ADA website accessibility for businesses

Definition

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits disability discrimination by businesses open to the public, which the law calls public accommodations. The Department of Justice's position is that Title III applies to the goods and services a business offers on the web, and its published guidance says so.

Does it apply to you

• Your business serves the public. DOJ lists restaurants, hotels, shops, gyms and day care centers as examples of public accommodations, and nonprofits that serve the public are included. Religious organizations and private clubs that meet specific requirements are exempt.
• DOJ's web guidance says the ADA's requirements apply to everything a public accommodation offers, including what it offers on the web.
• DOJ has no regulation setting detailed technical standards for business websites. Businesses have flexibility in how they comply, and DOJ names WCAG and the federal government's Section 508 standards as helpful guidance.
• Federal courts differ on whether a business that operates only online, with no physical location, is a public accommodation. The answer can depend on the circuit where a claim is filed.
• State and local governments are covered by Title II. DOJ's 2024 rule adopted WCAG 2.1 Level AA for their web content and mobile apps, with compliance dates of April 26, 2027 for governments serving 50,000 or more people and April 26, 2028 for smaller governments and special districts.

Why it matters

Accessibility barriers can stop customers from using a website and can lead to complaints, demand letters or lawsuits. Technical review finds the barriers so they can be fixed and recorded.

Requirements

• Content that assistive technology can read: text alternatives for images, headings that describe structure, form fields with labels a screen reader announces.
• Operation without a mouse. Every control reachable and usable by keyboard, with a visible indication of what is focused.
• Text that stays legible when someone enlarges it or overrides colors, and contrast sufficient for people with low vision.
• WCAG is the technical standard DOJ's guidance points to, and Title III names no version for businesses. WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the current W3C Recommendation and is the level the industry treats as the target.

Steadwatch's role

• Automated accessibility checks before publication, quarterly manual review and a dated record of findings.
• Contrast is measured for every declared color pairing, at 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for interface boundaries.
• Reusable components support consistent accessibility behavior, while completed pages and content still need testing.

Records you receive

• A dated monthly record naming every route tested, what was checked, and what it found.
• A published accessibility statement describing the standard targeted, the known gaps, and how to report a barrier.
• A per-build artifact, kept and versioned, so the record covers the whole period.

Your responsibilities

• Content you publish through channels we do not run: a PDF emailed to a customer, a third-party booking widget, a social embed.
• Deciding whether to obtain a legal opinion on your own situation. We describe obligations and record what the site does. We are not your lawyer and nothing here is legal advice.
• Reporting a barrier you hit. Automated testing finds a large share of barriers. A person trying to use the site finds the rest, so tell us when something is wrong.