I received an ADA demand letter. What should I do?

Over 4,000 ADA Title III lawsuits were filed in US federal courts in 2024 alone. Demand letters — the letters sent by plaintiff attorneys before filing — are an order of magnitude more common. If one landed in your inbox this morning, you are not alone, and you are not doomed.

This guide covers the first 72 hours. What to do, what to avoid, and how to move from panic to a documented response plan.

What a demand letter actually is

A demand letter is a formal notice from a plaintiff's attorney alleging that your website violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) — specifically, Title III, which governs "places of public accommodation." Since the 2019 Robles v. Domino's decision, US federal courts have consistently held that commercial websites qualify.

The letter will typically:

• Name a blind or low-vision individual as the allegedly aggrieved party.
• List specific WCAG 2.1 AA violations their scanner detected on your site (most commonly: missing alt text, low contrast, non-keyboard-navigable forms).
• Demand a settlement in the $5,000–$50,000 range to avoid litigation.
• Set a deadline — usually 14 to 30 days — to respond.

The goal of the letter is to extract a quick settlement, not to go to court. Plaintiff attorneys file these in volume because each settlement covers fees with minimal effort.

What NOT to do in the first 24 hours

1. Do not ignore it. Silence converts demand letters into filed lawsuits, which are an order of magnitude more expensive to defend.
2. Do not immediately pay the demanded amount. The opening number is almost always negotiable down 40–70% with a credible remediation plan.
3. Do not install an accessibility overlay widget (AccessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye) thinking it "fixes" the problem. Overlays are increasingly cited themselves in ADA lawsuits (see the DOJ's 2023 guidance) and plaintiff attorneys specifically ask whether one is installed — an overlay can make your position worse.
4. Do not email the plaintiff attorney yourself. Any statement you make can be used against you. Route communication through counsel.

What to do in the first 72 hours

Hour 0-24: Evidence baseline

Before you touch your site, document what it looks like now. The plaintiff's scan is their evidence. Your scan, run by you and timestamped, starts your evidence trail.

Run a full WCAG 2.2 AA scan — the specifics don't matter as much as the fact that you have dated output. At minimum you need:

• Total violation count
• Critical / serious / moderate breakdown
• The specific rules that triggered (rule IDs like color-contrast, image-alt, label)
• Timestamp and URL

Hour 24-48: Engage counsel

Find an attorney who has defended ADA Title III cases (not just general tech attorneys). They'll typically respond to the demand letter with a two-part position:

1. We dispute the specific allegations pending our own audit.
2. We have a documented remediation timeline already in motion.

That second point is where your baseline scan comes in. Good-faith remediation is a strong defense under the ADA.

Budget: $2,000–$5,000 in attorney fees for the initial response. Much less than a settlement, and it dramatically shifts the negotiating posture.

Hour 48-72: Start remediation sprint

Focus on the critical and serious violations first — these are the ones that appear in nearly every plaintiff's complaint. Common culprits:

• Missing alt attributes on images. Fix: add descriptive alt text. Empty alt (alt="") is correct for purely decorative images.
• Form inputs without labels. Fix: associate every <input> with a <label for="..."> or an aria-label.
• Low color contrast (below 4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text). Fix: adjust your color palette. Contrast checkers are free everywhere.
• Keyboard traps in modals or custom dropdowns. Fix: ensure Tab moves focus correctly and Esc closes modals.

Don't try to fix everything in a week. A documented plan with a realistic timeline (30–90 days) is defensible. A site that's "perfect" but has no paper trail is not.

Your 30-day defense structure

Week 1: Baseline + counsel + response to demand letter. Week 2: Fix critical violations. Re-scan to verify. Week 3: Fix serious violations. Generate a VPAT 2.4 document (this is a standard accessibility conformance report used in procurement — having one signals a mature compliance posture). Week 4: Publish an accessibility statement on your site. Schedule quarterly re-audits.

At this point, most plaintiff attorneys settle for a nominal amount or drop the matter. The ones who don't are going to trial — and your evidence trail (baseline scan, remediation log, VPAT, accessibility statement) is now the centerpiece of a good-faith defense.

What this costs

| Item | DIY cost | With Accesseon | |---|---|---| | Initial WCAG 2.2 AA scan | Free (axe DevTools browser extension) | Free | | Remediation (fixes) | Developer time — 8–40 hours | AI-generated fix suggestions with before/after code | | VPAT 2.4 document | $2,000–$10,000 (consultant) | $199 one-off | | Accessibility statement | Attorney drafted: $500–$1,500 | Auto-generated from scan | | Ongoing monitoring | $0 (manual) or $500+/mo (enterprise tools) | $99/mo (weekly re-scans + alerts) |

The message isn't "buy Accesseon." The message is: the tooling that used to require a $10K consultant engagement is now available for under $300/month. There's no excuse for not having documented evidence of good-faith remediation.

The long view

ADA demand letters will keep happening. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) takes effect in June 2026 and extends similar obligations to EU markets. Section 508 enforcement is intensifying for federal vendors. Your best long-term position is not "how do I respond to this letter" but "how do I make my site demonstrably compliant, with a paper trail, as part of my development process."

A CI/CD gate that blocks merges with accessibility regressions costs you an hour to set up and saves you the next demand letter entirely.

If you take one thing from this

Document everything, starting today. Your dated scan from right now is worth more than any tool, any statement, any settlement offer. Counsel's job is to turn that documentation into a defense. Your job is to have the documentation.

Run a scan right now. It takes 30 seconds and the results are admissible.