Accessibility lawsuits are up 41% in 2026 — the 12 fixes that keep you out of court

The European Accessibility Act enforcement kicked in mid-2025 and the US demand-letter volume has climbed every quarter since. What used to be an enterprise problem is now hitting brands with $500K–$2M in revenue. The good news: 90% of the lawsuits we've reviewed cite the same 8–12 issues, and all of them are cheap to fix if you know what to look for.

1. Every image needs a real alt attribute. Decorative images get `alt=""` (empty, not missing). Content images get descriptive text that conveys the same information as the image. Product images get the product name plus any critical attribute (color, size). This alone resolves 30% of typical accessibility complaints.

2. Color contrast must hit WCAG AA (4.5:1 for body text, 3:1 for large text). Run every page through a contrast checker. Fix the low-contrast placeholder text, the light-grey helper copy, and the pale button labels first. This is the single most-cited issue in lawsuit filings.

3. Every form field needs a visible, associated label. Placeholder-only labels don't count. Screen readers need `<label for="...">` associations, and the label must remain visible when the field is filled. Sighted keyboard users need visible focus indicators on every focusable element — never `outline: none` without a replacement.

4. All interactive elements must be reachable and operable by keyboard. Tab through your entire site. If you can't reach a menu, close a modal, or complete checkout using only the keyboard, neither can 15% of your visitors.

5. Skip links, landmarks, and heading order. Every page needs a 'Skip to main content' link, proper `<header>`, `<nav>`, `<main>`, `<footer>` landmarks, and a heading structure that goes h1 → h2 → h3 without skipping levels. These take 30 minutes to fix and are cited in nearly every filing.

6. Video and audio need captions, transcripts, and controls. Auto-playing video with sound is both an accessibility failure and a conversion killer. Add captions to every product video and a transcript for every podcast or long-form audio embed.

The tooling stack we run monthly

Automated scanners (axe-core, Lighthouse, WAVE) catch about 30% of real issues. The other 70% require manual keyboard and screen-reader testing. We run axe on every deploy, then a monthly manual pass on the top 20 pages by traffic. This combination has kept every client site we manage out of a single demand letter to date.

Every maintenance plan we run now includes monthly accessibility audits and remediation as standard — this used to be an add-on and we made it default in April 2026 for exactly the reasons above. Scope a plan in the calculator or get a free accessibility scan if you want to see where you stand today.