THE ACCESSIBILITY WAKE-UP CALL
- Splash Box Marketing, LLC
- Apr 3
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 23
ARE YOU AT RISK OF A LAWSUIT?
For most organizations, accessibility becomes a priority at a very specific moment. They don’t prioritize it just because they wake up inspired. It isn’t sparked by a strategy session, a conference workshop, or a long-term roadmap. Usually, it begins when something lands in the inbox: a complaint, a demand letter, a notice from legal counsel, or a headline that hits too close to home. What had been deferred or loosely understood now suddenly carries timelines, scrutiny, and in the worst case, legal consequences.
For healthcare marketers, government agencies, and cross-functional IT/marketing teams, the shift from ideal or theoretical to very real tends to occur quickly and visibly. That’s because these are environments that have significant public scrutiny paired with the necessity of using digital content. People rely on websites, portals, and documents to complete tasks that affect their care, finances, and access to services. When these tasks break down – like when a form can’t be completed, a document can’t be read, or a portal can’t be navigated – the issue is not theoretical. It’s immediate, and it is what often prompts formal legal action.
But the goal isn’t to operate in fear. It’s to understand the landscape well enough to reduce risk, respond responsibly, and build a program that holds up under scrutiny.
IT’S NOT JUST BIG BRANDS THAT GET SUED
THE BEST TIME TO ADDRESS ACCESSIBILITY IS BEFORE THE LETTER. THE SECOND-BEST TIME IS IMMEDIATELY AFTER. |
There’s a common assumption that accessibility lawsuits primarily target large, recognizable brands. In reality, though, the pattern is broader. Risk for a lawsuit follows usage, meaning organizations that attract high traffic, support essential tasks, and/or publish large volumes of public-facing content are the most likely to face complaints. Similarly, environments where multiple teams contribute to digital content without shared standards creates inconsistencies that compound over time, which also increases risk.
There are so many sectors that are affected by lawsuits related to accessibility: retail and hospitality; banks and financial institutions with forms, authentication, and statements; healthcare systems and health plans with patient/ member portals, provider searches, and notices; universities and colleges with admissions, course materials, and public PDFs; and government and municipal agencies with access to programs, forms, and public information. The above types of businesses appear most frequently in accessibility cases not simply because of their size, but because of what users need from them. A retail site might lose a sale when something goes wrong, but a healthcare portal or benefits document can block access to seeing your doctor or obtaining critical information. The more essential a task, the higher the expectation that it works for everyone.
RISK FOLLOWS VOLUME: THE MORE PEOPLE RELY ON YOUR WEBSITE TO COMPLETE A TASK, THE MORE EXPOSURE YOU HAVE. |
SIZE DOESN’T MATTER
If you’re a small company, you might be wiping the sweat off your brow and thinking that you’ve dodged a bullet. But risk isn’t only about company size. Accessibility lawsuits extend beyond the traditional measures of scale. Smaller organizations are often surprised to find themselves exposed as they often assume limited reach or resources reduce their risk. In practice, exposure is more related to whether someone can complete essential tasks.
Any organization, regardless of size, is more exposed if you feature:
Online forms for appointments, enrollment, contact, payment, and more.
Portals, such as member/patient, provider, student, or citizen services).
PDF-heavy pages like notices, directories, policies, and reports.
Third-party widgets for chat, scheduling, maps, payment, embedded tools, and customer service.
Video content without captions/transcripts.
Frequent campaigns with landing pages built fast.
In practice, exposure to these types of lawsuits is shaped by function. Anyone who relies on essential forms, portals, and documents is operating in the same landscape. So, a single PDF or landing page can be enough to trigger a complaint. But your risk increases if your organization treats accessibility as a “final pass” instead of a build requirement.
WHAT PLAINTIFFS USUALLY ALLEGE
Most claims point to the same set of barriers that prevent basic navigation and task completion. The same issues appear again and again across websites, apps, documents, and multimedia. Websites and apps often have navigation that doesn’t work without a mouse, missing form labels, unclear error messages, poor focus visibility and low color contrast so keyboard users can’t see where they are on a page, and landing pages structured visually not semantically.
If a user somehow manages to wade through an inaccessible website to find the needed document, they then may face even more barriers if the document isn’t up to standards. If a document isn’t accessible, it often features an incorrect reading order, no tags, an incoherent structure, missing alt text, decorative images improperly marked, tables without headers, and forms without labeled fields. When any of these issues occur, assistive technology cannot read and interpret the document. These are not fringe cases or obscure technical failures. They are everyday inequalities that occur in every industry, across multiple sectors, and at both small and large organizations.
