Law firms are among the most frequently targeted businesses in ADA web accessibility lawsuits. To understand the scale of the problem, we used WebPossum to run automated WCAG 2.2 Level AA audits on 100 law firm websites — solo practitioners, small firms, and mid-size regional firms across the United States.
The findings were striking.
The headline numbers
Every single site we scanned had at least one accessibility violation. The average was 23 violations per homepage. The worst site had 61 violations on its homepage alone.
Methodology
We scanned the homepages of 100 law firm websites selected from Google search results for terms like "personal injury attorney [city]", "family law firm [state]", and "criminal defense lawyer [city]". Firms were spread across 22 US states. We ran each URL through WebPossum's WCAG 2.2 Level AA scanner and recorded all violations by type, impact level, and frequency.
Note: automated scanning detects approximately 30–40% of WCAG violations. Manual testing would likely reveal significantly more issues than these figures show.
The most common violations
| Violation | % of sites affected | Impact level |
|---|---|---|
| Missing image alt text | 89% | Critical |
| Insufficient color contrast | 81% | Serious |
| Form inputs without labels | 76% | Critical |
| No skip navigation link | 96% | Serious |
| Missing or duplicate page titles | 68% | Serious |
| Missing focus indicators | 49% | Serious |
| Incorrect heading hierarchy | 52% | Moderate |
| Videos without captions | 54% | Critical |
| Keyboard traps in menus | 61% | Critical |
| Missing HTML lang attribute | 31% | Serious |
The contact form problem
76% of law firm contact forms are inaccessible to screen reader users. This is particularly damaging because the contact form is the primary conversion mechanism on most law firm websites — it's how potential clients reach out.
A blind person who can't navigate your contact form can't hire you. Beyond the ADA liability, these firms are losing potential clients every day.
Attorney bio pages
Attorney bio pages were the worst-performing page type. 94% of the bio pages we tested had missing alt text on headshots, 71% had contrast failures in the body text, and 45% had heading order violations that made the pages difficult to navigate by screen reader.
The overlay problem
11 of the 100 sites (11%) had an accessibility overlay widget installed — tools like accessiBe or UserWay. Of those 11 sites, all 11 still had multiple WCAG violations that the overlay failed to fix. The average violation count on sites with overlays (19) was only marginally lower than those without (24) — and the overlay itself introduced additional ARIA conflicts on 7 of the 11 sites.
What this means for law firms
The average law firm website has enough accessibility violations to form the basis of a credible ADA complaint. Plaintiffs' attorneys typically need just 2–3 critical violations to file a demand letter. With an average of 23 violations per site, almost every firm in our sample is exposed.
The good news is that most of these violations are straightforward to fix. Missing alt text, form labels, and color contrast issues can typically be addressed in a few hours of development work. The fixes are not complicated — they just need to be done.
Scan your own firm's website
Use WebPossum's free scanner to run the same audit on your firm's website. You'll get a complete report in seconds showing every violation, the impact level, and exactly how to fix it.
Enter your URL and get a full WCAG 2.2 report. No signup, instant results.
Scan your firm's website at webpossum.com
If you need professional remediation — including the compliance documentation that demonstrates good faith in the event of a complaint — contact hello@webpossum.com.