Is Your Website ADA Compliant? What Michigan Businesses Risk

Is Your Website ADA Compliant?

Most small business owners assume an ADA compliant website is something only big corporations have to worry about. That assumption is exactly what makes small businesses a target. Courts in much of the country have treated business websites as "places of public accommodation" under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the demand letters and lawsuits that follow regularly name small companies — local shops, restaurants, contractors, clinics.

The risk is real and it's growing. Thousands of web-accessibility lawsuits are filed every year in the U.S., and a large share target small and mid-sized businesses precisely because their sites are the least likely to be compliant. A single demand letter can mean a settlement that dwarfs what it would have cost to build the site right in the first place.

The reassuring part: compliance isn't mysterious, and it isn't only about avoiding lawsuits. An accessible site is a better, faster, more usable site for everyone.

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What ADA Compliance Actually Means (WCAG 2.1 AA)

There's no separate "ADA checklist" for websites. In practice, the recognized standard is WCAG 2.1 Level AA — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It sounds technical, but in plain English it comes down to a handful of things working properly:

• Color contrast strong enough that text is readable for people with low vision.
• Keyboard navigation — everything works without a mouse, because many people can't use one.
• Alt text on meaningful images, so screen readers can describe them.
• Labeled forms, so someone using assistive technology knows what each field is for.
• Logical headings and a clear page structure that screen readers can move through.
• Visible focus states, so a keyboard user can always see where they are.

None of this changes how your site looks to a typical visitor. It's mostly invisible — until it's the thing that lets a customer actually use your site instead of leaving.

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Why Overlay Widgets Don't Fix It

When business owners first hear about this, many reach for the quick fix: an accessibility overlay — one of those pop-up widgets with a little person icon that promises instant compliance for a monthly fee.

They don't work. Overlays sit on top of a site and try to patch accessibility with JavaScript after the fact, and they routinely miss the things that actually matter. Worse, sites using popular overlay tools have themselves been named in accessibility lawsuits — the widget became evidence that the owner knew about the obligation and chose a shortcut. Many people who rely on screen readers actively dislike overlays because they interfere with the tools they already use.

Real accessibility can't be bolted on. It has to be built into the markup of the site itself.

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A Two-Minute Self-Check

You don't need an audit tool to spot the most common problems. Try these on your own site:

• Unplug your mouse and press Tab. Can you reach every link, button, and form field, and can you always see where you are? If focus disappears or you get stuck, that's a failure.
• Look at your lightest text. Is faint gray text on white genuinely easy to read? Thin, low-contrast type is the single most-cited violation.
• Turn on your phone's screen reader for 30 seconds. If your images are announced as "image" with no description, your alt text is missing.

These won't catch everything, but if your site fails the basics, it's a strong sign the deeper structure needs work too.

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How to Actually Fix It

The honest path is also the simplest: build it in from the start. When a site is hand-coded with semantic HTML, proper contrast, labeled forms, and keyboard support from day one, accessibility isn't a separate project — it's just how the site is made. Retrofitting an old, bloated site is harder and more expensive than doing it right once.

That's the approach I take on every build. Every CATESWEB site is built to WCAG 2.1 AA as standard, along with the standard legal pages most sites need — not as an upcharge, not as an add-on, but as part of the baseline. It's the same reason I build web design in Grand Rapids clients sites that are fast and structured for local search: the things that protect you and the things that grow you are the same good engineering.

If you're evaluating anyone to build or maintain your site, accessibility is one of the questions that separates a real professional from a risk. It's on my list of 12 questions to ask before you hire a web designer — ask it, and pay attention to whether the answer is "we add a widget" or "it's built in."

This article is general information about web accessibility, not legal advice. For your business's specific ADA obligations, talk to an attorney.