Web & SEO
What is ADA compliance?
ADA compliance for a website means the site is usable by people with disabilities to the standard expected under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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Technical definition
The ADA predates the modern web and does not itself specify technical criteria for websites. In practice, courts, settlements, and federal guidance have converged on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at level AA as the working benchmark for what an accessible site looks like.
That means the practical requirements are the WCAG ones: sufficient contrast, text alternatives for images, full keyboard operation, visible focus states, labeled form controls, accessible error messages, and semantic markup that assistive technology can interpret. Requirements and case law continue to evolve.
In plain terms
US law expects businesses serving the public to be usable by people with disabilities, and that has been applied to websites.
There is no certificate. What exists is a standard, WCAG AA, and a record of what courts have treated as falling short of it.
Why it matters
Web accessibility lawsuits against small and mid-sized businesses are common and the pattern is consistent: a demand letter, a list of failures anyone could have generated with a free checker, and a settlement that costs more than the fixes would have.
The defensive position and the right thing to do are the same list. Fix contrast. Add real alt text. Make sure the site works with a keyboard alone. Label your form fields. Be wary of overlay widgets that promise instant compliance, because they have been named in litigation rather than preventing it, and they do not fix the underlying markup. This page is background, not legal advice, and a real audit is worth its cost.
