Who Is Liable? Website Accessibility Clauses in Client Contracts

Most website build contracts say nothing about accessibility. That silence is fine right up to the day a client forwards a demand letter and asks what you promised them. At that point, the contract is the only record of who agreed to do what.

This guide covers the four clauses worth having in a build or redesign contract, the points to raise with your lawyer for each one, and the promises you should never put in writing. It is written for anyone who builds sites for other people: freelancers, agencies and in-house teams working for another department.

This is not legal advice. Contract law and disability law differ by country and by state. Use this guide to prepare for a conversation with a lawyer in your client's jurisdiction. That lawyer writes the actual clause.

Where liability actually sits

Start with who the law puts the duty on, because that shapes everything else in the contract.

United States: private businesses

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act says no one may be discriminated against in a place of public accommodation "by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation" (42 U.S.C. 12182(a)). The Department of Justice's guidance on web accessibility says businesses open to the public must make the goods and services they provide online accessible. It also says the Department has no regulation that sets detailed technical standards for them, and it names WCAG as helpful guidance.

Read that plainly: the duty sits with the business that runs the site, which is your client. Whether a builder can also be pulled into a dispute depends on the contract and local law, and that question belongs to a lawyer. What you can control is how clear your own promise was.

United States: state and local government

Public-sector clients are different. The DOJ rule for state and local governments sets WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the standard. The DOJ's first steps page says a public entity "can't contract away its responsibilities under the ADA" and must make sure content a vendor or contractor provides on its behalf meets WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Expect public-sector contracts to name that standard and to pass the requirement on to you.

European Union

The European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) puts the obligation on the "service provider", which Article 3 defines as the person who provides a service in the Union or offers it to consumers there. Article 2 lists the services covered, including e-commerce services and consumer banking services, provided to consumers after 28 June 2025. Article 13 says service providers must design and provide their services to meet the Act's accessibility requirements and have procedures in place so they keep meeting them.

Two parts of the Act affect what you write in a contract:

• Microenterprises providing services are exempt (Article 4(5)). Article 3 defines a microenterprise as one with fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than 2 million euros. Many small clients fall under it, but it does not cover products, and a client that grows past it loses it.
• Disproportionate burden has to be assessed and documented (Article 14). A client who relies on it must write down the assessment and keep it for five years. If your quote or audit feeds that assessment, say so in the contract.

For which standard sits behind the Act today, see our guide to EN 301 549 v4.1.1 and what changed for EU client sites.

Clause 1: the standard of work

"The site will be accessible" is a promise nobody can measure. A usable clause names three things.

1. The standard and version. Name WCAG 2.2 Level AA. W3C says sites that conform to WCAG 2.2 are intended to also conform to WCAG 2.0 and 2.1, so this covers clients whose policy or regulator still points at 2.1.
2. The pages in scope. WCAG says conformance "is defined only for web pages", and a conformance claim has to describe which pages it covers. So list the templates and key journeys you are building (home, product, checkout, contact form) rather than "the website".
3. The point in time. The promise applies to what you hand over, on the date you hand it over. Later changes are covered by clause 4.

A plain-language brief to give your lawyer might read: "We build the templates in Schedule A to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA at handover, tested as described in Schedule B. Content added after handover is the client's responsibility unless a support agreement says otherwise." Your lawyer turns that into contract language.

Clause 2: the three things you do not control

WCAG itself recognises that some content is outside the author's control. Its section on partial conformance for third party content allows a statement that a page "would conform to WCAG 2.2 at level X if the following parts from uncontrolled sources were removed." Your contract should draw the same line around three things.

Content the client supplies

Images, PDFs, videos and copy the client provides or uploads later. You can build a template that asks for alt text, but you cannot write it for a photo you have never seen. For example:

<!-- Broken: client uploaded a product photo and left the alt field empty -->
<img src="/uploads/IMG_4412.jpg">

<!-- Fixed: the template requires alt text, and the client writes it -->
<img src="/uploads/blue-wool-scarf.jpg" alt="Blue wool scarf, folded">

Say who writes alt text, captions and document tagging, and whether you train the client to do it. Our alt text checker is a quick way to show a client what a missing description looks like.

