Guide
You got an ADA website demand letter. The first 72 hours.
Thousands of US small businesses receive one of these every year. The letter is designed to feel apocalyptic. It is not, but the clock does matter. Here is what actually happens next, written for a business owner, not a lawyer.
Hour 0-24: do these three things
1. Contact a defense attorney who has handled ADA website cases
Not your cousin who does real estate closings. ADA web claims are a volume practice on the plaintiff side; the defense bar knows the playbook, the settlement ranges, and the specific plaintiff firms. Many offer a flat-fee initial consult. Bring the letter.
2. Preserve everything, change nothing rashly
Do not delete pages, do not panic-install an accessibility widget, do not reply to the letter yourself. Take dated screenshots of the pages named in the letter. Rushed changes can destroy evidence of your good faith or make things look worse.
3. Locate your web contacts and contracts
Who built the site, who hosts it, who can make changes this week? If an agency built it, check your contract: some include accessibility warranties.
Hour 24-72: get an independent audit moving
The first substantive thing nearly every defense attorney asks for is an independent assessment of what is actually broken. Not the plaintiff's list, which is often a template, and not an automated scan screenshot, which courts and opposing counsel have learned to discount. An audit gives your attorney three things:
- A negotiating position. If the plaintiff's complaint lists 40 template issues and 12 are real on your site, that changes the conversation.
- A remediation plan. Settlements in these cases almost always include a commitment to fix the site. You need to know the real scope before you agree to a timeline.
- Evidence of good faith. Moving quickly toward an independent assessment and a fix plan is the posture that ends these cases early and cheap.
Speed matters here: response deadlines in demand letters are typically 14-30 days, and your attorney needs the facts well before that. This is the specific problem we built AuditRush for: a signed, evidence-backed WCAG audit in 48-72 hours at a flat $490, instead of two weeks and four figures.
What NOT to do
- Do not install an overlay widget as your response. Plaintiff firms now cite overlays in complaints; the FTC fined a major vendor $1M for compliance claims. Widgets do not fix the underlying code and can add new barriers.
- Do not ignore the letter. The follow-up to an ignored demand letter is usually a filed complaint, and your options narrow.
- Do not assume settling means it is over. Serial plaintiffs re-test. The fix plan matters more than the check.
The slightly longer view
Most of these cases settle. What you control is how fast, how cheap, and whether you come out with a site that does not invite the next letter. An accurate audit early is the cheapest input into all three.