Do small business websites have to be ADA compliant?

RushilFounder, Ru Visibility2 October 2026

Short answer

In the US, the Department of Justice says the ADA's requirements apply to the goods and services businesses open to the public offer on the web. It has no regulation setting detailed technical standards for them, but points to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as helpful guidance. This is general information, not legal advice.

What the Justice Department says

Its guidance on web accessibility is direct: “the ADA's requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges, or activities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web” ( US Department of Justice, March 2022).

“Public accommodations” means businesses open to the public. The Department's examples include “retail stores and other sales or retail establishments; banks; hotels, inns, and motels; hospitals and medical offices; food and drink establishments; and auditoriums, theaters, and sports arenas.”

Is there a technical rule to follow?

Not a detailed one for businesses. The Department says it “does not have a regulation setting out detailed standards”, and that businesses “have flexibility in how they comply”. It points to existing standards as “helpful guidance”, naming the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

In practice, WCAG 2.1 at level AA is the standard ADA web claims are generally measured against, and the one our audits use.

What problems it is talking about

The Department's own examples of barriers:

poor color contrast, such as light gray text on a light background;
no text alternatives (“alt text”) on images;
no captions on videos;
navigation that only works with a mouse, not a keyboard.

What a small business can sensibly do

Find out where your site stands, fix the barriers that stop people using it, and keep checking as the site changes. How to test your own site walks through the first step. We publish our own results, with dates, because we test other people's sites for this.

Not legal advice. If you have received a complaint or demand letter, speak to a lawyer.

Sources

Find out what AI says about you.

Send us your web address. We run our own tool on it, free, and send you what it says. The whole thing — not a taster with the useful bits taken out.

Whether AI can even read your site

ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google and Bing all send a small program to read your pages. We knock on your door as each one and see who gets let in. If they are being turned away, nothing else matters until that is fixed.

Two scores out of 100 — one for Google, one for AI

Plus what is behind each number. Where we could only make a fair guess, we say so instead of dressing it up as a measurement.

A list of fixes, best one first

Ordered by what gives you the most for the least work, so the top of the list is the quickest win. It is yours either way — use it with us or without us.

We ran it on our own site too. It told us what we were getting wrong, and we published that. A tool you will not point at yourself is not worth much.

One thing the free check does not do: actually ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini for businesses like yours, dozens of times, and count how often your name comes up. That costs us real money each time we run it, so it comes with paid work.