ADA Lawsuit Trends 2026: Website Filings After a 27% Rise in 2025

Seyfarth Shaw, which tracks ADA Title III litigation, counted 3,117 federal court website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, against 2,452 in 2024, which it reports as "a 27% increase from 2024" (Seyfarth Shaw, ADA Title III blog, 25 March 2026).

That rise ended two years of decline. The 2023 and 2024 dip that made some business owners relax did not last.

Consumer-facing sites take most of it. EcomBack, counting 3,948 ADA website accessibility lawsuits filed in 2025, reports that "the top 9 industries accounted for 3,613 lawsuits (91.51%)", led by restaurant, food and drink at 1,368 (34.65%) and lifestyle, fashion and apparel at 1,025 (25.96%) (EcomBack, 2025 annual report). EcomBack and Seyfarth count different universes, which is why the two totals differ.

The 2026 numbers so far point the same way. The sections below set out what the trackers have counted this year, and the forces behind them.

ADA lawsuit trends in 2026: what the filing numbers show

As of October 2026 there is no full-year count yet, so everything below is a half-year figure or a projection. Each tracker counts something different, and their totals should never be added together.

Source	What it counts	2026 figure
Seyfarth Shaw, 9 September 2026	All federal ADA Title III lawsuits, websites and physical locations	5,006 in the first half of 2026, a 9% increase on the first half of 2025
UsableNet, 8 July 2026	Website and app lawsuits in federal and state courts	A projection of "approximately 6,176 lawsuits for 2026", "a nearly 20% increase over 2025", based on filings through 14 June

Three things stand out in the 2026 data.

• Volume is still rising. UsableNet calls the first half of 2026 "the highest volume of digital accessibility lawsuits we have ever tracked." Seyfarth's 9% rise covers all Title III cases, not only websites, and Seyfarth has not published a separate 2026 website figure yet.
• Filings are moving between courts. UsableNet reports plaintiffs "increasingly favoring state court over federal". Seyfarth counted 485 Title III suits in New York federal courts in the first half of 2026, and says those courts "have applied somewhat more stringent standing standards in website accessibility lawsuits." A smaller federal count in one state does not mean fewer claims there.
• Ecommerce is the main target. UsableNet reports that "79% of lawsuits filed are in eCommerce."

What to tell a client or a manager: filings rose in 2025, the first half of 2026 was higher again on every tracker we cite, and no tracker counts demand letters settled privately. The trend is up, but nobody can give you an exact total for 2026 yet.

AI is making it cheaper to sue

Plaintiffs filing without a lawyer are the clearest signal. Seyfarth reported in October 2025 that pro se plaintiffs filed 1,774 federal ADA Title III lawsuits in all of 2024, against 1,867 in the first nine months of 2025 alone, which on a monthly average is a 40% increase (Seyfarth Shaw, October 2025). Seyfarth's headline describes that growth as "likely powered by AI". Note what that figure is and is not: it is the growth in pro se filings, not the share of all filings.

Someone who cannot use your website no longer needs a lawyer to draft a complaint. That lowers the cost of filing, which is the part that matters for anyone who runs a site. Our guide to AI and pro se ADA website lawsuits goes through the numbers in more detail.

The European Accessibility Act now applies

If you sell to customers in the EU, there is a second set of rules to meet.

Member states apply the European Accessibility Act from 28 June 2025 (Directive (EU) 2019/882, Article 31), and the services it covers include ecommerce (European Commission). The directive does not set the penalties itself: each member state lays down its own, under Article 30, so fines and enforcement differ from country to country.

Unlike the ADA, the EAA lists accessibility requirements in the law itself, and the harmonised standard used to meet them for websites, EN 301 549, includes the WCAG success criteria. Whether a particular business is covered depends on what it sells and its size. Our guide on whether the European Accessibility Act applies to your business walks through the scope, and EN 301 549 v4.1.1 covers the standard.

The Title II deadline moved to 2027, and it changes less than it sounds

The ADA Title II web rule adopted in April 2024 originally required public entities with a population of 50,000 or more to comply by 24 April 2026. That date has moved. On 20 April 2026 the Department of Justice published an Interim Final Rule, effective the same day, titled "Extension of Compliance Dates for Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities". In its own words, "The compliance date for State and local government entities with a total population of 50,000 or more is extended from April 24, 2026, to April 26, 2027. The compliance date for public entities with a total population of less than 50,000, or any special district government, is extended from April 26, 2027, to April 26, 2028" (DOJ Interim Final Rule, Federal Register, and ada.gov, first steps).

