Could your website land you a legal demand letter? A plain-English accessibility checklist.
If your business has a website, this is worth ten minutes. Website accessibility lawsuits and demand letters are now one of the most common legal threats aimed at small businesses. Hundreds of these cases are filed in federal court every month, and many more demand letters are settled quietly before they ever reach a courtroom. You can check the current numbers yourself in UsableNet's lawsuit tracker (opens in new tab).
This is a self-check, not legal advice. It will not make you compliant, and it will not make anyone lawsuit-proof. What it does is show you the problems that most often get a website flagged, in plain English, so you can see roughly where you stand before you talk to anyone.
The eight-point check
Images with no text description
A screen reader cannot see an image. It reads out a short written description you attach to the image, called alt text. When that description is missing, a blind visitor reaches a blank spot where your product photo or logo should be.
Quick check: pick an important image and ask whether it has alt text, the short description a screen reader reads aloud. If it has none, that image is silent to anyone using one.
Forms with unlabeled fields
Every form field needs a label that is tied to it in the code, not just grey placeholder text that disappears the moment you start typing. Without a real label, a screen reader announces an empty box, so the visitor cannot tell whether to type their name, their email or their phone number.
Quick check: click the wording that labels a field, like the word Email, rather than the box itself. If your cursor jumps into the box, the label is properly connected. If nothing happens, it is not.
Text you cannot read
Pale grey text on a white background, or light text laid over a busy photo, is unreadable for many older visitors and anyone with low vision. Weak color contrast is the single most common failure on the web.
Quick check: if you have to squint or lean in to read any of your own text, from the big headings down to the small print, the contrast is too low.
A site you cannot use without a mouse
Many people cannot use a mouse and move through a site with the Tab key alone. If they cannot reach your menu, your links or your contact button that way, they are locked out.
Quick check: put your mouse aside, press Tab over and over and watch. A clear outline should move from item to item, reach everything that matters and never get trapped.
Video with no captions
Video and audio need captions or a transcript, so deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors get the same information as everyone else. Auto-generated captions are a start, but they are often wrong on names, prices and technical terms.
Quick check: mute a video on your site. If you cannot follow it with the sound off, neither can your customers.
An accessibility overlay widget
This is the one that surprises people. An accessibility overlay is a plug-in that promises to fix your site automatically, usually with a little person-in-a-circle icon in the corner. It is sold as a shield. In practice it is closer to a target.
Roughly one in four accessibility lawsuits are now filed against businesses that already run one of these widgets, so it does not stop the letters and can even attract them. You can see that in the tracker (opens in new tab). The claims behind these tools have not held up either. The FTC (opens in new tab) ordered one of the largest overlay vendors, accessiBe, to pay $1 million for misleading customers about what its automated tool could actually do. For the wider view from accessibility practitioners, read overlayfactsheet.com (opens in new tab).
Quick check: if your site runs one of these overlay widgets, treat it as a problem to remove, not a fix you already paid for.
No accessibility statement
An accessibility statement is a short page that says you are working to meet the standard, explains how to report a problem and gives a way to reach you. It will not stop a complaint on its own, but its absence removes an easy piece of evidence that you took accessibility seriously.
Quick check: search your own site for the word accessibility. If nothing comes up, you have no statement.
PDFs no one can read
A PDF menu, price list or intake form that is really just a scanned image is a wall to a screen reader. The same rules that apply to your pages apply to the documents you hand out.
Quick check: open one of your PDFs and try to select the text with your cursor. If you cannot highlight it as text, it is an image, and it is not accessible.
Most sites pass the eye test and still fail
You can run every check above and still miss what matters, because the hardest problems are the ones you cannot see by looking. The exact contrast ratio of your text. Whether your alt text truly describes an image or just says photo. Whether the code behind a custom menu tells a screen reader what it is. Whether the whole site holds up when a real person navigates it end to end with a screen reader.
That is what a proper scan is for. We measure the things the eye test cannot, by machine and by hand, then hand you the results in plain English. See a real scored report of our own site before you run your own.
An honest word on compliance
No website can be certified perfectly and permanently accessible, and anyone promising a lawsuit-proof site is selling you something. That includes the widgets above.
Accessibility is about reducing risk. You meet the standard as closely as you can. You keep a record that you tried. You fix issues quickly when they surface. That posture makes you a poor target and shrinks what any complaint is worth. This is general information, not legal advice.
Last reviewed: July 2026
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