ADA website lawsuits in Illinois

Illinois has become one of the busiest states for website accessibility lawsuits. If your Illinois business received a letter or a lawsuit about its website, here's what to know.

This is a technical accessibility assessment, not legal advice, and automated testing cannot establish ADA compliance.

The numbers

Seyfarth Shaw, a law firm that tracks these filings, counted 585 website accessibility lawsuits in Illinois's federal courts in 2025, the third-most of any state, after New York and Florida. Those counts don't include cases filed in state courts.

What these cases are about

They're usually brought under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the federal law covering businesses open to the public. The complaint typically says a person with a disability, often someone who uses a screen reader, couldn't use the website, and lists barriers like images without alternative text or form fields without labels. How these lawsuits work, in plain English.

Common questions

My business only sells online. Does this apply to me?

Courts in different parts of the country haven't always agreed on this. Illinois's federal courts are in the Seventh Circuit, whose decisions apply there. An Illinois attorney can tell you how this question is currently treated.

Is there an Illinois law that sets website standards?

There's no federal regulation that sets technical standards for business websites. Letters and complaints usually point to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 or 2.2, level AA. Ask your attorney whether any state law also applies to your business.

I got a letter, not a lawsuit. Is it real?

Some business owners receive scam emails that imitate law firms or platforms. A real letter names a firm you can look up, and a filed lawsuit has a case number in court records. What to do about a demand letter.

First steps

1. Talk to an Illinois attorney about the deadline. Lawsuits have a short, fixed deadline to respond.
2. Get the technical facts. Find out which of the claimed barriers actually exist on your pages today.
3. Fix the real issues on your site itself, starting with your home, product, cart and contact pages. Step-by-step fixes: Shopify, WordPress.
4. Keep dated records of what was wrong, what you changed and when.