Two things did not change. The rule still adopts WCAG 2.1 Level AA as its technical standard, so it remains the first formal federal web accessibility benchmark in the US. And the extension applies to Title II only: it does not touch Title III, which is where private businesses are sued. If you are a private-sector defendant, nothing about your exposure moved by a day.

What the extension really buys is time for public entities, and a longer runway for agencies serving them.

Why does this matter for private businesses? Because a federal rule naming WCAG 2.1 Level AA gives everyone, plaintiffs included, a clear technical benchmark to point to, even though the rule itself covers only state and local government.

Accessibility overlays won't save you

Some businesses think they can drop an overlay widget on their site and call it compliant. The data says otherwise.

EcomBack counted 983 ADA website accessibility lawsuits in 2025 against sites that already had an accessibility widget, out of 3,948 filed, which is 24.90% of the year, up from 722 cases (22.65%) in 2024 (EcomBack, 2025 annual report). Roughly a quarter of defendants had already paid for a product they believed protected them. UsableNet's 2026 midyear report reaches the same view: "the presence of a widget has not proven to be a meaningful deterrent."

In April 2025 the Federal Trade Commission approved a final order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million, and barred the company from claiming its automated product makes a website WCAG compliant (FTC press release).

Overlays don't fix your code. They add a layer on top of broken HTML, and the barriers in the underlying page are still there. Our guide to accessibility overlays and lawsuit risk covers what to do instead.

Where the 2025 federal website lawsuits were filed

Seyfarth's 2025 count puts New York first with 1,021 federal website accessibility lawsuits, Florida "a close second with 961", and Illinois third with 585 after passing Minnesota and Pennsylvania. California's federal courts had only four, because plaintiffs there file in state court (Seyfarth Shaw, March 2026).

That last point matters. Seyfarth notes that its federal numbers do not include "lawsuits filed in state courts", and that many plaintiffs "file in New York and New Jersey state courts instead of federal court." The real total of website lawsuits is higher than 3,117.

And filed complaints are not the whole picture either. Demand letters are settled privately and never reach a docket, so no public count of them exists. That cuts both ways: nobody can tell you how many there are, including anyone who quotes you a number.

The DOJ is watching settlements more closely

On 2 February 2026 the Department of Justice filed a Statement of Interest in Alcazar v. Fashion Nova, opposing a proposed class action settlement over the retailer's website. The Department argued that the deal gave little value to blind consumers while paying class counsel generously, and that the website set up to manage the settlement was itself not accessible to people with vision disabilities (DOJ press release, case page). The court had not ruled on it when the DOJ last updated its case page.

The signal is that a settlement which pays money without fixing the website is now open to challenge. If your site is sued, actual remediation is the part that carries weight.

What this means for your business

If you have never tested your site, start there. Automated failures are common: the 2026 WebAIM Million found that "95.9% of home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures", with an average of 56.1 errors per page (WebAIM Million 2026).

The useful habits are simple. Scan regularly, fix the issues most often named in lawsuits first, and keep dated records of what you fixed and when. Automated scans find many problems but cannot confirm a site conforms to WCAG, so plan some manual testing too. No tool or scan makes a site lawsuit proof.

The most common failures WebAIM found, and where to start:

Low contrast text (83.9% of home pages). Text without enough contrast against its background. It is also one of the easiest things to fix.

Missing alt text (53.1%). Every meaningful image needs a description that a screen reader can announce. Product images, banners, icons: all of them.

Missing form labels (51%). If your checkout form or search bar doesn't have proper labels, screen reader users can't complete purchases. For ecommerce sites, an inaccessible checkout blocks sales as well as people.

Broken keyboard navigation. Automated tools catch only part of this, so test by hand: if someone can't tab through your site and use every element without a mouse, dropdown menus, modal popups and shopping cart flows are the usual failure points.

Next steps

Federal website lawsuits rose 27% in 2025, and every 2026 tracker cited here shows the first half of this year higher again. AI has lowered the cost of filing, the EAA now applies in the EU, overlays have not stopped lawsuits, and the DOJ has challenged a settlement that did not fix the site.

1. Run a free scan of your key pages: home, product or service pages, the contact form and the checkout.
2. Fix contrast, alt text and form labels first, because they are the most common failures.
3. Test the main journeys with a keyboard only.
4. Keep a dated record of every fix.
5. Rescan after each release, so new failures do not undo the work.

Scan your website for free to see which automated failures your pages have today.