Third-party embeds and services

Payment widgets, booking tools, chat bubbles, maps and cookie banners. Name them in the contract, say they are supplied by others, and agree what happens when one fails: you report it, the client decides whether to replace it.

Plugins, themes and the platform

On WordPress, Shopify and similar platforms, an update to a theme or plugin can undo your work overnight. Our guide to WordPress accessibility issues and fixes shows where these problems usually come from. The contract should say which ones you chose and tested, and that later updates are covered under clause 4.

Clause 3: how the work is tested and accepted

A standard with no test is an argument waiting to happen. Agree in writing how you will check the work before handover.

• Automated checks on every page in scope, with the report attached to the handover. You can run a free accessibility scan on any page to see what one looks like.
• Manual checks that tools cannot do, at least a keyboard pass through every journey in scope. Our guide on how to test keyboard accessibility by hand is a pass you can describe in a schedule, and the keyboard and focus checker covers the parts a machine can see.
• What counts as done. For example: no open failures of Level A or AA criteria on the listed pages at handover, apart from items in clause 2.

Be honest in the contract about what automated testing can do. W3C's page on selecting evaluation tools says tools "can not determine accessibility, they can only assist in doing so." A scan report, including one from AccessGuard, is evidence of the checks you ran, not proof of conformance. For the full process, see how to audit a website for accessibility.

Clause 4: who owns accessibility after handover

Every new page, product photo and plugin update can introduce a failure. Under the EAA, Article 13 expects service providers to have procedures so that their service stays accessible as it changes. Somebody has to own that, and the contract should say who.

There are two honest options:

• Handover. The client owns it from the handover date. You provide documentation and a short training session for their content editors, and the contract says so.
• Retainer. You keep checking and fixing on an agreed schedule, for an agreed fee. Define what is checked, how often, how fast you respond to a new failure and what counts as extra work.

If you choose a retainer, tools can carry the routine part. AccessGuard's paid plans rescan the pages you add to a site daily, weekly or monthly, and alert you to new failures and score drops, so you can report what changed since the last check. Monitoring covers only the pages you add, so match that list to the pages in your contract. Our page for agencies shows how it fits client work.

What never to put in writing

• "Fully compliant" or "ADA compliant". No scan, including ours, can confirm conformance, and W3C says tools can only assist in judging accessibility.
• "Lawsuit proof" or a promise of no claims. You cannot control who files a claim or on what grounds.
• An open-ended guarantee over content you do not control. Clause 2 exists to stop this.
• A widget as the fix. In April 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission finalised an order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims about what its product could do. Our guide on accessibility overlays and lawsuit risk covers why an overlay is not a remediation plan.

Also be careful with indemnities. A client's standard terms may ask you to cover any claim related to the site. Show that clause to your lawyer before you sign it.

What to say to the client

Most clients have never thought about this, so keep it short and factual:

• "The law puts accessibility on the business that runs the site, so we want the contract to be clear about what we deliver."
• "We build to WCAG 2.2 AA, the web accessibility standard published by W3C, and test the pages in scope before handover."
• "Content you add later, and tools from other companies, can break it. Here is who looks after that, and what it costs if it is us."

Checklist before you sign

• The contract names WCAG 2.2 Level AA, not "accessible" or "compliant".
• A schedule lists the pages and journeys in scope.
• Client content, third-party embeds and platform updates are listed as outside your control.
• The acceptance test names both automated and manual checks, and the report is part of the handover.
• Ownership after handover is stated: the client, or you under a retainer with defined scope.
• No guarantee of compliance or of no lawsuits appears anywhere, including in your proposal and marketing.
• A lawyer in the client's jurisdiction has reviewed the accessibility and indemnity clauses.

Before the next proposal goes out, scan the client's current home page. It gives you a factual starting point for the conversation and a baseline for the pages you are about to take on.