Do you know your ADA Digital Accessibility Risk?
The first half of 2025 brought another surge in digital accessibility lawsuits. Between January and June, plaintiffs filed more than 2000 lawsuits in U.S. federal courts alleging that websites, mobile apps, or digital platforms were inaccessible. That represents a 37 percent year-over-year increase compared to the same period in 2024.
Those raw numbers can be alarming if you run a business, manage a digital platform, or advise on compliance. What many decision-makers miss, however, is that risk is not evenly distributed across the marketplace. A small group of repeat plaintiffs and their attorneys account for the majority of lawsuits. Understanding who these plaintiffs are and how they operate is crucial to making a realistic risk assessment tailored to your organization.
The Concentration of ADA Litigation
One of the key takeaways from the 2025 mid-year reports is that just 31 plaintiffs filed more than 50 percent of all ADA digital accessibility lawsuits in the first six months of the year. That works out to roughly 1,016 lawsuits initiated by a small cluster of individuals and the lawyers who represent them.
That concentration matters. It tells us that the ADA litigation environment is driven less by thousands of independent individuals filing one-off cases, and more by a limited number of repeat actors (sometimes referred to as “testers”) who file hundreds of cases each year.
Among the most active plaintiffs in early 2025 were Michael Sandoval, Julie Dalton, Perla Mageno, Rebecca Castillo, and Robert Glen Myers. Each of these plaintiffs filed dozens of lawsuits, collectively accounting for a significant share of the national totals.
Why Concentration Matters for Risk
If you think of ADA litigation as a random risk, like a lightning strike that randomly impacts organizations, you will almost certainly misjudge your exposure. In reality, the environment looks more like a targeted hunt. Repeat plaintiffs have patterns. They often file against specific industries, website designs, or geographic regions.
If your business model, technology stack, industry profile, or jurisdictional location overlaps with what these prolific plaintiffs target, your risk is significantly higher than average. Conversely, if you operate in an industry that has historically been outside their focus, your immediate litigation risk is lower, though never zero.
This doesn’t mean organizations in “low-risk” sectors should ignore accessibility. The ethical and business imperatives for accessibility remain universal. However, from a litigation standpoint, understanding these concentrations enables organizations to allocate resources more effectively (or argue for additional resources).
Key Factors to Include in an ADA Risk Assessment
To make an informed decision about your organization’s ADA risk, combine plaintiff intelligence with other risk factors.
Industry Vulnerability
Industries with high consumer interaction and transactional websites continue to be the most frequent targets. In the first half of 2025, companies in the retail, e-commerce, restaurant, health services, and beauty/home product sectors saw the highest number of new lawsuits. These industries are attractive because their websites often involve purchasing flows, forms, and multimedia content, which are all easily discoverable potential WCAG failures.
Business Size and Revenue
Historically, ADA digital cases targeted mid-sized firms, but the trend is shifting upward. In the first half of 2025, 36 percent of lawsuits targeted businesses with annual revenues over $25 million, up from 33 percent in 2024. Plaintiffs and their lawyers are well aware that larger firms are more likely to settle quickly, and either have insurance or can afford to absorb higher payouts. Smaller firms are not immune, but the concentration of risk is moving toward organizations with bigger balance sheets. TL;DR: The lawyers go where the money is.
Accessibility Widgets and Overlays
Accessibility overlays—add-on tools that promise to make a site compliant with “one line of code”—continue to draw lawsuits. Plaintiffs and courts increasingly reject these tools as insufficient because they do not address the underlying code problems. If your site relies solely on overlays as its ADA remediation, that is again, easily discoverable, and makes it more likely your organization will appear on a target list. TL;DR: Using an overlay screams “This site isn’t accessible, sue us!”
Geography and Venue
While federal courts hear ADA Title III cases nationwide, some jurisdictions have become hotbeds of activity, particularly New York, Florida, California, and Illinois. Businesses operating in those states face a higher risk of litigation. The plaintiffs most responsible for filings in 2025 usually file repeatedly in the same courts with familiar judges. TL;DR: Location, location, location. Lawyers want easy settlements and wins, not convincing new judges hundreds of miles away that accessibility matters.
How to Build a Layered Picture of Risk
The most effective way to understand ADA litigation exposure is to build a layered picture of risk that takes the following items into account:
Plaintiff intelligence: Are the top 31 plaintiffs filing cases against your industry or a geographical region where your organization can be sued? Do their digital or snail mail addresses, or the addresses of their law firms, show up in your customer or marketing database?
Peer benchmarking: Have competitors or similar organizations in your space been sued?
Technical indicators: Does your site fail automated scans on basic WCAG criteria?
Business profile: Is your revenue size, customer base, or online presence aligned with common targets?
Overlaying these factors lets you map risk into categories—low, moderate, and high. For example, a large e-commerce company headquartered in Florida with $50 million in annual revenue that relies on an accessibility widget would fall into a high-risk category. A small Wyoming-based B2B company that makes embroidered t-shirts and doesn’t sell out of state would fall into a lower category.
What To Do Once You Understand Your Risk
Risk assessment is only helpful if it is used to inform action. Not having a strategy is a strategy, it’s just not one you can count on for positive results. Once you have a clear view of exposure, the next step is mitigation. That means investing in genuine accessibility improvements, not just legal defenses.
Train Your Teams
Accessibility is not a one-time project. Designers, developers, QA testers, and product managers all need training on WCAG requirements and inclusive design practices. Embedding accessibility into day-to-day work prevents regressions and reduces long-term cost.
Commit to Fixing Bugs At Their Source
The only reliable long-term solution is fixing accessibility barriers at the code level. That means aligning your site or app with WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 AA standards, rather than relying on overlays or widgets.
Incorporate User Testing
People with disabilities should test your digital properties. Automated tools and developer checklists are not enough. User testing provides real-world validation that your site is genuinely usable, which strengthens both accessibility outcomes and your legal defense if challenged.
Document Efforts and Progress
Courts tend to look more favorably on organizations that demonstrate a consistent commitment to accessibility, even if the site is not yet perfect. Maintain documentation of audits, remediation roadmaps, and testing cycles to ensure accurate and comprehensive records. Words or intent without action are viewed unfavorably, as they indicate that your organization was aware of the need to be accessible but deliberately or negligently chose not to take any action.
Final Words
While litigation grabs headlines, accessibility is fundamentally about inclusion. Lawsuits may motivate action, but the broader benefits of accessibility, such as expanded customer reach, stronger brand reputation, and better user experience, extend far beyond risk avoidance.
A digital experience that excludes people with disabilities is not only a legal liability, but it is also a lost business opportunity. More than 60 million adults in the United States live with a disability, representing hundreds of billions in disposable income. Inclusive design directly expands market access.
The spike in ADA digital accessibility lawsuits in 2025 underscores the urgency of addressing accessibility, but raw lawsuit counts can be misleading. With over half of the cases filed by just 31 plaintiffs, risk is highly concentrated and predictable.
By understanding who the repeat plaintiffs are, which industries they target, and how those patterns intersect with your own business model, you can build a realistic picture of your organization’s litigation risk. Combine that insight with technical assessments and proactive remediation, and you will be in a far stronger position to avoid lawsuits and serve all your customers more effectively.
Accessibility is a journey that requires ongoing attention, but the cost of inaction is rising. Now is the time to make informed decisions and invest in meaningful accessibility improvements.