Originally published May 2025. Updated May 5, 2026.
If you’ve spent any time around small business owners lately, you’ve probably heard the same anxious question:
“Is my website going to get me sued?”
It’s a fair question. Web accessibility lawsuits are climbing. Demand letters are getting automated. And most owners have never had a real conversation about what ADA compliance actually means for the site they paid someone to build.
We’ve been thinking about this a lot. Building it into every site we ship. Advising clients who get scary letters in the mail. Watching the legal landscape shift year over year. So when our friends at Physician Side Gigs asked us to write the definitive guide for their physician community, we said yes.
That guide is here, and it’s the most thorough piece we’ve put our name on:
→ ADA Compliance and the Future of Your Website: What to Know About Accessibility
It was written for physicians, but every word applies to any business owner with a website. Below is the short version, with our take layered on top.
What ADA Compliance Means for Websites
The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed in 1990, written for physical spaces. Over the last decade, courts have applied it to the digital world too. That includes your website.
In practice, it means people with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities can use your site the same way everyone else can. Navigate it. Read it. Fill out forms. Get in touch.
The standard most courts reference is WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium. The current benchmark is WCAG 2.1 or 2.2, Level AA. Our PSG guide breaks down what that actually looks like in plain English.
Why This Is a Bigger Deal Now Than It Used to Be
A few things have converged in the last couple years.
Automated scanning is everywhere. Bots crawl the internet flagging WCAG violations. Attorneys use those reports to send demand letters at scale. It’s a system, and it doesn’t care how small your business is.
ADA Title II expanded in 2024. The Department of Justice published a final rule requiring state and local government websites to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Title II applies to public entities, but the direction it points is clear.
Lawsuits keep climbing. Real businesses, including small ones, get real legal paperwork. Most cases settle. Settlements still cost money, and so do the legal fees.
None of this is meant to scare you. It’s meant to help you get ahead of it.
The Risks of Ignoring It
If your site doesn’t meet accessibility standards, you’re exposed in three ways.
Legal exposure. ADA-related web lawsuits have been climbing year over year. Even when cases settle, the cost adds up.
Lost customers. Roughly 1 in 4 U.S. adults lives with a disability. If your site doesn’t work for them, they go somewhere that does.
Search ranking impact. Google rewards sites that are well-structured, semantic, and accessible. Poor accessibility tends to correlate with poor SEO, because the same things that help screen readers help search crawlers.
Where ARTILLERY Lands on This
A few things we want our clients and prospective clients to know, in plain English.
One. Accessibility is built into how we build.
The expensive remediation projects are almost always older sites, DIY builds, or themes that ignored accessibility from day one. When a site is built right from the start, most of the heavy lifting is already done. Heading structure, alt text discipline, keyboard navigation, color contrast, labeled forms. Those are baseline, not upgrades.
Two. We recommend UserWay.
Accessibility widgets are not a fix for a poorly built site. They’re a layer on top. Used the right way, they help. Font scaling, contrast modes, cursor adjustments, and a visible signal to bots and scanners that you take this seriously. UserWay is free, widely trusted, and we install it for clients who want the extra layer. We’re happy to set it up.
Three. The bones matter more than the badge.
If your forms aren’t labeled, your PDFs are inaccessible, or your navigation breaks for keyboard users, no widget will save you. The work has to happen at the code level. Good news: most of it is manageable, and a lot of it can be done in a focused pass instead of a full rebuild.
Four. Documents are the blind spot.
Intake forms. Handouts. Sponsor decks. Patient packets. PDFs are where almost every site falls short. If you have downloadable documents on your site, they need attention too.
What an Accessible Site Actually Includes (Divi or Otherwise)
Most of our clients are on Divi, but the principles apply to any well-built site. Here’s the working list we use on every build:
- A “skip to content” link for keyboard and screen reader users
- Visible focus outlines for keyboard navigation
- Proper heading structure (one H1, logical H2s and H3s)
- ARIA roles applied where they matter
- Alt text on every meaningful image
- Legible fonts at readable sizes
- Sufficient color contrast (4.5:1 for body text, 3:1 for large text)
- Form fields that are labeled and screen-reader friendly
- Descriptive link text instead of “click here”
- Accessible PDFs and downloadable documents
- Captions and transcripts on video and audio
- Modules and components that work without a mouse
Most of these we do by default. The rest we layer in with the right plugins or manual cleanup.
The Tools We’ve Tested
Three options come up most often. Here’s the short version.
$84 Accessibility Bundle (Divi-specific). Adds skip links, font scaling, ARIA tweaks, and more. Solid pick if you’re staying inside the Divi ecosystem.
Divi Assistant. Keyboard focus, alt-text prompts, ARIA roles, visual indicators. Good structural support during the build process.
⭐ UserWay (recommended). One of the most widely used accessibility overlays on the web. Free. Recognizable. Actively maintained. Adds a floating menu for font size, contrast, spacing, and more. Trusted by sites in healthcare, legal, and education. UserWay also provides an accessibility statement that helps signal compliance to bots and scanners. See it live on elaca.org.
If you’re going to add a widget anyway, we’d rather have you on the one most people trust.
What to Do This Week
If you want a starting point before reading the full PSG guide:
- Run your site through WAVE for a free baseline scan.
- Install UserWay if you don’t already have an accessibility widget.
- Ask whoever manages your website about heading structure, alt text, and keyboard navigation. Their answer tells you a lot.
- Look at your PDFs. They probably need work.
- Treat accessibility as a habit, not a project. Every page, image, and video you add is an accessibility decision.
Final Thought
ADA compliance is about more than avoiding a lawsuit, though that matters. It’s about making sure every person who finds you online can actually use what you’ve built. Roughly 1 in 4 U.S. adults has a disability. Some of them are your customers. Some want to be.
The good news: most of this is completely manageable. A well-built site, a trusted accessibility widget, and a team that understands the basics puts you ahead of the vast majority of websites out there.
Start where you are. Make progress. The rest follows.
Or visit a featured ARTILLERY project: elaca.org.
