Website accessibility in 2026: what the ADA and the European Accessibility Act mean for your business website

The short answer

If your business sells to consumers online, aim for WCAG 2.2 level AA. It is the target that satisfies the European rules, it is what US courts and settlements keep pointing to, and it is a published, testable standard from the W3C. Don't rely on a widget to get you there. Fix the site itself, publish an accessibility statement if you sell in the EU, and keep it accessible every time you change something.

We build websites, we are not lawyers. This explains the rules as they stand in October 2026 and is not legal advice. If you have received a demand letter or a letter from a regulator, talk to a lawyer first.

United States: the ADA and the lawsuit numbers

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires businesses open to the public not to discriminate against people with disabilities. Many courts apply that to websites.

The numbers are going up again. Law firm Seyfarth Shaw counted 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, up 27% from 2,452 in 2024. Website cases made up 36% of all federal ADA Title III suits that year. New York (1,021), Florida (961) and Illinois (585) led. California had only four in federal court, because plaintiffs there tend to file in state court instead.

2026 is on track to be busier. Seyfarth's mid-year report counted 5,006 federal Title III suits of all kinds in the first half of the year, against a four-year average of 4,463. UsableNet, which also tracks state courts and mobile apps, projects about 6,176 digital accessibility lawsuits for 2026, nearly 20% more than in 2025.

Two figures from UsableNet matter most for a smaller business: 79% of the lawsuits it tracked were against e-commerce, and 68% were against companies with less than $50 million in annual revenue.

There is no federal web standard for private businesses

The Department of Justice has a rule setting WCAG 2.1 AA as the standard for state and local government websites under Title II. In April 2026 it pushed those deadlines back by a year, to April 2027 and 2028. For private businesses under Title III there is no equivalent regulation at all.

In practice that changes little. Demand letters and settlements almost always measure a site against WCAG 2.1 AA, so that is the de facto standard. WCAG 2.2 includes everything in 2.1 plus a few extra criteria, so building to 2.2 AA covers both.

Why an overlay widget won't protect you

Overlays are scripts that add a toolbar to your site and promise compliance for a monthly fee. They don't change the underlying code, so a screen reader user still meets the same unlabelled buttons and broken forms. UsableNet keeps recording lawsuits against companies that had a widget installed.

The US Federal Trade Commission went further. In April 2025 it approved a final order requiring overlay vendor accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its product could make any website WCAG compliant. If the vendor isn't allowed to promise compliance, you shouldn't count on it either.

Europe: the European Accessibility Act

The European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) has applied since 28 June 2025. It covers a list of products and services sold to consumers in the EU. For websites, the important ones are:

e-commerce: any website or app where consumers can buy products or services,
consumer banking services,
e-books and the software used to read them,
electronic communication services,
websites, apps and ticketing for passenger transport.

It applies to anyone selling to EU consumers, including companies based outside the EU. A company website that only presents your services and has a contact form is generally not covered. Once visitors can book and pay, or put products in a basket and check out, it usually is.

Microenterprises are exempt for services. The directive defines a microenterprise as a business with fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than €2 million. A webshop with six people and €1.5 million turnover is outside the service requirements. The same webshop with twelve people is not. Your customers, of course, won't check your headcount before they get stuck at checkout.

The Netherlands: ACM and the accessibility statement

The Netherlands implemented the directive through the Implementatiewet toegankelijkheidsvoorschriften producten en diensten, which added a new section to Book 6 of the Dutch Civil Code. For webshops and communication services, the supervisor is the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). The AFM covers financial services.

The ACM's guidance is concrete. Your website and app must meet WCAG 2.1 AA, with 2.2 AA expected to become the norm during 2026. You must publish an accessibility statement that explains how your service meets the requirements. It has to be easy to find, accessible itself, and also available in spoken form, for example as an audio clip. You also need to give accessibility information about the products you sell, keep the service accessible after every change, and report known problems to the ACM with a plan to fix them.

The ACM has also started testing. In March 2026 it published results for about 100 of the largest Dutch webshops: on 61% of them, a customer using assistive technology could not complete an order. Another 33% had serious problems. The typical causes were mundane, like an order button you can't reach with a keyboard or a CAPTCHA that blocks the user.

What to fix: the checklist

The WebAIM Million 2026 study ran automated tests on the home pages of the top million websites. It found detectable WCAG failures on 95.9% of them, with an average of 56 errors per page. The same few problems show up again and again, so a short list gets most sites a long way.

