images. Does each important one have alt text that actually describes it?
- Test contrast. Free tools like the WebAIM Contrast Checker tell you in seconds whether text is too faint.
- Fill out your contact form with only the keyboard, and see whether errors are announced clearly.
If two or three of these trip you up, a proper audit is worth the time.
Be careful with accessibility overlays
You’ll see ads for widgets that promise compliance with one line of code. They add a toolbar on top of your site but leave the underlying code as it was, and plenty of lawsuits have been filed against sites that already had one installed. Several disability advocacy groups openly oppose them. The fixes have to go into the site’s design and code.
How to fix it properly
For most small business sites, reaching a solid WCAG 2.2 AA baseline comes down to a short list:
- Pick a color palette with enough contrast from the start
- Write alt text for every meaningful image
- Use real headings in the right order, so each page has a clear outline
- Label every form field and button
- Make menus and pop-ups work with a keyboard
- Caption your videos
- Publish an accessibility statement with a way for people to report problems
This work also helps your SEO. Clear headings, descriptive alt text and clean structure are what Google and AI search tools rely on to understand a page, so the same changes that lower your legal risk make the site easier to find.
Where to start
ADA website claims aren’t slowing down, and California makes them expensive. We build accessibility into every site we design, from the first color choices to keyboard testing before launch.
For a quick read on where your site stands, run our free website audit, then get in touch if you want a full accessibility review and a fix list.