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How The ADA Compliance Scanner Works
Our ADA compliance scanner is a free tool that grades your website against the WCAG 2.1 AA standard, which is the same standard cited in just about every federal ADA Title III lawsuit filed in the United States. Drop in a URL and we'll pull down the public HTML, run a 20 point inspection on it, and hand you back a 0 to 100 score with a clear pass/fail breakdown for each check. You'll know in about 30 seconds where you're solid, where you're exposed, and what to fix first.
This isn't one of those single-attribute checkers that just tells you whether you have an alt tag somewhere. We look at how your images are described, how your forms are labeled, how your page is structured, whether keyboard users can actually navigate it, whether your headings are in a sensible order, and whether your document declares its language. Every check is tied back to a specific WCAG 2.1 success criterion so you (or your developer) know exactly which rule applies and where to start.
Why ADA Website Compliance Matters in 2026
ADA website lawsuits used to be a niche legal issue. Now they're one of the fastest-growing types of business litigation in the country. Public litigation tracking shows over 4,600 federal ADA Title III digital lawsuits filed in 2024 alone, and that number doesn't include the thousands of demand letters that get settled quietly before anyone files anything. The activity is heaviest in New York, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas, but no state is immune. A handful of plaintiffs and their attorneys file these suits in waves, often dozens at a time, and they don't care if you're a Fortune 500 company or a local florist.
The money adds up fast. A typical demand letter resolves somewhere between $5,000 and $25,000 once you tally up plaintiff's legal fees, your own attorney's fees, and the cost of fixing the site. Cases that actually go to court can hit six figures. And here's the part most business owners don't realize: even after you settle, you still have to fix the site anyway. The lawsuit is just the cover charge. Businesses that get out in front of this and document an active accessibility program tend to either avoid demand letters entirely or settle them for a fraction of what an unprepared defendant pays.
There's also a customer side to this. The CDC says roughly 1 in 4 American adults, around 61 million people, live with some kind of disability. About 32 million of them have vision impairment, more than 37 million have hearing difficulties, and millions more have motor or cognitive limitations. When your site doesn't work for them, you're not just exposed legally. You're locking out a huge slice of your potential customer base, plus their friends and family who often help make purchase decisions on their behalf. ADA compliance is a customer service issue and a revenue issue at least as much as it's a legal one.
What This Scanner Actually Checks
The scanner runs through 20 specific checks, organized under the four core WCAG ideas: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. Here's what each one covers in plain English.
Perceivable: Can users actually receive the information?
This category is about whether users can see, hear, or otherwise pick up on what's on your page. We check every <img> tag for an alt attribute since screen readers depend on those to tell a blind user what an image is showing. We flag decorative images that are mistakenly marked as informative and informative ones marked as decorative. We also confirm your page has a single <h1>, that your headings descend in a logical order without skipping levels, and that your <html> tag declares its language so screen readers know which pronunciation engine to use.
For media, we look at <video> and <audio> elements and check whether you've included a captions track. We also surface common color contrast risk patterns. We can't measure pixel-perfect rendered contrast from a remote scan, but we can flag inline styles and class combinations that almost always result in low-contrast text, so you know where to do a manual review.
Operable: Can users navigate and interact?
This is all about keyboard accessibility. The basic rule: anything a mouse user can click, a keyboard user has to be able to reach with Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, and Space. We check that links and buttons have actual descriptive text. Stuff like "click here" or an image-only button with no aria-label gets flagged. We look for skip-to-content links near the top of the document so keyboard and screen reader users can jump past your nav. We flag any element with a tabindex greater than zero (those create unpredictable focus orders) and we look for evidence that you've kept your focus styles intact.
Tap target size is another big one under WCAG 2.5.5. Buttons and links smaller than 44x44 CSS pixels are nearly impossible to use for someone with a motor impairment or a tremor. We can't measure rendered size from a remote fetch, but we surface the patterns that usually lead to small targets, like icon-only buttons with tight padding or jam-packed inline link clusters.
