The numbers behind the demand letters. State-by-state filings, settlement ranges, the WCAG rules plaintiff firms actually cite. Reconciled from EcomBack’s Annual ADA Website Lawsuit Report, Seyfarth Shaw’s Title III tracker, and UsableNet’s compliance lawsuit tracker.
Federal court filings are the visible tip of the iceberg. Industry estimates from accessibility-defense lawyers put the demand-letter-to-filing ratio at 10–20×; the real volume of pre-suit demand letters in 2025 is in the range of 30,000–60,000. Most settle without a court filing because the cost-benefit calculation favours paying.
The 37% YoY increase in 2025 reflects two structural forces: (1) the Robles v. Domino’s precedent has now matured enough that plaintiff firms confidently file even on small sites, and (2) AI coding tools (Lovable, Cursor, Bolt, Replit) are producing tens of thousands of new websites per day with the same default accessibility violations the plaintiff bar specifically scans for.
Source: EcomBack 2025 Annual ADA Website Compliance Lawsuit Report, reconciled with Seyfarth Shaw and UsableNet trackers.
Filings data aggregated from three independent trackers: EcomBack’s 2025 Annual Report, Seyfarth Shaw’s ADA Title III Lawsuit Tracker, and UsableNet’s Compliance Lawsuit Tracker. Each tracker uses PACER court records as primary source; we reconcile the three to control for state-court refiles and duplicate counts.
Settlement-range data is drawn from accessibility-defense practice notes published by firms including Seyfarth Shaw, Mintz Levin, and Akerman LLP. Specific settlement amounts in confidential cases are estimated from publicly available consent decrees and from firm-published average ranges.
Most-cited-rules data is compiled by Comply Code from analysis of 200+ publicly available 2024–2025 ADA web-accessibility complaints filed in the EDNY, SDNY, SDFL, and CDCAL. We tabulated which axe-core rule identifiers map to the technical findings cited in each complaint.
Comply Code scans for the seven most-cited rules above plus the broader 90-rule WCAG ruleset, weighted by your site context.
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