ADA website compliance for small business, without the runaround.

Courts across the country have interpreted the Americans with Disabilities Act to apply to websites as "places of public accommodation." That means a small business site that is not usable by somebody with a visual, motor, hearing, or cognitive disability can become the target of a demand letter or lawsuit. Filings against small local businesses have surged in recent years, and the settlements are not small.

Beyond the legal exposure, between 20 and 25 percent of adults in the United States live with some form of disability. An inaccessible site quietly turns away a share of your potential customers every day. Fixing it is both the right thing to do and a real business improvement. We take a practical approach: clear audit, realistic remediation plan, real code fixes, a published accessibility statement, and optional monitoring. No scare tactics.

Remediation is where compliance work either succeeds or quietly fails, because remediation done as a script overlay does not hold up in court and does not improve the experience for real users. Real code fixes look like this:

• · Alt text on every meaningful image. Not "image1.jpg" or the filename. Real descriptions written by a human who understood the page.
• · Semantic heading structure. One H1 per page, H2s and H3s that describe the actual document outline. Screen readers use headings to navigate.
• · Labeled forms. Every input tied to a visible label, not a floating placeholder that disappears when you type. Error messages tied to the field they belong to.
• · Color contrast at 4.5:1 or better. Not "close enough". If the button text does not hit the ratio, we adjust the design.
• · Keyboard focus order that follows the visible layout. Tab through the page and the focus indicator moves the way a mouse would. No skips, no traps.
• · ARIA where it earns its keep. ARIA is powerful and overused. Half the bugs on sites we did not build are wrong ARIA that makes things worse. We use it sparingly and correctly.
• · Captions and transcripts for video. Non-negotiable. Transcripts help search engines too.
• · Skip-to-content links, focus visibility, motion-reduction media queries. The small stuff that adds up.

Every remediation project comes with a written before-and-after report so you can point to specific fixes if a demand letter shows up. That documentation is often more important than any single fix.

WCAG 2.1 AA applies the same way regardless of platform, but the tooling and constraints vary. Here is the short version per platform.

WordPress

Most flexible platform for accessibility work because everything is in your control: theme, plugins, custom code. Compliance issues usually come from the theme (color contrast, heading structure) or a page-builder plugin generating non-semantic markup. Sites we build ourselves ship WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. Sites we take over usually need a theme audit plus a plugin review before real remediation starts.

Shopify

Theme quality varies widely. The default Dawn theme is reasonably accessible; many paid themes are not. We audit in place, patch inside the Shopify theme editor, and use Liquid overrides for pieces that need custom work. Third-party Shopify apps (popups, quick-view modals, upsell widgets) often need to be replaced or wrapped.

Squarespace and Wix

Both platforms have improved on accessibility recently, but neither is compliant out of the box for most templates. Squarespace lets you inject some custom code but restricts deep markup changes. Wix gives more editing surface with less predictable rendering. Real remediation usually means simplifying the design, replacing custom widgets, and publishing a proper accessibility statement.

GoDaddy website builder

The GoDaddy Websites + Marketing product (not GoDaddy-hosted WordPress) has the most limited customization surface. Basic accessibility is achievable through the editor. Deeper compliance work usually means migrating off the builder to WordPress. If migration is out of scope, we improve what is fixable in place and provide a defensible accessibility statement.

Custom and headless sites

Custom builds (React, Vue, Astro, Next.js, custom PHP) are usually easiest to remediate because everything is in the code. The catch is that many ship inaccessible from day one because the developer optimized for visual delivery, not for screen readers. We audit, refactor components as needed, and add automated a11y tests to the build so regressions get caught in CI.

Three checks, all free, all take under an hour combined. If any of them surface problems, the site is not fully ADA compliant. That does not mean you get sued tomorrow. It means there is real work to do and real risk in the meantime.

If any of those steps reveal problems, we can help. Full audit and written report is the first thing we do on every project.

Every project is a flat fee in writing after a quick initial audit. A small business site (10 to 25 pages) with typical issues usually lands in the low to mid four figures for full remediation plus an accessibility statement. Larger sites (50-plus pages, WooCommerce stores, multi-site networks) scale up from there. Optional monitoring is a small monthly fee on top.

We do not guarantee you will never be sued. Nobody can, and anyone promising that is selling something. What we deliver is a strong, defensible good-faith effort that substantially reduces your exposure and genuinely helps your visitors.

Overlay tools alone are not the answer. Those one-line JavaScript widgets that promise "instant ADA compliance" have been criticized by accessibility advocates and have themselves been the subject of lawsuits. Real compliance starts in the code and content, not a floating icon.

We are not lawyers. For legal advice about your specific risk, talk to an attorney. We happily coordinate with yours on any technical questions.