Worst Accessibility Fails and Lessons Learned

The web accessibility litigation landscape is now undeniable. Over 2,000 ADA website accessibility lawsuits were filed in the first half of 2025 alone, a 37% increase year over year. E-commerce websites are the most frequent targets, accounting for 70% of cases. But the failures extend far beyond legal action. From overlay widgets that promised compliance but delivered lawsuits, to fundamental design choices that locked out millions of users, the history of accessibility failures offers sharp lessons for every organization with a digital presence.

The Overlay Catastrophe

The single most significant accessibility failure of the 2020s is the rise and fall of accessibility overlay widgets. Companies like accessiBe, UserWay, and others marketed JavaScript tools that claimed to make any website compliant with WCAG and the ADA through an automated layer placed on top of existing code.

The promise was appealing: install a single script, and your accessibility problems disappear. The reality was different.

The FTC settlement. In 2025, the Federal Trade Commission reached a $1 million settlement with accessiBe after finding the company misled businesses by marketing its widget as a guaranteed compliance solution. The FTC’s action confirmed what accessibility professionals had been warning for years: overlays cannot fix underlying code problems.

Lawsuits against overlay users. In the first half of 2025, 456 ADA lawsuits (22.6% of all cases) targeted websites that had accessibility widgets installed. The widgets did not prevent litigation. In some cases, they were cited as evidence that the organization was aware of accessibility issues but chose a cosmetic fix over genuine remediation.

Why overlays fail. A client-side JavaScript widget cannot add missing alt text to images if the content management system does not provide it. It cannot fix a custom dropdown menu that was built without ARIA attributes. It cannot restructure a data table that lacks proper markup. And it cannot repair a navigation system that does not work with keyboard focus. These are source code problems that require source code fixes.

Landmark Lawsuits as Case Studies

Target (2006-2008)

Target.com was built without basic screen reader compatibility. The NFB sued, and Target paid $6 million plus legal fees and entered a three-year monitoring agreement. The case established that the ADA applies to commercial websites. Full analysis: Target accessibility lawsuit case study.

Domino’s Pizza (2016-2022)

A blind man could not order pizza from Domino’s website or app using screen reading software. Domino’s fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing the ADA doesn’t apply to websites. The Court declined to hear the appeal, leaving the Ninth Circuit’s ruling against Domino’s in place. Full analysis: Domino’s Pizza accessibility case study.

American Airlines (2024)

The DOT fined American Airlines $50 million for cases of unsafe physical assistance of disabled passengers between 2019 and 2023. $25 million was credited back to the airline for equipment and systems upgrades. This was the largest disability-related airline penalty in DOT history.

The Most Common Failures

The WebAIM Million study, which analyzes the home pages of the top one million websites annually, consistently identifies the same categories of failure:

Low-contrast text appears on 79.1% of home pages, averaging 29.6 instances per page. This is the single most common accessibility barrier on the web. It affects users with low vision, users in bright environments, and older users with age-related vision changes.

Missing alternative text on images affects 55.5% of home pages. Without alt text, screen readers cannot convey image content to blind users.

Missing form input labels prevent screen reader users from understanding what information is requested in forms. This directly blocks critical functions like checkout, login, and registration.

Empty links (links with no discernible text) leave screen reader users unable to determine where a link goes or what it does.

Missing document language prevents screen readers from using the correct pronunciation rules, making content difficult or impossible to understand through speech.

Geographic Litigation Hotspots

The geographic distribution of ADA web accessibility lawsuits in 2025 reveals where enforcement is concentrated:

New York: 637 lawsuits (31.6%)
Florida: 487 lawsuits (24.2%), nearly doubled from 2024
California: 380 lawsuits (18.9%)
Illinois: 237 lawsuits, a 746% increase year over year

The concentration in these states reflects plaintiff-friendly court interpretations and active plaintiff firms rather than worse accessibility in those states. Businesses operating nationally are subject to suit in any of these jurisdictions.

Lessons Learned

Overlays are not compliance. The FTC settlement and lawsuit data prove that overlay widgets do not protect organizations from litigation and may increase risk.
Fundamental barriers cost the most. Missing alt text, low contrast, and broken keyboard navigation are cheap to fix proactively and expensive to defend in court.
Fighting the law loses. Domino’s spent years and substantial legal fees fighting the assertion that the ADA applies to websites. The law was not on their side.
Start now. With over 4,000 lawsuits per year and climbing, the question for most organizations is not if they will face accessibility scrutiny but when.

For the positive examples, see our universal design case studies guide. For startup-specific guidance, read accessible startup design from day one.

Key Takeaways

ADA web accessibility lawsuits exceeded 2,000 in the first half of 2025, a 37% year-over-year increase, with e-commerce accounting for 70% of cases.
The FTC’s $1 million settlement with accessiBe confirmed that accessibility overlay widgets do not deliver compliance, and 22.6% of 2025 lawsuits targeted sites using overlays.
Low-contrast text (79.1% of home pages) and missing alt text (55.5%) remain the most widespread accessibility failures.
New York, Florida, California, and Illinois account for over 90% of ADA web accessibility lawsuits, with Illinois filings increasing 746% year over year.

Sources

https://www.usablenet.com/ — UsableNet annual ADA digital accessibility lawsuit reports with litigation volume and industry breakdowns
https://webaim.org/projects/million/ — WebAIM Million annual analysis finding 79.1% of home pages have low-contrast text and 55.5% have missing alt text
https://www.ada.gov/ — U.S. Department of Justice ADA enforcement information and Title III guidance
https://www.ftc.gov/ — FTC enforcement actions including the accessiBe $1 million settlement for deceptive accessibility overlay claims