ADA TriageADA website lawsuits in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania had the fifth-most website accessibility lawsuits in federal court in 2025. If your Pennsylvania 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.
Check your site against the complaint. We scan your site and read the complaint or letter you got. In a few minutes you'll see how many issues we found and which of its claims they match. No payment or account needed.
The numbers
Seyfarth Shaw, a law firm that tracks these filings, counted 137 website accessibility lawsuits in Pennsylvania's federal courts in 2025, up from 103 in 2024 and the fifth-most of any state, after New York, Florida, Illinois and Minnesota. 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. One Pittsburgh firm filed 9 of these cases in the Western District of Pennsylvania between October 5 and October 14, 2026, all for the same plaintiff: what East End Trial Group's complaints say.
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. Pennsylvania's federal courts are in the Third Circuit, whose decisions apply there. A Pennsylvania attorney can tell you how this question is currently treated.
Is there a Pennsylvania 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
- Talk to a Pennsylvania attorney about the deadline. Lawsuits have a short, fixed deadline to respond.
- Get the technical facts. Find out which of the claimed barriers actually exist on your pages today.
- Fix the real issues on your site itself, starting with your home, product, cart and contact pages. Step-by-step fixes: Shopify, WordPress.
- Keep dated records of what was wrong, what you changed and when.
Want the specifics for your site? Run a free check first. Our $19 Technical Assessment + Fix Plan maps the claims in your letter or complaint to the actual issues on your pages, with step-by-step fixes and a dated before/after report after you fix them.