First
What to do, and what not to do
The instinct after reading one of these letters is either to panic or to dismiss it. Both are expensive. Here is the order that keeps your options open.
Do: send it to a lawyer
Before you reply to anything. These matters are legal first and technical second, and an early reply written without counsel can commit you to a timeline you cannot meet.
Do: get an independent audit
You cannot negotiate about a website nobody has measured. An audit gives you and your lawyer a dated record of exactly what was wrong and how much work fixing it represents.
Do not: ignore it
These firms file. Silence removes the settlement window and leaves you defending a claim instead of resolving a complaint.
Do not: quietly patch and hope
Changing a few things without a record can look like spoliation and leaves you with no evidence of the before state. Fix in the open, with documentation.
Day by day
The first seven days
This is the sequence I run with clients who arrive holding a letter. It is designed so that by the end of the week your lawyer has something concrete to respond with.
Days 1 to 2: preserve and instruct
Send the letter to your attorney. Take a dated copy of the site as it stands today, including the pages the letter names. Do not start changing code yet. Tell your team to keep a record of anything they do change.
Days 2 to 3: scope the audit
Identify the templates and journeys that matter: home, category, product or service, cart or enquiry, checkout, account, search and contact. That set, not every page, is what an audit needs to cover to be credible.
Days 3 to 8: audit by hand
Every template tested with JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack and keyboard alone, at 200 and 400 percent zoom and in forced colours. Each barrier recorded with the WCAG criterion it fails, where it occurs and how to fix it.
Day 8: remediation plan with dates
Barriers ranked by user impact and legal exposure, grouped into what can be fixed this month and what needs longer, each with an owner and a date. This is the document your lawyer responds with.
Why it works
What the audit gives your lawyer
A demand letter usually alleges inaccessibility in general terms. An audit converts that into something finite, and finite is negotiable.
A dated, independent record of the site
The report states what was tested, on what date, with which assistive technology, against which version of WCAG. That establishes your position at a point in time, from a third party rather than from your own marketing team.
A finite list instead of an open allegation
“Your website is not accessible” is unbounded. “Fourteen issues across six templates, nine of them fixable within three weeks” is a plan. Counsel can respond to the second; nobody can respond to the first.
Evidence that work is already under way
Settlement conversations turn substantially on whether remediation has begun. A signed remediation plan with dates, produced within days of the letter, is the strongest thing most defendants can put on the table.
A re-test that proves the fixes landed
After remediation the site is tested again and the report reissued showing before and after. Many settlement agreements require exactly this, so producing it as a matter of course keeps you ahead of the obligation.
You can see the format in the published case studies.
What they found
The barriers these letters usually cite
Demand letters are typically generated from an automated scan, so the issues named tend to come from a short list. All of them are real, and all of them are fixable.
- Images without text alternatives. Product photos, banners and icon buttons that a screen reader announces as “image” or reads out a filename. The most cited item in these letters, and usually the quickest to fix.
- Form fields without labels. Search boxes, newsletter sign-ups and checkout fields using placeholder text instead of a real label, so the prompt disappears the moment somebody types.
- Contrast below 4.5 to 1. Grey helper text, pale button labels and light text over photographs. Easy for a scanner to detect, which is exactly why it appears in almost every letter.
- Keyboard traps and hidden focus. Menus, modals and carousels that a keyboard cannot escape, and focus outlines removed for appearance. These block real users, not just scanners.
Who I am
Why an independent tester matters here
A report is only useful if it holds up under scrutiny. I am Shivaji Mitra, DHS Trusted Tester certified, running M/S. Anblik since 2003 with IAAP certified colleagues, and I have published 97 case studies covering government, healthcare and e-commerce work. I work in writing rather than meetings, which suits legal matters: everything I find, and everything I recommend, exists as a document you can forward.
FAQ
Website accessibility demand letters – frequently asked questions
Is a website accessibility demand letter a real lawsuit?
Not yet. A demand letter is a pre-litigation notice from a law firm claiming your website is inaccessible and inviting you to settle before a claim is filed. It carries real weight, because the same firms do file, but it is also the cheapest moment to resolve the matter.
Should I just pay what they ask?
Talk to your lawyer before paying anything. Paying a settlement without fixing the site leaves you open to a second letter from a different claimant, because the barriers are still there for the next automated scan to find. The durable answer is settlement plus remediation.
Can I just take the website down?
No. Removing the site does not remove the claim, and it destroys the evidence of your current state that an audit would capture. It also signals that no remediation is under way.
How quickly can you audit my site?
For a typical business site I can usually start within a few days and deliver the report inside one to two weeks. If you have a court or response deadline, tell me the date in your first message and I will say plainly whether it is achievable.
Will an audit report help my lawyer?
Yes, and it is usually the single most useful document you can give them. It establishes what was actually wrong, on what date, measured against a named standard, and it turns a vague allegation into a finite list of items with a remediation plan and dates attached.
What if the letter came because of an accessibility widget we installed?
That happens more often than vendors admit. Overlays do not repair the underlying code, and several businesses have received letters while running one. The audit will show what the overlay is hiding rather than fixing.
Do you give legal advice?
No. I am an accessibility consultant, not a lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice. I produce the technical evidence and the remediation work; your attorney handles the legal response. The two fit together well.
Start today
Send the letter and your site address
I will reply in writing within one working day with what an audit would cover, how long it takes and what it costs. If your deadline is not achievable I will tell you that too, rather than take the work.