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ADA demand letter: what to do when you get one

Got an ADA demand letter about your website? What it is, what federal and California law say, and the calm steps to take in the first week.

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Pavel Charkasau

An ADA demand letter is a private letter, often from a law firm, saying your website or app has accessibility barriers that violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and asking you to fix them, often with a proposed settlement. It is not a lawsuit and not a court order. If you have just received an ADA demand letter, do four things this week: keep it and don't ignore it, don't pay or promise anything yet, get a lawyer who handles ADA Title III matters (and tell your insurer), and check whether the barriers it describes actually exist on your site.

That last step is the one you can start today. A letter might say your checkout "cannot be completed with a screen reader." Either that is true today or it isn't, and you can find out in an afternoon.

Below: what federal ADA law requires of the sender, what a private plaintiff can ask a court for, California's extra rules, and how to check the technical claims. I am an engineer, not a lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice.

What is an ADA demand letter?

It is a prelitigation letter. The sender says a person with a disability tried to use your site and hit barriers, points to the ADA and often to WCAG, and proposes a way to resolve it before anyone files in court. If you run a business or nonprofit open to the public, the title that applies is usually Title III, which DOJ describes as "Businesses, including nonprofits, that serve the public" (ADA.gov).

A typical letter names a few barriers: missing alt text, unlabeled form fields, a menu you can't open with a keyboard. Some give a page URL and a date. Some read like a template with your company name dropped in.

Demand letters are sent privately, so the public lawsuit counts don't include them. Those counts are high enough on their own: Seyfarth Shaw tallied 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, up 27% from 2024 (Seyfarth ADA Title III). More on why in AI-drafted ADA complaints.

Does the ADA require a demand letter before a lawsuit?

No. Federal law has no notice-and-cure step for Title III. A person can file in federal court without writing to you first. The statute goes further in the other direction: it says nothing in the section requires a person with a disability "to engage in a futile gesture if such person has actual notice" that a covered business "does not intend to comply" (42 U.S.C. § 12188(a)(1), Cornell LII).

Congress has tried to change this. H.R. 620, the ADA Education and Reform Act of 2017, would have added a notice-and-cure period before certain private suits. It passed the House 225–192 on February 15, 2018 and died without a Senate vote (GovTrack; House vote #80).

So a letter is the sender's choice, not a legal prerequisite. It is an opening position, and its response date is the sender's, not a court's.

What should you do in the first week?

Here is the order I would work in. Your lawyer may change it.

  1. Keep everything. The letter, email headers, attachments, and the date it arrived. Keep old versions of the pages it names so you can show what they looked like on the cited dates.
  2. Don't respond on your own. No reply admitting fault, no counter-offer, no payment. Let your lawyer word any reply, including a friendly "we're fixing it" email.
  3. Call a lawyer who has handled website accessibility claims. Ask that question directly.
  4. Tell your insurer or broker. Some business policies cover defense costs for these claims and some don't. Check whether yours requires prompt notice of a claim.
  5. Check the claims on your real site. More on that below. This is the part you can do without waiting for anyone.
  6. Start fixing the real barriers. Agree with your lawyer how to document the fixes, but don't leave a broken checkout broken while letters go back and forth.

What can the sender actually get?

Less than most letters imply, at the federal level. A private plaintiff under Title III gets the remedies in 42 U.S.C. § 2000a-3(a), which is "preventive relief, including an application for a permanent or temporary injunction" (Cornell LII). In plain terms: a court order to fix the site. The ADA also lets a court award the prevailing party "a reasonable attorney's fee, including litigation expenses, and costs" (42 U.S.C. § 12205, Cornell LII).

Money damages and civil penalties exist in the statute, but they belong to cases the Attorney General brings. There, a court may award damages and assess a civil penalty "not exceeding $50,000 for a first violation" and "not exceeding $100,000 for any subsequent violation," with punitive damages excluded (42 U.S.C. § 12188(b), Cornell LII). A private letter quoting those figures is quoting a remedy the sender can't get. I go through the split in more detail in ADA Title II vs Title III.

State law is where the numbers change. In California, Civil Code § 51(f) makes an ADA violation a violation of the Unruh Act, and § 52(a) sets damages at "in no case less than four thousand dollars ($4,000)" (California Legislative Information, § 51; § 52). Where you do business matters, which is one more reason the lawyer call comes early.

Are there special rules for demand letters in California?

Yes, for one category. California regulates attorney demand letters for "construction-related accessibility" claims, which Civil Code § 55.3 defines as claims under a construction-related accessibility standard "with respect to a place of public accommodation" (Civil Code § 55.3). Those rules were written for physical premises; whether a website-only letter is covered is a question for your lawyer.

