AccessiScanA demand letter or ADA complaint just landed, citing your website under Title III and WCAG. Your stomach drops. Before you panic-pay a settlement or panic-buy an overlay widget, here is what actually matters in the first 72 hours — and the one thing that changes how these cases tend to resolve: being able to prove the day you started fixing it.
This is not legal advice and we are not your lawyer. Talk to a qualified attorney about your specific situation. What this guide gives you is the practical sequence and the documentation an attorney will ask you for.
Hour 0–4: do not do these things
- Do not ignore it. Most web-accessibility demand letters are real and are filed in volume by a small number of firms. Silence tends to escalate, not resolve.
- Do not install an overlay widget and assume you are covered. The FTC fined accessiBe $1M in 2025 and roughly a fifth of ADA web lawsuits in 2024–25 targeted sites that already ran an overlay. See our overlay lawsuit guide.
- Do not reply admitting fault or promising a specific compliance date before your attorney reviews it.
Hour 4–24: get an attorney + a dated record of where you stand
Forward the letter to counsel (an ADA-defense attorney if you can). In parallel, get a dated, objective record of your site's accessibility state right now. This matters because the question opposing counsel and the court keep coming back to is simple: when did you know, and what did you do about it? A timestamped audit run the day the letter arrived is the start of that answer.
A raw free-scanner dump (WAVE, Lighthouse) is a developer artifact — it is not dated, not signed, and not something you can hand to a lawyer. What you want is an audit that produces a verifiable, timestamped record you (and they) can point to.
Hour 24–72: build a remediation plan on paper
Settlement conversations tend to go differently when you can show a written remediation plan with real dates instead of a shrug. Group the issues by severity and commit to a timeline — critical issues first, then serious, then the rest. A 30/60/90-day plan, pre-filled with the actual issues found on your site, is exactly the kind of documented good-faith effort that demonstrates intent to remediate.
Publish an accessibility statement on your site as well. Courts look for one. It should describe your commitment and your remediation timeline without claiming you are already fully conformant.
What documentation an attorney will want
- A dated audit of the site against WCAG 2.1 AA, with issues ranked by severity.
- A written 30/60/90-day remediation plan tied to those specific issues.
- A published accessibility statement with a feedback contact.
- A way to verify the audit was conducted on the date claimed — a hash-signed, timestamped record beats "trust me, we ran a scan."
- Later: a before/after re-scan showing the issues you have resolved.
How AccessiScan helps (and what it is not)
Our $149 one-time audit was built for exactly this moment. It ships as a Legal Evidence Pack: an automated WCAG 2.1 AA scan with a prioritized fix list, a 30/60/90-day remediation plan pre-filled with your issues, a draft accessibility statement, a demand-letter response template for your attorney to adapt, and — the part free scanners cannot give you — a SHA-256 hash-signed, timestamped record with a public verification page, so the date you acted is independently verifiable. After you remediate, a free re-scan documents your progress against that dated baseline.
Honest scope: automated checks cover roughly 30–40% of WCAG 2.1 AA (the mechanical issues); full conformance requires manual testing with a screen reader. This documents your conformance status and good-faith effort. It is not a certificate of compliance and it is not legal advice. Anyone who promises that a scan or a widget instantly solves this for you — with no manual work and no ongoing effort — is overselling. Real remediation means fixing the issues, not buying a badge.
Get your timestamped audit + Evidence Pack → Emailed within the hour, no account required.