Online stores and accessibility lawsuits: read the report scope before the headline
The 2025 reports use different court coverage. Keep each number with its source, and use the findings to plan real customer-task checks.
A lawsuit headline may say website cases rose or that online stores were frequent defendants. Before using the number to make a business decision, ask what the report counted. A federal court count and a broader digital count are different measures.
The figures here come from the same reports used in our first article. They describe filed cases in defined groups of courts. They do not tell you the probability that your own store will receive a letter or face a lawsuit.
What the federal count covers
Seyfarth Shaw's report reports 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in US federal courts in 2025, compared with 2,452 in 2024. The firm describes that as a 27% increase. Keep the words federal courts beside that number.
The count does not include state-court cases or demand letters. A demand letter received by a business is therefore not another case to add casually to this total. If you compare years, use the same report's scope and definitions.
For an owner, the useful lesson is about reading a headline accurately. A larger number from a different report does not automatically contradict this one. First compare the courts and types of matters included.
What the broader digital count covers
UsableNet's report counted 5,114 digital accessibility lawsuits in 2025 in federal courts and the state courts of New York and California. Demand letters are outside that figure too. It is not a count of every complaint in every state court.
The report says about 70% of its cases were against e-commerce sites. Keep about in the sentence. Do not turn that approximate share into an exact store count. The figure belongs to the report's court coverage, not to all online businesses.
An online store owner can use this as a reason to take customer barriers seriously. It does not establish which specific feature on your store is inaccessible. That requires looking at the actual pages and tasks.
Keep the revenue and repeat-case findings precise
UsableNet found that companies with less than $25 million in yearly revenue were defendants in 64% of the 2025 cases it counted. Companies above $25 million accounted for the other 36%. Those shares describe defendants in the report, rather than the share of all small businesses sued.
The same report counted 1,427 cases against companies that had already been sued before. Preserve that as a count of cases. It does not say that every earlier defendant was sued again or that a past settlement determines the outcome of a later matter.
Follow a shopper through your own store
Choose an ordinary product and try reaching its details, selecting any required option and adding it to the cart. Include changing the quantity or removing the item. Use a safe test process agreed with the store team before attempting payment.
Use the keyboard for part of the route and ask an accessibility tester to assess barriers you cannot evaluate. The DOJ web accessibility guidance gives examples such as missing image descriptions, poor contrast and inaccessible forms. Those examples are useful prompts for a site review.
Record what happened on your store, not just what a scanner scored. If a product option cannot be selected, name the item and control. If an error message is unclear, save the wording and the step that produced it.
Include checkout and outside components
A working product page does not show that the full purchase route works. Put the cart, delivery fields and payment route on the test list. If another provider controls part of the journey, ask how to report and retest an accessibility issue there.
Keep private payment and customer details out of screenshots and issue reports. Use approved test data. Ask who owns the repair, who will repeat the task and how the outcome will be recorded. Those are practical decisions you can make without predicting a legal result.
Use the reports to start work, not a panic purchase
If a vendor cites a lawsuit percentage, ask for the report and the court scope. Then ask what work their proposal will do on your actual store. A credible scope names tasks, repairs and retests. A headline alone cannot establish that a tool fixes your barriers.
Do not accept a promise that a widget prevents lawsuits. Bring a letter or court document to qualified counsel, and bring technical barriers to an accessibility tester. Keep the legal response and the site repair plan assigned to the people who can assess them.
Your next step can be small and specific: test one purchase route, record its results and assign the observed barriers. That creates evidence about your own customer experience. The reports supply context; your site supplies the work list.
Access Heroes may earn a commission if you buy a tool we recommend. You pay the tool's maker directly, and we always tell you before you sign up. This article is general information, not legal or tax advice.
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Want help identifying barriers in your store's purchase route? Book a free web accessibility check with TJ. He will look at your site with you and tell you what to fix first.
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