You received an ADA website accessibility demand letter. What to do in the first 72 hours.
Thousands of these letters go out every year, most of them to small businesses. Almost all of them end in a settlement, and the number on the settlement depends a lot on what you do this week. This is technical and process information, not legal advice; you still need a lawyer.
· Rampa
Technical and process information, not legal advice. Talk to a lawyer before replying to the letter.
First, three facts
- 1The letter is a business, not a verdict. The same law firms send hundreds of them; most settle for a few thousand dollars plus the fixes.
- 2Courts look at two things: does the site fail the guidelines (WCAG, the international web accessibility standard), and is the owner doing something about it. The second one is where you have room.
- 3Nothing you do today makes it disappear. What you do today decides whether you pay $5,000 or $25,000, and whether you get a second letter next year.
Today (first 24 hours)
Preserve and measure
- Do not reply yet, and do not call the number on the letter. Anything you say can end up in the file.
- Do not delete or change pages. Changing evidence looks worse than the failures.
- Save the letter, the envelope and the date you received it. Most letters give a deadline; write it down.
- Scan your site today, so there is a dated record of where it stood when the letter arrived. A free scan takes a minute and gives you the list with the corrected code.
- Do not install an accessibility widget (overlay). Over 20% of lawsuits in 2025 targeted sites that had one; some letters cite the widget itself.
Day 2
Get a plan with dates
- Send the technical report to whoever builds your site. Ask for two dates: when the critical failures will be fixed and when the rest will.
- Fix what needs no code first: image descriptions, page titles, link text, form labels. That is usually half the list and one afternoon.
- Publish an accessibility statement: a public page that says what you are doing and gives a way to report problems. Courts have treated it as evidence of good faith.
- Turn on monitoring, so every fix is recorded with a date and nothing comes back without you knowing.
Day 3
Hand the lawyer a folder, not a worry
- Find a lawyer who handles ADA website cases; the first call is usually free and they have seen this exact letter before.
- Give them: the letter, the dated scan, the plan with dates, the statement link and the diligence record. With that folder, they negotiate from strength.
- Let the lawyer reply. What usually gets the number down: a fix already in progress, a dated record, and a monitoring commitment.
What the letter usually asks for, and what answers it
- "Your site does not comply with WCAG 2.1 AA." Answer: a dated scan showing each failure, and the corrected code for each one.
- "Provide a remediation plan." Answer: the action plan with dates, ordered by what hurts users most.
- "Commit to ongoing compliance." Answer: monitoring with a public statement and a badge that shows the live score.
- "Pay damages and fees." Answer: that is the lawyer's part; your folder is what makes the number smaller.
What not to do
- Ignore it. Deadlines pass and the complaint gets filed; then it costs more.
- Install a widget and reply that the site is now compliant. Many lawsuits name the widget.
- Promise dates you cannot keep. A missed date in writing is worse than a longer honest one.
- Take the site down or delete the pages the letter names.
- Reply on your own, in anger or in a hurry.
The 72-hour kit
Everything above, produced by Rampa in about an hour, from a free scan.
- Dated scan
- Every failure on up to 100 pages, desktop and phone, with the WCAG criterion and the corrected code, tested.
- Action plan
- The five fixes that raise the score most, in order, with what is already written for the developer.
- Public statement and badge
- A page that states what you are doing, updated after every scan, plus a badge for the footer.
- Diligence record
- A printable record for your lawyer: dates, scans, what was fixed and when, what remains.
Questions people ask
- Do I have to pay what the letter asks?
- That is a legal question; ask a lawyer. What is true in general: the amount is negotiable, and a dated record of fixes in progress is what lawyers use to negotiate it down.
- Will fixing the site make the letter go away?
- Usually not by itself, but it changes the conversation from "you are ignoring the law" to "we are fixing it, here are the dates". That is the difference between the two ends of the settlement range.
- Does an accessibility widget protect me?
- No. It changes what the visitor sees in the browser; the code stays the same, and the code is what the complaint cites. Several lawsuits in 2024 and 2025 named the widget as part of the problem.
- My store runs on Shopify or WordPress. Does that change anything?
- Not the law. It changes how much you can fix yourself: on these platforms, most of the common failures are settings in the editor, not code.
- How long does it take to fix a typical site?
- The no-code half: one afternoon. The code half: a developer's day or two with the corrected code in hand. Keeping it that way is what monitoring is for.