Understandable: Is the content predictable and helpful?
This category is about whether people can actually figure out how to use your site. We confirm that every form field has a real label attached to it, that your submit buttons say something meaningful, and that error messages are properly tied to their fields with aria-describedby or similar. We check that the <title> tag is present, descriptive, and unique. A bad page title is one of the most common WCAG 2.4.2 failures and one of the easiest to fix.
We also flag content that auto-refreshes or auto-redirects since that can completely disorient someone with a cognitive disability. WCAG 2.2.1 requires either a way to pause or extend timeouts, or a default behavior that doesn't trap users in a loop they can't escape.
Robust: Will assistive technology actually work?
This category covers whether your site plays nicely with assistive tech, especially screen readers. We look at your ARIA usage, your landmark regions (<nav>, <main>, <header>, <footer>), and the overall structure of your document. We flag duplicate IDs, ARIA roles that don't make sense, and missing landmarks. We check that your data tables use <th> with proper scope attributes, that iframes have meaningful title attributes, and that you've published an accessibility statement somewhere on your site. That last one is a big indicator of a mature compliance program and it's something plaintiff attorneys look for.
Common ADA Website Violations We Find Every Day
After running thousands of these scans on real client and prospect sites, the same handful of failures show up over and over. If you're a business owner, marketing director, or developer, learning to spot these in your own site is the first step to getting your legal exposure under control. Here's the short list of the worst offenders, ranked by how often we see them and how much trouble they cause in lawsuits.
Missing or Inadequate Alt Text on Images
This is the number one issue cited in ADA website complaints, hands down. When a photo, infographic, or product image has no alt attribute, a screen reader either says nothing or reads out the raw filename like "IMG_2049_final_v3.jpg." For an e-commerce site, missing alt text on product photos basically makes your store unusable to a blind shopper, and that's exactly the fact pattern most plaintiffs build their cases around. The fix is simple: every meaningful image needs a short, accurate alt attribute, and decorative images need alt="" so screen readers know to skip them.
Insufficient Color Contrast
WCAG 2.1 AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text and UI components. Light gray text on white, washed-out brand colors over tinted backgrounds, and low-contrast hero overlays are the usual suspects. The thing is, low-contrast text isn't just bad for users with low vision or color blindness. It's also bad for everyone trying to read your site on a phone in bright sunlight. Color contrast issues are easy to find with browser dev tools and easy to fix in CSS, which makes them a quick win for both compliance and general usability.
Forms Without Proper Labels
Contact forms, search forms, login forms, and checkout flows are some of the most heavily targeted parts of any website. When a form input doesn't have a real label tied to it, screen readers can't tell the user what the field is for. Placeholder text alone won't cut it. Placeholders disappear the moment the user starts typing, and a lot of screen readers don't read them at all. Every input needs either a visible <label for="..."> or, in the rare case where you really can't use a visible label, an aria-label or aria-labelledby.
Keyboard Inaccessibility
If a sighted mouse user can click it, a keyboard user has to be able to reach and activate it with Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, and Space. Custom dropdown menus, modal dialogs, image carousels, and "click anywhere to close" overlays are notorious for breaking this. Easy test: unplug your mouse and try to use your own homepage. If you get stuck somewhere, focus disappears, a menu won't open, or a modal traps you, then keyboard-only users are stuck in the same place. That's a direct WCAG 2.1.1 violation.
Missing or Broken Focus Indicators
WCAG 2.4.7 requires a visible focus indicator on every keyboard-focusable element. A lot of websites, especially ones built from older themes or "designer-friendly" templates, use CSS that strips the default browser outline (outline: none) without putting anything back in its place. Now a keyboard user has no idea where they are on the page. That single CSS line is responsible for a huge chunk of accessibility complaints, and it's trivial to fix by replacing the missing outline with a high-contrast custom focus style.
