An accessible website is one that people with disabilities can use: someone who is blind and uses a screen reader, someone who cannot use a mouse, someone with low vision who zooms in, or someone who is deaf and needs captions. It also happens to make a site easier for everyone, including the many customers browsing on a phone in bright Florida sunshine.

Accessibility comes up in our conversations with Jacksonville business owners for two reasons: they want to serve every customer, and they have heard about ADA website lawsuits. This guide covers both, in plain English.

A quick note: we are a web design and development team, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. If you have received a demand letter or have specific legal questions, talk to an attorney.

What the ADA says about websites

The Americans with Disabilities Act was written before the modern web, so it does not mention websites directly. The U.S. Department of Justice has made its position clear in its guidance on web accessibility and the ADA: businesses open to the public, which the ADA calls public accommodations, must provide equal access to their goods and services, and that includes what they offer online. The DOJ lists retail stores, banks, hotels, medical offices, restaurants and theaters among the businesses covered. Medical practices have extra considerations, which our healthcare website design checklist walks through.

For private businesses, the DOJ has not issued a regulation with a specific technical standard. Its guidance says businesses have flexibility in how they comply, while still being required to make their online services accessible. It points to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as helpful technical guidance.

State and local governments are in a different position. In 2024 the DOJ adopted a rule under Title II that sets WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the standard for government websites and apps. In April 2026, the DOJ extended those compliance dates to April 2027 for larger governments and April 2028 for smaller ones. That rule does not apply directly to private businesses, but it shows which standard regulators consider the benchmark: WCAG 2.1 AA.

Florida is one of the busiest states for these cases: in 2025 it had the second-most federal website accessibility lawsuits in the country, behind only New York, according to Seyfarth Shaw's ADA Title III tracking. That is another practical reason local businesses pay attention to this.

WCAG in plain English

WCAG is published by the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative. The WCAG overview explains the structure. The guidelines are organized around four principles, often remembered as POUR:

• Perceivable: people can see or hear the content, or get it another way. Think alt text for images and captions for video.
• Operable: people can use the site with a keyboard, a switch or voice, not just a mouse, and they have enough time to do so.
• Understandable: text is readable, navigation is predictable and forms explain what went wrong.
• Robust: the code works with assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Each guideline has testable success criteria at three levels: A (the minimum), AA (the level most organizations target) and AAA (the strictest, rarely required for a whole site). When people say a site “meets WCAG,” they usually mean WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 at Level AA.

WCAG 2.1 vs 2.2

WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023. It includes everything in 2.1 (except one obsolete criterion about code parsing) and adds new success criteria. The ones at Level A and AA that matter most for small business sites are:

• Focus not obscured: sticky headers, chat widgets and cookie banners should not completely hide the element a keyboard user is on.
• Target size: buttons and links should generally be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or have enough space around them.
• Dragging movements: anything that requires dragging, like a slider, needs a simple click alternative.
• Consistent help: if you offer help such as a phone number or chat, keep it in the same place on every page.
• Redundant entry: do not make people retype information they already entered in the same process.
• Accessible authentication: logins should not depend on memory puzzles; allow password managers and copy and paste.

Our recommendation: build and test new sites to WCAG 2.2 AA. It covers 2.1 AA and keeps you current.

The issues we find most often

When we review small business websites in Northeast Florida, the same problems show up again and again. They are also the barriers the DOJ highlights in its guidance.

A 15-minute self-check

You do not need special tools to spot the biggest problems. Try this on your homepage, your main service page and your contact page:

1. Unplug the mouse. Press Tab repeatedly. Can you see where you are on every step? Can you reach the menu, every link and every form field, and submit the form?
2. Zoom to 200%. Does text still fit, or does content overlap or disappear? Does the page work on a narrow phone screen without sideways scrolling?
3. Check the headings. Is there one clear main heading, with sections in a logical order? Headings should describe the structure, not just make text bigger.
4. Read the links out of context. Would “Learn more” make sense on its own? Would “Learn more about roof repair”?
5. Submit a form with a mistake. Does it tell you clearly what went wrong and where, in text rather than only a red border?
6. Play a video with the sound off. Are there captions, and are they accurate?

The W3C also publishes Easy Checks, a free first review you can follow step by step. Free automated tools such as WAVE or the accessibility section of Google Lighthouse are helpful too, but they only catch part of the problem. As the DOJ puts it, a “clean” report does not necessarily mean everything is accessible.

What about accessibility overlays?

Overlays are scripts that add an accessibility toolbar or claim to fix a site automatically. They can adjust things like text size, but they cannot reliably fix problems in the underlying code, such as unlabeled forms, poor heading structure or inaccessible custom menus. Many accessibility practitioners and disability advocates are critical of relying on them. We recommend treating an overlay as, at most, a convenience, never a replacement for fixing the site itself.

Build it in, do not bolt it on

The most cost-effective time to handle accessibility is during design and development. Retrofitting a finished site is possible, but it means revisiting layouts, components and content that could have been right the first time. In our UI/UX design process, we:

• Choose color palettes that pass contrast checks before anything is built.
• Design visible focus states and large, well-spaced tap targets from the start.
• Use real HTML elements (buttons, labels, headings and landmarks) instead of styled boxes that only look right.
• Write content with clear headings, plain language and descriptive links.
• Test with a keyboard, a screen reader and zoom before launch, not only with automated tools.

Accessible sites also tend to be faster and better structured, which supports SEO. Clean headings, descriptive links and text alternatives help search engines understand a page, too.

Keep it accessible after launch

• Train whoever edits the site to add alt text, use headings correctly and avoid text baked into images.
• Check new PDFs and videos. Menus, forms and brochures uploaded as scanned PDFs are a common gap.
• Review third-party widgets. Booking tools, chat boxes and review widgets can introduce barriers you did not build.
• Publish an accessibility statement with a way for people to report problems and get help, and respond when they do.

How we help

We design and build websites for Jacksonville and Northeast Florida businesses with WCAG 2.2 AA as the target, and we can review an existing site and give you a prioritized list of fixes. If speed and search visibility are also on your list, our free website speed and SEO report is a good place to start.

Need this done for your site? Our ADA website compliance service covers a WCAG 2.2 AA audit with automated and manual testing, a prioritized findings report, fixes to your code and content, an accessibility statement and retesting.

Frequently asked questions

Ask about an accessibility reviewCall (904) 574-9775