Is Your Website ADA Compliant?

What every small business, nonprofit, and coach needs to know in 2026

Here’s a question most business owners have never thought to ask; can someone who has visual, auditory, or motor impairments actually use your website?

If you’re not sure, you’re not alone. A lot can go into accessibility and it can be overwhelming to look at, but that’s why we’re here. Let’s break this down together.

What is accessibility?

Accessibility is an integral part of good design that benefits everybody; covering a wide range of needs including, visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, and photosensitive impairments. Within these categories are a vast array of different types of disabilities, each with their own unique needs and accommodations.

Accommodating for these various needs can be as simple as adding alt text to images, providing captions on videos, ensuring keyboard navigation, and avoiding flashing content. 

What Has Changed, And Why It Matters Now

In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice published its first ever formal rule establishing a technical standard for website accessibility. That standard is called WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Think of it as a building code for your website; the same way a physical storefront is required to have a ramp and accessible bathrooms, a website is now required to have auditory or visual aides for its users. 

If you have a website, it’s worth knowing that courts have been referencing WCAG as a standard in ADA Title III cases for some time now – so accessibility expectations for websites aren’t exactly new, even without a formal rule in place. 

Digital accessibility lawsuits have been on the rise – with thousands of cases filed each year targeting businesses of all sizes, and all types of practices. 

The good news? 

This is very fixable, and you don’t have to figure it out alone. With a few intentional steps, you can make your website more inclusive and get ahead of potential issues before they become a problem. 

What Does “ADA Compliant” Mean for Your Website?

WCAG 2.1 Level AA boils down to four principles. 

Your website needs to be:

1. 1. Perceivable: All information must be accessible to users with disabilities. Images need descriptive alt text, videos need captions, and no important text should ever live inside an image only. Color contrast is one of the most commonly failed, and yet, one of the most important requirements in this section.
   2. Operable: Your entire site should be navigable by keyboard alone, using the tab key, with every element accessible to a screen reader. This is where embedded tools and iframes deserve special attention; don’t worry, we will circle back to this in a minute. 
   3. Understandable: Content is clear, readable, and consistent in the way it behaves. Buttons do what buttons are supposed to do, and navigation stays the same across all pages. Nothing unexpected happens when a user moves through the site. For someone relying on a screen reader, predictability isn’t a preference, it’s how they orient themselves within your digital space.
   4. Robust: The site needs to be compatible and work seamlessly with screen readers, and other assistive technologies.
       

According to a 2025 analysis by WebAIM, 94.8% of homepages fail basic WCAG checks. Six simple violation types account for 96% of all failures: 

1. Low color contrast
2. Missing alt text
3. Missing form input labels
4. Empty links
5. Missing document language
6. Empty buttons

Most accessibility barriers are straightforward, and simple to address – we can work through them together, one step at a time.

The Hidden Problem with Embedded Tools

Many business owners assume that if their website looks good and loads correctly, it works for everyone. The moment you embed a third-party tool, you inherit that tool’s accessibility problems, whether you know it or not.

Here’s a common scenario:

A nonprofit embeds a third party event calendar on their programs page. A visually impaired visitor navigating with a screen reader arrives at that page and finds the calendar, but they can’t tab through the dates. They can’t read the event details. They can’t register. The information is right there on the screen and completely out of reach.

Whether the calendar is accessible depends entirely on how the third-party vendor built it, and the majority of popular event calendars, booking widgets, and registration tools are not built with accessibility in mind. Your website code can be perfectly clean, and the embedded tool still creates a barrier. Many business owners have no idea that this is happening.

That visitor can’t participate in the community that this organization serves. Pause for a moment. How might you feel in that position?

A Word About Those Accessibility Plugins

You may have seen overlay widgets, the little accessibility icons that pop up in the corner of some websites. It’s tempting to install one and call it done. Pause.

Overlay tools can offer users some helpful controls, like adjusting font size, but they don’t fix the underlying structural problems in your website code. In 2025, the FTC took enforcement action against one of the most widely marketed overlay products for claiming it could make any site WCAG compliant. It can’t. No plugin can. The work has to happen inside the site itself. 

This Is About More Than Avoiding a Lawsuit

Sites built to WCAG standards load faster, rank better in Google and AI-powered search tools, and serve more people. An accessible website is a better website – and it’s something we approach with care, knowing that every site has its own unique needs and audience to serve.

Where to Start

You don’t have to fix everything overnight, but taking that first step makes all the difference.