ADA and Unruh Act Website Accessibility Claims Against California Businesses

Why these claims work

Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation, and courts have applied it to websites, most reliably where the site connects to a physical location. The ADA itself provides only injunctive relief and fees — but Unruh adopts ADA violations as violations of California law and attaches statutory damages, which is what makes the letters economically worthwhile to send.

There is no federal regulation specifying technical standards for private websites, so the practical benchmark courts and settlements use is WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

What the scans typically flag

• Images without meaningful alternative text.
• Form fields without programmatic labels, especially in checkout and contact flows.
• Insufficient color contrast on text and interactive elements.
• Keyboard traps and content that cannot be reached without a mouse.
• Missing focus indicators and skip-navigation links.
• Modals, carousels, and menus that do not announce state to screen readers.
• Video without captions and PDFs that are untagged images.

Responding to a demand letter

• Preserve the site as it existed, including a copy of the current build, before remediating.
• Do not contact the claimant directly, and do not admit a violation in early correspondence.
• Commission an audit combining automated scanning with manual screen reader testing — automated tools catch a minority of real barriers.
• Evaluate whether the claimant is a serial filer and whether California's high-frequency litigant provisions apply.
• Build a remediation plan with dates; a credible plan is the primary lever in settlement, because injunctive relief is what the statute is nominally about.
• Check whether an accessibility overlay widget is in use — overlays are frequently alleged to be inadequate and are not a defense.

Reducing the risk before a letter arrives

Adopt WCAG 2.1 AA as the internal standard, test with real assistive technology at each significant release, add accessibility requirements to vendor and agency contracts, publish an accessibility statement with a contact path, and train the people who publish content — most regressions come from new content, not the original build.

Rainey Law P.C. defends ADA and Unruh accessibility claims for California businesses and reviews digital properties before the demand letters start.