Improper Heading Structure
Screen reader users skim pages by jumping from heading to heading the same way sighted users skim by visual hierarchy. A well-built page has exactly one <h1>, with <h2> sections under it, <h3> subsections under those, and so on. Common screw-ups include skipping levels (going straight from <h1> to <h4>), using heading tags purely to make text bigger instead of to mark structure, and having either zero or multiple <h1> tags. Our scanner flags all of these.
Inaccessible Video Content
Video without captions or transcripts is an obvious problem for users who are deaf or hard of hearing, and it's a real annoyance for anyone watching with the sound off. YouTube and Vimeo embeds usually offer auto-captions, but auto-captions are often inaccurate enough to fail WCAG 1.2.2, which requires accurate captions for prerecorded media. Self-hosted video with no <track> element at all is an even more direct failure.
WCAG 2.1 vs WCAG 2.2 vs Section 508: What Standard Should You Target?
The accessibility world has a few overlapping standards, and it's worth knowing which one applies to you so you're aiming at the right target.
WCAG 2.1 AA: The Practical U.S. Legal Standard
WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the standard cited in almost every U.S. ADA Title III website lawsuit, and it's the standard the DOJ adopted in its 2024 final rule for state and local government websites. If you're a private business, this is the one to aim for. WCAG 2.1 AA covers 50 specific success criteria including alt text, color contrast, form labels, keyboard access, and a lot more. Our scanner is built around these.
WCAG 2.2: The Newer Standard
WCAG 2.2 was finalized by the W3C in October 2023. It adds nine new success criteria on top of 2.1, mostly focused on improvements for users with cognitive and motor disabilities. Highlights include minimum tap target sizes, more predictable focus appearance, and less reliance on memory-based authentication. Right now WCAG 2.2 isn't being widely cited in U.S. lawsuits yet, but it's clearly where things are headed. Forward-thinking businesses are already targeting 2.2 AA so they're not playing catch-up when the legal standard moves.
Section 508: Federal Government Standard
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act covers federal agencies and federal contractors. The Section 508 Refresh harmonized the standard with WCAG 2.0 AA, so if you hit WCAG 2.1 AA you've already gone past what Section 508 requires. If you sell to federal customers or work on federal contracts, your site has to meet Section 508, and our scanner's findings translate directly.
EN 301 549: The European Standard
EN 301 549 is the European accessibility standard, and it's now a regulatory requirement under the European Accessibility Act (EAA) which took effect for private-sector websites and digital products in 2025. It's based heavily on WCAG 2.1 AA with some extra provisions for hardware and non-web software. If you sell into the EU, EAA compliance isn't optional anymore, and the scanner's WCAG-based findings cover most of what you need.
What An ADA Compliance Audit Looks Like
Running our free scanner is the first step. A full professional ADA / WCAG 2.1 AA audit from us goes way beyond what any automated tool can do, and we run it in five phases.
Phase 1: Automated Baseline Scan
We start with the same kind of automated scanning the free tool does, but expanded across every page (or every page template) on your site. This catches the easy 30 to 57 percent of issues that automated tools can reliably find: missing alt text, empty form labels, broken HTML structure, ARIA mistakes, and the rest of the code-level stuff. The output is a master spreadsheet keyed to specific URLs and specific WCAG criteria.
Phase 2: Manual Code Review
Then one of our accessibility specialists goes through the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on representative pages by hand. That includes the homepage, your top landing pages, contact forms, checkout flows, and any custom interactive components. This catches stuff automated tools always miss. Things like ARIA roles that exist but are applied incorrectly, focus traps inside modals, misuse of the presentation role, and JavaScript that doesn't follow the WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices.
Phase 3: Assistive Technology Testing
Next we test the site with real assistive technology. We use NVDA on Windows, VoiceOver on macOS and iOS, JAWS on Windows, and TalkBack on Android. The tester actually navigates your site using screen reader keyboard commands, fills out forms, completes purchases, and accesses content the way an actual user with disabilities would. This phase finds interaction problems that no static code scan can catch.
