ADA Website Compliance and WCAG 2.2: What Small Businesses Need to Know

Website accessibility means people with disabilities can use your site. That includes people who are blind and use screen readers, people who cannot use a mouse, people with low vision, and people who are deaf or hard of hearing. It also protects your business from ADA website lawsuits.

What the law says

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act covers businesses open to the public. The Department of Justice has said the ADA applies to websites of these businesses. The DOJ has not set one required technical standard for private businesses. Courts and settlements most often point to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, known as WCAG.

California businesses face added risk, since the Unruh Civil Rights Act allows claims tied to ADA violations.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

What WCAG 2.2 is

WCAG is published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023. It added 9 new success criteria to WCAG 2.1. Most businesses aim for Level AA.

New WCAG 2.2 criteria include:

• Focus not obscured: When someone tabs through your site, sticky headers and pop-ups should not hide the item in focus.
• Target size: Buttons and links need enough size or spacing to tap.
• Dragging movements: Anything that needs dragging needs a simple click alternative.
• Consistent help: Help options like a phone number or chat should appear in the same place on each page.
• Accessible authentication: Logins should not rely on memory puzzles alone.

The most common issues we find

• Images without alt text
• Low color contrast between text and background
• Forms without labels
• Menus and pop-ups that do not work with a keyboard
• Missing visible focus outline
• Videos without captions
• Headings used out of order

Why overlay widgets are not enough

Accessibility overlay widgets add a toolbar to your site. They do not fix the code underneath. Many lawsuits have named sites that used overlays. Real compliance means fixing the code and content.

How to start

1. Take our free 3-minute ADA self-check.
2. Get an audit of your key pages: home, services, contact, checkout.
3. Fix the code: alt text, contrast, labels, keyboard access, focus styles.
4. Add an accessibility statement with a way to report issues.
5. Test again after every major site change.

See our ADA website compliance and remediation service.