For letters that are covered, the rules are specific:

  • The letter must give "a plain language explanation of the specific access barrier or barriers," how it interfered with the person's use, and the date or dates it was encountered (§ 55.31(a)) (Civil Code § 55.31).
  • It "shall not include a request or demand for money," and it can't state a specific amount of potential liability (§ 55.31(b)).
  • The attorney must include a State Bar number and send a copy to the California Commission on Disability Access within five business days (§ 55.32(a)) (Civil Code § 55.32).
  • A separate written advisory explaining the recipient's rights must go with the letter (§ 55.3(b)).

Even outside California, that is a fair picture of a well-formed claim: a barrier, a page, a date. Those you can check.

How do you check whether the claimed barriers are real?

Take each barrier in the letter and try to reproduce it on the page and date it names. You are looking for a yes or no per claim, with evidence.

Start with an automated scan of the named pages. A claim like "form fields lack labels" becomes a concrete finding: input#email has no accessible name, which fails WCAG 1.3.1 and 4.1.2. "Low contrast" becomes a measured ratio against the 4.5:1 minimum for normal text. You can scan the page and get the selector for each failure, or check a single color pair with the contrast checker.

Then check what a scanner can't. Automated testing catches roughly 30 to 57% of accessibility issues, depending on the study; Deque's analysis of its own rules landed at 57% (Deque). The rest needs a person. Tab through the checkout with the mouse unplugged. Turn on VoiceOver or NVDA and try to complete the task the letter describes. If a date picker traps focus or an error message is never announced, no scanner will tell you; a keyboard and a screen reader will. The WCAG checklist lists the criteria that need human judgment.

DOJ says the same thing in its own guidance. Automated checkers "need to be used carefully," and "A 'clean' report does not necessarily mean everything is accessible." It recommends "Pairing a manual check of a website with the use of automated checkers" (ADA.gov).

Record each claim as confirmed, not reproduced, or already fixed, with a screenshot and the date. That table is what your lawyer will want; see what accessibility evidence to keep.

Should you install an overlay after a demand letter?

I wouldn't, and I built a company on the opposite approach, so weigh that as you like. An overlay is a script that tries to patch the page in the browser. It doesn't change the source code the letter is about. DOJ's guidance puts overlays in the same bucket as automated checkers: tools to be "used carefully," not proof of accessibility (ADA.gov). The FTC's final order against accessiBe, approved on April 22, 2025, bars the company from claiming its automated products can make any website WCAG-compliant unless it has evidence to back that up (FTC). I wrote up the details in the accessiBe FTC settlement and in whether overlays cause lawsuits.

Fix the code. Label the input. Make the menu open with Enter. Those changes hold up when someone checks.

What should you put in place after the letter is resolved?

A way to catch the next regression first: scheduled scans of checkout, signup and contact pages, a manual keyboard-and-screen-reader pass when those flows change, and a public accessibility statement with a way to report problems. The statement documents your effort. It doesn't guarantee anything, and it shouldn't claim to.

FAQ

Is an ADA demand letter the same as a lawsuit?

No. A demand letter is a private letter sent before any court filing. Nothing has been filed, and no court has found anything. It can lead to a lawsuit if it isn't resolved, which is why you should take it seriously and involve a lawyer early.

Do I have to respond by the date in the letter?

The response date is set by the sender, not by a court. Missing it doesn't carry a legal penalty by itself, but it may affect whether the sender files. Let your lawyer decide how and when to respond rather than replying yourself.

Does fixing the website make the demand letter go away?

Not automatically. Under Title III, a private plaintiff's remedy is an injunction plus possible attorney's fees (Cornell LII). Fixing addresses the core of the claim, but fees and state-law claims can remain.

Can I find out whether the barriers in the letter are real myself?

Yes, and you should. Run an automated scan of the pages named in the letter, then test the same task with a keyboard and a screen reader. A scan catches only part of the issues, so the manual check matters. Record each claim as confirmed, not reproduced, or fixed, with the date.

If a letter mentions a $50,000 penalty, can the sender collect it?

No. Civil penalties of up to $50,000 for a first violation and $100,000 for later ones are in 42 U.S.C. § 12188(b), which covers actions brought by the Attorney General (Cornell LII). A private plaintiff under federal Title III can't collect them. State laws, such as California's Unruh Act, can add damages of their own.

Check the claims before the first call with your lawyer

The most useful thing you can bring to that call is a list of each barrier in the letter with a yes or no next to it. Run a free accessibility scan of the pages the letter names and you'll have the machine-checkable half, with the selector for each failure, in a few minutes. The manual half is on you and a screen reader.

Written by Pavel Charkasau, founder of wcagc.com. I am an engineer, not a lawyer, and this post is not legal advice. It is what I would want to know on the day the letter arrives.

Last updated: September 23, 2026

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