ADA-related demand letters targeting websites have grown roughly 14% year-over-year since 2018. If you just received one, here's what to do — and what not to do — in the first 72 hours. If you're earlier in the process and trying to understand what an accessibility audit even covers, read our complete website accessibility audit guide first.
First 24 hours
- Don't reply directly. Forward to your lawyer (or get one) before any written communication. Anything you send becomes evidence.
- Preserve the page state. Take a full HTML + screenshot snapshot of the URL(s) cited in the letter, today's date. Their claims are time-bound; you need proof of what was live when.
- Run a baseline scan. axe-core, WAVE, AccessProof — anything that produces a date-stamped issue list. This becomes the starting point of your remediation log.
Day 2–7
- Triage findings: critical/serious first (color contrast, missing labels, keyboard traps).
- Document each fix with a commit / ticket / dated entry. The paper trail matters more than the speed.
- Add an accessibility statement page (publicly linked from the footer) describing your standard, conformance level, contact, and remediation plan.
What reduces risk long-term
Most plaintiffs settle out of court if you can show continuous, dated remediation activity. A single audit means nothing; quarterly automated scans + a public statement + a contact form do.
Common mistakes
- Negotiating directly with the plaintiff before counsel.
- Removing the offending page (looks like evidence destruction).
- Using an "accessibility overlay" widget. Courts increasingly view them as cosmetic; they don't fix underlying issues and may add new ones.
How AccessProof helps
Each scan produces a dated, exportable PDF report. Schedule weekly or monthly scans, archive the PDFs, and you have the contemporaneous documentation that turns "we tried" into "we proved we tried".