If you run an independent practice, your website is no longer just a digital business card. Patients use it to book appointments, fill out intake forms, pay bills, message your team, and access their portal. That also makes it a growing source of legal exposure, and plaintiffs' firms have noticed.
Website accessibility lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act climbed again in 2025, and healthcare is one of the sectors seeing more of them. This is a rundown of why the risk is rising, what the law actually asks of you, and the practical steps that reduce your exposure, including where compliance tools genuinely help and where they can make things worse.
Why this matters now
Digital accessibility litigation rebounded sharply in 2025 after a brief dip. Seyfarth Shaw counted 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits for the year, roughly a 27 percent increase over 2024. When you add state court filings, UsableNet put the total above 5,000. A mid-year report from EcomBack found 2,014 website accessibility suits in just the first half of 2025, a 37 percent jump year over year.
Healthcare sits squarely in the target zone. Retail and food service still draw the most cases, but medical and health providers made up a meaningful and rising share, with EcomBack logging 144 filings against the medical and health industry in the first half of 2025 alone. The reason is simple: as patient portals, telehealth platforms, and online forms have expanded, so has the number of pages a plaintiff can point to as a barrier.
What the law actually requires
Title III of the ADA covers places of public accommodation, and it names the professional office of a health care provider directly. That means an independent practice is covered whether or not it takes any federal money. When a patient with a disability cannot use your site the way everyone else can, that is the theory most of these cases are built on.
There is no single ADA statute that spells out technical website rules, so courts and plaintiffs have almost universally settled on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, as the yardstick. The practical standard today is WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with the newer WCAG 2.2 raising the bar further on things like focus indicators and mobile touch targets.
One more layer worth flagging: the HHS Section 504 final rule sets WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the standard for recipients of federal financial assistance, with compliance dates arriving in 2026 and 2027 depending on entity size. Many practices that participate in Medicaid may fall under this rule in addition to Title III. If you are unsure whether your practice counts as a recipient, that is worth confirming, because it changes the timeline you are working against.
The problems that show up most often
Demand letters and complaints tend to cite the same recurring issues. On a medical practice site, the usual suspects are:
- Images without alt text, so screen readers cannot describe them
- Form fields without proper labels, which breaks intake forms, insurance fields, and appointment requests for anyone using assistive technology
- Poor color contrast that makes text hard to read for low-vision users
- Navigation that cannot be operated by keyboard alone
- Video without captions
- PDFs and downloadable forms that are not tagged or readable by screen readers
Notice how many of those live on the exact pages patients need most: intake, booking, billing, and portal access.
Why an accessibility widget is not a shortcut
Here is the part that trips up a lot of well-meaning practice owners. It is tempting to drop in an AI-powered accessibility overlay, one line of code that promises to make your site compliant automatically, and consider the problem solved. The evidence says that does not work, and it can actively increase your risk.
In the first half of 2025, roughly 22.6 percent of website accessibility lawsuits targeted sites that already had an accessibility widget installed. Plaintiffs are specifically looking for them, because an overlay signals a business that thought it had a fix but did not test the actual experience.
Regulators have said the same thing. In January 2025, the Federal Trade Commission announced a one million dollar settlement with accessiBe, an overlay company that had marketed its AI tool as able to make any website WCAG compliant. The FTC alleged the plug-in failed to fix basic components like navigation menus, form fields, and image descriptions, and the final order now bars the company from claiming its automated product can make any site compliant. The FTC also flagged that the company had dressed up paid endorsements as independent reviews.
The takeaway is not that all tools are useless. It is that no tool makes your site compliant on its own, and any vendor promising otherwise is selling you a liability, not a defense.
What actually reduces your risk
Real protection comes from a program, not a plug-in. The core steps:
- Audit against WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 Level AA. Use an automated scan to find the obvious issues, then follow it with manual and assistive-technology testing. Automated scanners only catch a fraction of accessibility barriers, so the manual pass matters.
- Remediate the actual code. Fix the alt text, form labels, contrast, keyboard navigation, captions, and document tagging at the source. This is the step overlays skip.
- Publish an accessibility statement with a real contact channel so users can report problems and see that you are making an ongoing effort.
- Set up issue reporting and respond to it. A documented feedback loop shows good faith and often resolves a complaint before it becomes a demand letter.
- Vet your vendors. Your booking system, patient portal, and telehealth platform are all part of your surface area. Ask each vendor for their accessibility conformance documentation, sometimes called a VPAT.
- Monitor on an ongoing basis. Accessibility is not one and done. Every new page, form, or content update can reintroduce barriers, so build re-testing into your routine.
- Document everything. If a demand letter arrives, a record of your audits, fixes, and response process is one of your strongest assets.
Where AI and compliance tools genuinely fit
Tools earn their place inside that program, not in place of it. AI-assisted scanners are good at speeding up detection and handing you a prioritized remediation roadmap. They do not replace manual testing or the actual code fixes, and they cannot promise compliance.
A platform like Clym is a reasonable fit here precisely because it supports the workflow rather than pretending to be a magic fix. It scans a site against WCAG 2.2 and returns a categorized report with remediation guidance, provides an accessibility statement and an issue-reporting channel, and offers a user preference center for display adjustments. For patient-facing sites, it also handles the privacy and consent side, including cookie consent and HIPAA authorization, which is a real convenience when your website already has to juggle both accessibility and privacy obligations. The value is in the auditing, documentation, and ongoing management, not in a single line of code that makes the work disappear.
If you use any tool, use it to do the work, not to skip it.
If you receive a demand letter
Many of these matters start as a demand letter rather than a filed lawsuit. Do not ignore it, and do not panic-install an overlay in response. Loop in counsel, pull together your accessibility records, and move quickly on remediation. A prompt, documented, good-faith response is often what keeps a letter from turning into litigation.
The bottom line
The lawsuits are rising, healthcare is on the list, and independent practices are covered under Title III whether or not they take federal funding. The good news is that the fix is knowable: audit, remediate the real code, publish a statement, keep a feedback loop open, vet your vendors, and monitor over time. Tools can accelerate every one of those steps. Just remember that accessibility is something you build and maintain, not something you buy in a box.
Disclosure: Clym is a partner of Camino Strategy Group.
Sources
- Seyfarth Shaw, ADA Title III federal filing data, 2026
- UsableNet, 2025 Year-End Digital Accessibility Trends
- EcomBack, 2025 Mid-Year and Annual ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuit Reports
- Federal Trade Commission, accessiBe order and press release (January 2025, final April 2025), ftc.gov
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Section 504 Final Rule, hhs.gov
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 and 2.2
- DarrowEverett LLP, ADA Website Accessibility Litigation Insights, 2025
- ADA Title III, 42 U.S.C. 12181(7)(F)