Area	What to check	Common failure
Contrast	Text at least 4.5:1 against its background, large text 3:1	Light grey text on white, white text on pastel buttons. WebAIM found low contrast on 83.9% of home pages
Keyboard	Every link, button, menu and form works with Tab, Enter and Escape	Dropdown menus and pop-ups that only open on hover or click
Focus	A clearly visible focus outline, and focus that moves in a logical order	The outline removed in CSS because the designer found it ugly
Alt text	Meaningful images described, decorative ones marked as decorative	Missing alt text on 53.1% of home pages, or file names like “IMG_2034”
Forms	Every field has a visible label, errors are explained in text	Placeholder text used instead of a label, errors shown only in red
Headings	One h1, then h2 and h3 in a logical order that reflects the content	Headings chosen for their size rather than their meaning
Video	Captions for videos with speech, a transcript for audio	Auto-generated captions nobody has checked
Zoom	Page usable at 200% zoom and on a narrow screen without sideways scrolling	Fixed-height boxes where enlarged text gets cut off
Checkout	Login, payment and confirmation all work with a keyboard and screen reader	A CAPTCHA or third-party payment pop-up that traps the user

If you sell online, start with the checkout. It is where the ACM found most failures, it is what plaintiffs in the US test, and it is where an inaccessible site loses actual money.

How to test your site

Automated tools are a useful first pass and nothing more. When the UK Government Digital Service tested automated tools on a page with 143 known barriers, the best single tool found 41% of them. All tools combined found 71%, and 42 barriers weren't caught by any tool. A green score means the basics are in place, not that the site works.

A sensible routine for a small or mid-sized business:

Run a free scanner such as WAVE or Chrome's Lighthouse on your main templates: home, a product or service page, the contact form, the checkout.
Unplug the mouse. Complete your most important task with only the keyboard. Can you always see where you are?
Zoom to 200% and check the same pages on a phone.
Try a screen reader for ten minutes: VoiceOver is built into every Mac and iPhone, NVDA is free on Windows.
Get a manual audit against WCAG 2.2 AA if the EAA covers you or you sell heavily in the US, then base your accessibility statement on it.

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What it costs: fixing later vs building it in

Accessibility costs very little when it is part of the design and build from the first day, and a lot when it is bolted on afterwards.

Built in, it is mostly decisions that take no extra time: a palette checked for contrast before approval, real buttons instead of clickable boxes, labelled form fields, headings that follow the content. The extra work is keyboard and screen reader testing before launch, which takes hours, not weeks.

Retrofitting is a different story, and the cost depends on where the problems sit:

Content fixes such as alt text, link wording and captions are cheap. Your own team can usually do them in the CMS.
Code fixes in forms, menus and focus styles are a defined amount of developer time. On a well-built site, a few days at most.
Design-level problems are the expensive ones. If the brand colours fail contrast, every page changes. If the site is built with a page builder or heavy template that generates poor markup, you end up fighting the tool on every fix, and a rebuild is often cheaper than patching.

If an older site fails in all three groups, compare the cost of fixing it with a new site built properly. Our prices are published: a Start site is €1,490 / $1,690, a CMS site €2,490 / $2,790, both one-time and excluding VAT, with a fixed scope and price in writing. More on what drives the price in How much does a website cost in 2026? Whoever builds your next site, get WCAG 2.2 AA written into the scope.

Accessible sites are easier for search engines and AI to read

Screen readers, search crawlers and AI assistants can't see your design. They read the code. A page with a clear heading structure, real text instead of text in images, descriptive links and labelled forms is easier for all three to understand.

It isn't a ranking trick, but the structure that helps a blind visitor find your opening hours also helps Google, ChatGPT or Perplexity pull the right answer from your page. More on that in Being online in 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Does the European Accessibility Act apply to my company website?

If consumers can buy products or services on your website or in your app, it most likely does, unless you are a microenterprise with fewer than 10 employees and no more than €2 million in turnover or balance sheet total. A website that only presents your business and has a contact form is generally not covered.

Which WCAG level should my website meet?

Aim for WCAG 2.2 level AA. EU regulators currently require WCAG 2.1 AA and expect 2.2 AA to become the norm, and US courts and settlements mostly refer to WCAG 2.1 AA. Since 2.2 includes everything in 2.1, building to 2.2 AA covers both.

Will an accessibility overlay or widget make my site compliant?

No. Overlays don't fix the underlying code, companies using them are still being sued in the US, and in 2025 the FTC ordered overlay vendor accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its tool could make any website compliant.

What is an accessibility statement?

It is a page on your website that explains how your service meets the accessibility requirements, which parts don't yet and how people can get help. Under the EAA, businesses that sell to consumers online need one, and the Dutch ACM requires it to be easy to find and also available in spoken form.