Phase 4: Remediation Planning
All the findings get rolled into a remediation plan that prioritizes issues by severity, lawsuit risk, and how much effort it takes to fix them. High-impact, low-effort fixes go first. Bigger or design-impacting changes get batched into a longer roadmap. Every finding includes the WCAG criterion it violates, the URLs affected, the recommended fix, and an effort estimate.
Phase 5: Implementation & Verification
We do the actual remediation work according to the plan, then re-run both the automated and manual tests to confirm everything is fixed. You get a final conformance report and, where it makes sense, we'll help you write and publish an accessibility statement that documents your conformance level, gives users a way to report accessibility issues, and shows your ongoing maintenance commitment.
Why AldoMedia Is Buffalo's Choice For ADA Compliance
AldoMedia has been building, optimizing, and maintaining websites for businesses in Buffalo, Amherst, Williamsville, the rest of WNY, and clients across the country since 1999. Our approach to ADA compliance is developer-first. We don't slap a widget on top of your site and call it done. We fix the underlying HTML, CSS, ARIA, and content, the way an in-house accessibility engineering team would.
Because we also build, host, and maintain custom PHP, WordPress, and Shopify sites in-house, we can do the remediation work directly on your codebase instead of writing a report and walking away. For ongoing protection, our managed accessibility plans include scheduled re-scans, content review on new pages and blog posts, and rapid response if a demand letter or accessibility complaint shows up. We stay on top of the moving parts too: WCAG 2.2, the European Accessibility Act, the DOJ's 2024 Title II rule, and the steady stream of federal court rulings that shape what "ADA compliance" actually means in practice.
Local Expertise, National Coverage
We're proudly based in Buffalo, NY, but our audit and remediation work runs remotely for clients in all 50 states and Canada. Whether you're a Western New York retailer worried about a serial-plaintiff filing locally, an e-commerce brand getting demand letters from out-of-state firms, or a healthcare practice juggling ADA and HIPAA at the same time, we've handled the situation and we have the workflow ready to go.
A lot of our clients first reach out to us not because they were planning an accessibility upgrade, but because a demand letter or lawsuit just hit their inbox. We treat those situations with real urgency. The typical cycle is a fast triage scan in the first 24 to 48 hours, a remediation roadmap within a week, and substantial conformance achieved within four to six weeks for typical brochure or e-commerce sites. We coordinate directly with your legal counsel, document every change for the case file, and produce the kind of conformance evidence courts and plaintiffs expect to see.
Industries We Specialize In
Some industries face higher ADA risk because of the customers they serve, the regulators that watch them, or the volume of digital transactions they process. We have deep experience with retail and e-commerce, healthcare and medical practices, hospitality (hotels, restaurants, event venues), legal and financial services, education and nonprofits, and government contractors. Each of these has its own accessibility wrinkles. Healthcare sites have to think about patient-portal accessibility under both the ADA and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. Financial sites get scrutinized under both ADA rules and federal banking regulator guidance. We know the playbook for each one.
What Comes Bundled With Remediation
Every remediation engagement we do includes a lot more than just the code fixes. You get a published Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) or Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) that documents your conformance level, an accessibility statement page tailored to your business that you can publish on your site, training materials for your content team so future blog posts and product additions stay compliant, and a documentation packet your legal team can hand to opposing counsel if a demand letter ever shows up. That documentation is often the single most useful piece of evidence for getting a serial-plaintiff complaint shut down quickly.
Frequently Asked Questions About ADA Website Compliance
What is ADA compliance for websites?
ADA compliance for websites means your site can actually be used by people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn't spell out specific technical rules for the web, but courts and the Department of Justice both point to WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the standard they expect you to meet. In practice that means a blind shopper using a screen reader, a deaf customer watching a video, or someone with a motor disability who can only use a keyboard should be able to do everything on your site that a sighted mouse user can.
Is my business required to have an ADA-compliant website?
Probably yes. If you run a retail store, restaurant, hotel, medical practice, financial business, school, or pretty much any kind of public-facing service, federal courts have repeatedly ruled that your website is covered by ADA Title III. State and local government sites fall under Title II, and the DOJ's 2024 rule requires those to hit WCAG 2.1 AA by 2026 or 2027 depending on size. Plenty of small mom-and-pop businesses have been sued too, so size doesn't protect you.