The underlying issues of inaccessible websites and documents are rarely complex, as shown above. So, you can imagine the frustration that comes from a person who relies on assistive technology and faces these barriers time and time again. The law requires accessibility, but many organizations simply don’t comply with that mandate. That’s why lawsuits regarding digital accessibility have exploded over the last decade. In 2025 alone, there were 5,114 lawsuits, according to UsableNet’s 2025 Year-End Report.
WHAT CHANGES THE DAY YOU FACE A LAWSUIT
When you get sued or receive a demand letter, the internal dynamics shift quickly. Accessibility becomes time-bound, with expectations for response and resolution. Before, accessibility is important, but after, it’s urgent. The groups of stakeholders expand beyond marketing, creative, and IT to now include legal, compliance, procurement, and executive leadership. Teams are asked for timelines, proof, and accountability. Most importantly, the conversation moves from intent to evidence. Your intentions no longer matter. Your values and stances toward accessibility are no longer important. What does matter is whether accessibility can be demonstrated and proven: what’s been tested, what you fixed, and what you’re doing to prevent recurring inaccessibility.
While we can’t offer legal advice, strong responses tend to share the same shape. The first step is triage and stabilization. Confirm receipt of the lawsuit or letter and route it to the right internal owners. Make sure to preserve the complaint details like URLs, screenshots, and dates. Don’t push risky changes like a major redesign out of panic, especially if you’re not ready for them. Lastly, identify whether the issue involves third-party tools.
DON’T SCRAMBLE. STABILIZE, THEN MOVE WITH A PLAN. |
From there, your team should validate the claims by attempting to reproduce the issues using keyboard-only navigation and screen reader checks. Make sure to run automated scans as a starting point and take an inventory of the affected pages, templates, and documents.
The next phase is to focus on what blocks users from completing core actions. Prioritize those items that affect the largest number of people most often. Fixing navigation, menus, key PDFs, and implementing form functionality takes priority over less critical and minor issues. At the same time, it’s important to document your work, tracking issues, ownership, and resolution in a way that can be shared both internally and externally if needed. This documentation becomes just as important as the fixes themselves because it provides a record of progress and accountability.
Create a simple remediation log that documents the issue, location, severity of the problem, owner of the fix, date of the fix, and how it was tested.
The fastest way to end up back in the same situation is to fix pages one-by-one without fixing the system. Addressing individual pages or files resolves immediate concerns, but it doesn’t prevent recurrence. It doesn’t plan for new documents or webpages. Without changes to templates, publishing workflows, and vendor requirements, the same issues will appear. To prevent this from happening, create accessible templates and components, utilize a pre-publish checklist, define who’s responsible for which part of the process, open conversations with vendors, and monitor periodically.
A HIDDEN RISK: THIRD-PARTY TOOLS
Third-party tools introduce another layer of complexity. Scheduling widgets, chat and support tools, payment modules, maps, document viewers, and embedded forms are often outside direct control, yet fully integrated into key user journeys. Even though these aspects may be a third-party tool, the user doesn’t view it that way. The user sees it as part of your website, which falls under your responsibility. Organizations, then, are left to assess whether they have the leverage to require fixes of the vendor or whether alternative vendors are needed. This is really where accessibility expectations begin to influence procurement and contract decisions, rather than remaining confined to design, content, and development teams.
There are a few practical steps to help mitigate the risks associated with using third-party tools. Some include:
Take inventory of which third-party tools are used most.
Request accessibility documentation and testing details.
Add accessibility requirements to renewals and contracts.
Over time, organization5 that manage accessibility effectively develop a different posture toward the task. The goal isn’t to remain in fear of a complaint around every corner, but to be able to respond with kindness, clarity, and speed. This comes from knowing what’s been tested, what’s been improved, and what processes are in place to maintain progress. It’s a shift from making fixes reactively to a stable system that prioritizes accessibility as part of how content is produced and maintained. In practice, this mindset comes down to a few essential checks that reflect real user tasks:
Can a keyboard-only user complete the top five most important tasks?
Do your top 20 pages have clear headings and descriptive links?
Do your top forms have labels and usable error messages?
Are your top ten PDFs tagged with correct reading order?
Do videos have captions and transcripts?
Are third-party widgets tested and documented?
Do you have a pre-publish accessibility checklist?
Confidence in accessibility doesn’t come from assuming that everything is now compliant. It comes from having visibility into how your content performs and knowing how to respond when something breaks. It also comes from treating accessibility as a shared responsibility across marketing, IT, and vendors as well as building it into the way you publish, not just what you publish. ●
