The Accessibility Lawsuit Nobody Warned You About

Nobody builds a website intending to exclude anyone. It just happens by default: a designer picks a light gray on white because it looks clean, a developer skips the alt text because the deadline is tomorrow, a form field never gets a label because the placeholder text looked fine. None of it feels like a decision. It's just what happens when accessibility isn't on anyone's checklist.

Then a letter shows up. Usually from a law firm you've never heard of, citing the ADA or WCAG, listing a handful of issues on your site: no keyboard access to the checkout button, no labels on your contact form, images with no alt text for screen readers. It reads like a shakedown because in a lot of cases it is one. But the underlying issues are usually real, and ignoring the letter doesn't make the exposure go away.

Why small sites get targeted

Big companies have accessibility audits baked into their process. Small and mid-sized businesses almost never do, which makes them the easier target. E-commerce stores are especially exposed because checkout flows involve forms, buttons, and dynamic content, all places where accessibility tends to break first. If your site was built fast and never touched again, there's a good chance it has several of these gaps right now.

It's cheaper to build it in than bolt it on

Retrofitting an existing site for accessibility means going screen by screen, component by component, testing with a keyboard and a screen reader, and fixing what breaks. It's slow and it's rarely anyone's favorite project. Building accessibility in from the start costs almost nothing extra: semantic HTML, real form labels, sufficient color contrast, and visible focus states are basic engineering practices, not a separate workstream you bolt on later.

A short list of the fixes that cover most of the risk:

• Every image gets meaningful alt text, or an empty alt for purely decorative ones
• Every interactive element is reachable and usable with a keyboard alone
• Every form input has a real, programmatically linked label
• Text and background colors meet contrast standards, especially on buttons and links
• Focus states are visible, not stripped out for looking "cleaner"

None of this is exotic. It's the difference between a site that was designed and a site that just happened.

Where this fits if you're rebuilding anyway

If you're already planning a redesign or a rebuild, this is the moment to fix it once instead of patching it forever. It's also exactly the kind of thing we build in from day one at Cedrix, so it's never a fire drill later. If you want to see what that looks like without committing to anything, our free MVP offer is a low-risk way to start. Or if you'd rather just talk through what your current site is exposed to, get in touch and we'll walk through it together.