ADA Website Compliance for WordPress: What the Law Actually Requires

What the ADA Actually Requires of Websites

Title III: Private Businesses

The Americans with Disabilities Act's Title III bars discrimination in "places of public accommodation." The Department of Justice's own guidance, Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA, confirms businesses and state/local governments can currently choose how they meet that standard online, because the DOJ has not issued a regulation with detailed technical requirements for private business websites. But the same guidance lists the barriers that show up in real enforcement actions: "incompatibility with screen-reader software, the absence of alternate text, missing captions or transcripts for video and audio content, insufficient color contrast, broken links, pop-ups," and it recommends pairing an automated checker with manual testing to get an accurate picture.

The DOJ's 2024 Title II Rule: State and Local Government

In April 2024, the DOJ finalized a rule that, unlike the Title III guidance above, does set a specific technical bar, but only for state and local government entities, their agencies, and public transit authorities. That rule requires web and mobile app content to meet WCAG 2.1, Level AA, with compliance deadlines of April 26, 2027 for entities serving populations of 50,000 or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones. It does not apply to private businesses. If your WordPress site belongs to a city, county, school district, or transit agency, this rule is the one with an actual deadline attached.

WCAG 2.1 AA, the De Facto Standard

No regulation forces a private business to hit WCAG 2.1 AA specifically. In practice, it's the standard almost every court, settlement, and demand letter points to anyway, because it's the only detailed, testable technical standard in the room. Treat it as the target even though Title III itself doesn't name it as mandatory.

What an ADA Demand Letter Looks Like

A demand letter usually comes from an attorney representing someone with a disability who tried to use your site and hit a barrier. According to law firm Saul Ewing's overview of the current wave of ADA website litigation, more than 4,000 such lawsuits were filed in US federal and state courts in 2024 alone, and the specific barriers named tend to match the DOJ's own list: screen reader incompatibility, missing alt text, missing captions, poor contrast, broken links, and disruptive pop-ups.

The letter typically alleges your site is inaccessible under Title III, references specific pages and elements the sender's tester (often using a screen reader) couldn't use, and requests that you remediate the site and, per Saul Ewing's summary, warns that a business "can be forced to defend such cases, make their websites compliant, and pay significant attorneys' fees to the prevailing plaintiff." We are not citing a specific settlement dollar figure here because we could not source one for a typical case; treat any number you hear quoted elsewhere as unverified until you see it in writing from your own counsel.

The 5 Most Common WordPress Accessibility Failures

The WebAIM Million, an annual scan of the top one million home pages, found the same handful of failures account for the overwhelming majority of accessibility errors across the web, WordPress sites included, in its February 2026 report. Here's each one, and how to check it yourself.

1. Low-contrast text: 83.9% of pages

The most common failure by far. WordPress themes often set body text, buttons, and links in colors that look fine to a designer on a calibrated monitor and fail WCAG's 4.5:1 contrast ratio for normal text. Check it: pick your theme's primary button color and run it through a contrast checker against its background. If the ratio is under 4.5:1, it fails.

2. Missing alt text: 53.1% of pages

Every image needs a text alternative, and WordPress makes it easy to skip this field when uploading to the Media Library. Check it: open your Media Library, sort by upload date, and spot-check the last 20 images for a blank "Alt Text" field.

3. Missing form labels: 51% of pages

Contact forms, checkout fields, and newsletter signups built with a placeholder instead of a real <label> fail this one, because a placeholder disappears the moment someone starts typing and screen readers don't reliably announce it as a label. Check it: tab into each field on your contact or checkout form with a screen reader running, or check your form plugin's field settings for a "label" value, not just a placeholder.

4. Empty links: 46.3% of pages

An icon-only social link or a "read more" link with no discernible text tells a screen reader user nothing about where it goes. Check it: view your page's source and look for <a> tags wrapping only an icon or an image with no alt text and no visible text.

5. Empty buttons: 30.6% of pages

Hamburger menus, search icons, and "add to cart" buttons built as icon-only elements without an accessible name fail the same way empty links do. Check it: same approach, look for <button> elements with no text content and no aria-label.

The Free-Scan Path

You don't need to guess which of these five your site has. WCAGpatch's free tier scans your WordPress site, checks it against WCAG 2.1 AA using axe-core's 64 automated checks, and gives you a score dashboard and violation history. No account, no credit card, no time limit. It won't catch everything (see the certificate section below), but it will tell you, specifically, which pages have low contrast, missing alt text, or the other issues above, right now. Run a free scan.

What a Compliance Certificate Is, and Isn't

A certificate is a dated PDF documenting that a scan ran, what it found, and, on Pro and up, what got fixed. It's evidence of a good-faith effort, the kind of paper trail the DOJ's own guidance and most settlement negotiations actually look for. It is not a legal guarantee of anything. Automated scanning tools, WCAGpatch included, detect roughly 30 to 40% of WCAG success criteria; the rest need a human tester. No certificate from any vendor makes your site immune to a demand letter. What it does is show you took the issue seriously before one arrived. See plans.

Sources

1. DOJ, "Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA". Title III scope, common barriers, recommendation to pair automated and manual testing.
2. DOJ, "Fact Sheet: New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps", the 2024 Title II rule. WCAG 2.1 AA requirement, April 2027 and 2028 deadlines, state and local government scope.
3. Saul Ewing LLP, "A Rise in ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuits". 4,000+ 2024 lawsuits, demand-letter consequences, FTC order context.
4. WebAIM Million, February 2026 report. Top accessibility failure categories and percentages: contrast 83.9%, alt text 53.1%, form labels 51%, empty links 46.3%, empty buttons 30.6%. The percentages cover all home pages scanned, not WordPress specifically; the mapping of each failure to a WordPress cause is ours.
5. WCAGpatch product facts, checked 2026-09-07. 64 automated checks via axe-core 4.11.1 against WCAG 2.1 A and AA; the 30 to 40% automated-coverage disclaimer is the same one in this site's footer; the free-tier feature list is the one on the pricing section.