I got an ADA demand letter for my website. What do I do?

Receiving an ADA accessibility demand letter is alarming the first time. It is also routine — roughly 30,000–60,000 are sent in the US each year and the response playbook is well established. This is what to do, in order, before you do anything you can't take back.

First — don't ignore it, but don't panic

A demand letter is not a lawsuit. It's a settlement offer with an implied threat: pay us now or we sue. The pre-litigation phase exists precisely because most cases settle there. Plaintiff firms typically expect 60–80% of demand letters to settle without ever being filed in court. The data below comes from Seyfarth Shaw's ADA Title III tracker and EcomBack's annual filing reports — the two most-cited public datasets on this topic.

The first 48 hours: what to do

1. Preserve the letter. Scan it, save the envelope. Note the date you received it — response windows run from receipt.
2. Don't reply to the lawyer directly yet. Anything you write can be used. Especially don't admit anything ('yes, we had a contrast issue').
3. Check the response window. Most letters give 21–30 days; California gives 14 (the state's accelerated CRPA process).
4. Take a screenshot of every page mentioned in the letter, plus the home page and any signup or checkout flow. Plaintiffs often update sites after sending the letter; you want evidence of state at receipt.
5. Run a compliance scan (Comply Code or any axe-core-based tool) on every URL named in the letter. Save the report — you'll need it for the remediation phase regardless of how this resolves.
6. Call your insurance broker. If you have a general liability or cyber policy, ADA demand letters are sometimes covered. Most policies require notification within a window; missing it can void coverage.
7. Find an ADA-defense attorney. The market is well-developed — every mid-size US firm has someone who does this. The Seyfarth Shaw, Lewis Brisbois, and Mayer Brown ADA Title III practices are the highest-volume defenders; many smaller firms charge less.

What's actually in the letter

Demand letters follow a remarkably consistent template. Knowing the template helps you assess whether the letter is well-supported or boilerplate. Most include:

• A named individual plaintiff with a stated disability and how it affected them on your site (often vision impairment + screen-reader use).
• A list of WCAG 2.1 (or 2.2) success-criteria violations, usually 8–20 items.
• Citation of Title III of the ADA, plus state equivalents if applicable (e.g. California's Unruh Act adds $4,000 per visit in statutory damages).
• A demand for: (a) remediation, (b) injunctive relief (a promise to fix things), (c) statutory damages or attorney fees.
• A response deadline (usually 21–30 days).

What's not in most letters: actual evidence of the violations beyond a list. About 60% of demand letters are generated using axe-core or WAVE against the public site by the plaintiff's firm — not by a human screen-reader user encountering specific problems. This matters legally because Title III requires actual injury; standing is contested in many cases on exactly this point.

The settle-vs-fight decision

About 75% of demand letters settle. About 20% lead to a filed lawsuit (which then mostly also settles). The remaining ~5% reach actual judgment or dismissal. The math behind settling:

For most indie operators, the calculation is simple: pay the pre-suit settlement (typically $5–15K plus a remediation commitment), remediate the site, move on. Fighting only makes economic sense if you have multiple letters from the same firm (worth establishing precedent) or believe the standing claim is genuinely weak.

What 'settlement' usually includes

A standard pre-suit settlement has three parts:

1. Monetary payment — typically $5,000–$25,000, structured as attorney fees rather than damages for tax reasons. Paid to the plaintiff's firm, not directly to the named plaintiff.
2. Remediation commitment — usually 'achieve WCAG 2.1 AA conformance within 12 months' on the site. Sometimes includes specific test deliverables or re-audits at 6 and 12 months.
3. Confidentiality clause and a release — you can't be sued again by the same plaintiff for the same site over the same period. The release rarely binds other plaintiffs.

The remediation phase

Settlement or not, you need to fix the underlying problems — otherwise you'll get another letter from a different plaintiff in 6–18 months. Same patterns get found repeatedly.

1. Run a scan against every page on your public site, not just the ones in the letter. Plaintiff firms triage to the obvious pages; the same issues exist elsewhere.
2. Fix the 5 most-cited WCAG criteria first: form labels (§1.3.1, §3.3.2), color contrast (§1.4.3), alt text (§1.1.1), link names (§2.4.4, §4.1.2), modal focus traps (§2.1.2, §2.4.3). These appear in ~75% of letters.
3. Document each fix with a screenshot before/after and a date. Your settlement may require evidence of remediation; even if not, this protects you against the next letter.
4. Set up a monthly automated scan. Comply Code, axe DevTools, WAVE, and Pa11y all run from a CI step. Catching regressions before they ship is far cheaper than catching them after a plaintiff does.
5. Add an accessibility statement to your site (a simple page describing your conformance target and how to report issues). This is what well-defended sites do; it doesn't reduce demand letters to zero but it makes weak claims easier to defeat.

How to reduce your odds of getting another letter

Plaintiff firms target sites with specific patterns. Reducing your exposure means breaking those patterns:

• Don't mention New York, Florida, or California in your copy if you don't have to — those states account for ~75% of federal filings.
• Make your accessibility statement findable from the footer with a clear contact for issues. Plaintiffs prefer sites that haven't tried.
• Run accessibility scans before every deploy. The patterns that get cited are the ones an automated scanner catches.
• If you ship to all 50 states, the math says you'll eventually get a letter regardless of remediation. Plan operationally for it: $10K reserved, an attorney on speed-dial, and a remediation log.