What is WCAG 2.1 and why does it matter?
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. They're written by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and version 2.1 has 78 specific rules grouped under four ideas: content has to be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. There are three conformance levels (A, AA, AAA) and AA is the one that actually matters legally in the United States. Almost every ADA website lawsuit cites WCAG 2.1 AA, which is exactly what our scanner is built to check.
Can my business be sued for an inaccessible website?
Yes, and it's happening more every year. Over 4,600 federal ADA Title III digital lawsuits were filed in 2024, and that's just the ones that became formal lawsuits. Thousands more get settled quietly through demand letters before they ever hit a courtroom. The targets aren't just big companies. Small shops with simple brochure sites get hit too. Most settlements land somewhere between $5,000 and $50,000 once you add up legal fees and remediation costs, and serial plaintiffs often file dozens of suits at a time. Having a documented accessibility effort already in place is one of the best defenses you can have.
What are the most common ADA violations on websites?
Same handful of issues come up over and over in lawsuits: missing alt text on images, low color contrast, links and buttons that don't say what they actually do, forms without proper labels or error messages, content you can't reach using just a keyboard, videos without captions, broken or missing heading structure, and no accessibility statement on the site. Our 20 point scanner is built to catch these exact issues because they're what plaintiffs go after first.
Does an accessibility overlay or widget make my site ADA compliant?
No, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Overlay widgets are third-party scripts that claim to fix accessibility automatically by laying a toolbar on top of your site. The DOJ, the National Federation of the Blind, and a long list of plaintiff law firms have all said overlays don't make a site compliant. In fact, businesses using them have been sued specifically because of it. Real compliance means fixing the underlying HTML, CSS, and content. An overlay can be useful as an extra tool, never as a replacement for the real work.
How does the AldoMedia ADA compliance scanner work?
You give us a URL and we pull down the publicly available HTML of that page. Then we run it through a 20 point inspection that looks at things like alt attributes on images, form labels, heading order, color contrast warning patterns, ARIA roles, focus indicators, language declaration, page structure, link text quality, and more. The whole thing usually takes about 30 seconds. You get a 0 to 100 score, a list of what passed and what didn't, and a clear next step. It's free, there's nothing to install, and it doesn't touch your site in any harmful way.
Will the scanner catch every accessibility issue on my site?
No automated tool catches everything. Research consistently shows automated testing finds somewhere between 30 and 57 percent of WCAG issues. What our scanner does catch is the high-risk, frequently-cited stuff that drives most lawsuits. For full conformance you also need manual testing with real screen readers and keyboard-only navigation, and ideally testing with actual users who have disabilities. We offer that as a follow-up service for clients who need certified-level conformance.
How much does it cost to make a website ADA compliant?
Depends on how big the site is, how broken it is, and what it's built on. A typical brochure site with a handful of pages usually runs $1,500 to $4,500 to bring into solid WCAG 2.1 AA shape. Bigger sites with e-commerce, custom functionality, or hundreds of pages can run $5,000 to $25,000 or more. We offer fixed-fee remediation packages and ongoing accessibility maintenance plans, both of which are way cheaper than the average lawsuit settlement.
What happens after I run the scan?
You'll see your score, what you're doing well, and a prioritized list of what's broken. From there you can ask us for a full manual audit and remediation quote. We'll go through the automated findings, run hands-on testing with screen readers and keyboard navigation, and put together a complete report with a fixed price to fix everything. A lot of our clients also pair remediation with our ongoing maintenance plan so they stay protected as their content changes.
Ready To Lock Down Your ADA Compliance?
The free scan above is the starting point. From there we handle full WCAG 2.1 AA audits, fixed-price remediation, accessibility statements, and ongoing maintenance plans that keep your site protected as your content changes. We work with Buffalo NY clients and businesses across the country.
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