Hot off the presses, here are the best practices for making your website ADA compliant in 2025: WCAG 2.1 AA conformance and publishing an accessibility statement.
There’s no dancing around it, it’s the same, rock solid advice we’ve been telling clients for years. But let’s break down our specific recommendations for solo entrepreneurs and small business with lower budgets as well as entities with larger budgets.
What NOT to Do: Widgets
Any website owners with any budget can already pickup a win by not using any automated “solutions” for website accessibility. It doesn’t matter whether they’re AI super charged or not. Whether they’re called widgets, apps, plugins, tools, toolbars, etc., stay far away.
Overlay widgets don’t make your website WCAG conformant and they do not stop lawsuits. Moreover, some plaintiffs’ law firms actually look for websites with these overlay widgets installed.
Recommendations for Lower Budgets
If you’re a small business or working with limited resources, here’s your action plan:
1. Focus on High-Risk Issues First
Start by addressing the accessibility issues most likely to trigger litigation. Alternative text for images is particularly crucial – it’s not technically complex to implement but carries one of the highest associated risks.
Sign up for our ADA Compliance Course for the exact strategy and instructions we recommend.
2. Reduce Scan Errors to 0
While just a starting point, we always recommend reducing your automated scan errors down to zero. Zero errors on free tools like definitely helps reduce risk.
- WAVE
- Google Lighthouse
- AXE scan
Remember that while scan results are helpful, many plaintiffs’ lawyers have recruited teams of accessibility professionals now. They don’t recruit people for them simply to use a scan.
3. Work with Detail-Oriented Contractors
If you’re outsourcing work, choose contractors who have experience in accessibility, not just those who claim to “know about” it. Look for those who pay close attention to detail and demonstrate their knowledge.
Some contractors just throw WCAG and accessibility in because they know website owners are looking for it. Seek out contractors who harp on it.
4. Consider a Mini Audit
A focused audit of 5 or fewer core pages can provide extremely high value at a lower cost. The scope will include a core set of the most critical pages on your website and then your developer can apply issues found to other pages.
Recommendations for Higher Budgets
Organizations with a higher budget can advance their accessibility and compliance efforts even further along with more precision. With the lower budget, we’re working as best we can and with a higher budget, we’ll have more comprehensive scope with greater precision.
1. Invest in a Professional Audit
Get a thorough, professional audit. This will tell you all of the issues within scope and provide suggestions on how to fix them.
2. Implement Professional Remediation
Whether handled in-house or outsourced, ensure remediation is done correctly. This includes:
- Systematic addressing of identified issues
- A re-audit that verifies the fixes have made been correctly
3. Develop an Accessibility Policy
Create an internal accessibility policy distinct from your public accessibility statement. This demonstrates your organization’s commitment to accessibility and has the remote upside of potentially helping you defend against a lawsuit.
4. Invest in Training
Train your team to maintain accessibility standards, preventing the introduction of new issues during updates and changes. This ensures your investment in accessibility isn’t undermined by future website updates.
We highly recommend our WCAG Course.
Maintaining Compliance: Best Practices
Whatever your budget, the best path is to take action immediately and be aggressive in finding and fixes issues. This exercise is all about improving accessibility and reducing risk and being proactive is the winning approach.
It’s better to take care of accessibility now and never experience receiving demand letter or finding out a complaint was filed against you in court.
If you need help with reducing risk of a lawsuit, we’re happy to help. Just send us a message and we’ll take care of everything from there.
