One of the banes of e-commerce websites is lawsuits filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), claiming that websites are inaccessible to people who are sight-impaired or have other disabilities. The number of ADA e-commerce lawsuits surged in 2025 and all indications are that this will continue into 2026. For websites that offer hundreds of products for sale, it is virtually impossible to ensure that every product link converts seamlessly to screen readers and other specialized apps designed for accessibility to navigate, search, and purchase items online. Plaintiffs who call themselves “testers” spend hours online searching out broken hyperlinks and the like. Federal law does not have any clear standards or safe harbors to give businesses any degree of certainty when it comes to compliance. Even worse, a recent NBC report stated that many litigants are using tools such as ChatGPT to draft the lawsuits rather than hiring an attorney to do so. This do-it-yourself trend makes lawsuits easier to file and even harder to resolve because pro se plaintiffs tend to have unrealistic expectations and/or make unreasonable settlement demands.
