4,000+ ADA Lawsuits in 2024. Are You Next?

Note: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult qualified legal counsel for guidance on your specific situation.

I'm going to hit you with some numbers. They're not fun numbers. But they're the kind of numbers that are useful to know before your lawyer is billing you $450 an hour to explain them to you in a conference room.

According to published legal tracking reports, in 2024 there were over 4,000 federal ADA lawsuits filed against websites. In 2025, that number reportedly went up by approximately 37 percent. The trajectory is not ambiguous. This is not a trend that is cooling off.

Who's Getting Sued

One of the most persistent myths about accessibility lawsuits is that they're mostly going after massive corporations with deep pockets. Fortune 500 companies, major retailers, tech giants. The kind of entities that can absorb a settlement and move on.

The data does not support this myth.

According to industry analyses, an estimated 77 percent of ADA website lawsuits target companies with under $25 million in annual revenue. Small businesses. Regional retailers. Startups. Companies where a $50,000 legal bill isn't just annoying; it's potentially existential.

And reportedly, 77 percent of cases target e-commerce specifically. If you sell things online, you are in the primary target zone.

The Serial Plaintiff Problem

Here's the detail that really gets people: an estimated 1 in 4 ADA lawsuits are filed by repeat plaintiffs, according to published analyses. There are law firms that have essentially systematized this. They find inaccessible websites, they have a client with a disability file suit, they negotiate a settlement, and then they move to the next target. They do this over and over.

This isn't some secret conspiracy. It's a straightforward consequence of a law with a private right of action and a large pool of defendants who haven't addressed known, easily-identified problems. When you can run an automated scan and find WCAG failures on a site in five minutes, the economics of this approach become obvious.

The Number That Explains Everything

Every year, a major accessibility research project scans the top one million websites and checks them for basic accessibility issues. Their 2025 report found that an estimated 94.8 percent of homepages had detectable WCAG failures.

Not 10 percent. Not 30 percent. Nearly 95 percent.

If 94.8 percent of websites fail on detectable accessibility issues, and there are law firms actively looking for targets, the question isn't really "will websites get sued." The question is which ones, and when.

The Math on Fixing It vs. Fighting It

I said I'd give you numbers, so here are the ones that actually matter for your decision-making:

Proactive accessibility remediation: Estimated at $3,000 to $10,000 for most small to medium sites, according to industry sources. Higher for larger, more complex sites, but still finite and bounded.

ADA lawsuit average cost: Estimated at $25,000 to $75,000 when you factor in legal fees, settlement, and the time your team spends dealing with it, according to published reports. Some cases run significantly higher.

And that's if you settle. If you fight it? You're looking at costs that can easily exceed six figures, and you're doing it against a legal team that has done this dozens of times and knows exactly how it goes.

The math is not complicated. Fixing the site costs less, takes less time, and has the added benefit of actually making your site usable for the 1.3 billion people worldwide with disabilities. That's not a rounding error in any market.

What the Most Common Violations Actually Are

The annual accessibility survey of the top million sites is useful because it tells you what's actually failing. The top issues, year after year, are:

• Low contrast text (fails in 80%+ of pages)
• Missing image alt text
• Missing form input labels
• Empty links (links with no text that tells you where they go)
• Missing document language
• Empty buttons

These are not exotic edge cases. They're basic HTML hygiene issues. They're caught by automated scanners in seconds. Most of them are fixed with a few lines of code or a few minutes in your CMS. The reason 94.8% of sites still have them isn't because they're hard to fix. It's because nobody checked.

One More Thing About Serial Lawsuits

I mentioned the estimate that 1 in 4 ADA lawsuits are repeat filings by the same plaintiffs. There's an important nuance here: the fact that serial litigation exists doesn't make the underlying claims invalid. Courts have generally not been sympathetic to the argument that "this plaintiff files a lot of suits, therefore my website doesn't need to be accessible." If your site has WCAG failures, that's a legitimate legal exposure regardless of who found it.

The answer isn't to argue about plaintiff motivations. The answer is to not have WCAG failures.

Where to Start

If you don't know where your site stands right now, that's the first thing to fix. SCOUTb2 is a free browser extension that runs 25+ automated WCAG accessibility checks and gives you a report of potential issues it identifies. No account required to scan. You can have a baseline picture of your accessibility posture in minutes.

If you're on a small team or running a lean operation, start with the high-frequency issues: contrast, alt text, form labels, link text. Fix those, scan again, repeat. It's not glamorous project management but it works, and it's dramatically cheaper than the alternative.

4,000 lawsuits in a year. 94.8% of sites failing, according to published research. The numbers are right there. What you do with them is up to you.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, professional, or compliance advice. SCOUTb2 is an automated scanning tool that helps identify common issues but does not guarantee full compliance with any standard or regulation.