Almost certainly not — and that’s the uncomfortable part. The ADA holds the party that “owns, leases, or operates” the place of public accommodation responsible, and that’s your business, not the freelancer or agency that built your site. When an ADA website lawsuit arrives, it names you. Your designer, in most cases, faces no legal exposure at all unless your contract says otherwise.
That last clause is the whole game. You can’t transfer your ADA duty to a vendor, but you can put money and remediation obligations back on the agency with the right contract language — and almost no small-business web contract has it. This article covers who actually gets sued, the 2025 case where a business tried to blame its web vendor and lost, the clause language that works, and the California bill that tried to change the rules.
Who gets sued when a website isn’t accessible?
The business, essentially every time. Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination “by businesses open to the public,” in the words of the Department of Justice’s web accessibility guidance — and lawsuits follow that definition. According to UsableNet’s year-end lawsuit report, more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2025, and 1,427 of them targeted companies that had already faced a prior claim. The defendants are retailers, restaurants, and service businesses — not the shops that built their sites.
The DOJ has also addressed outsourcing directly. Its guidance on the Title II web rule for government entities states: “Your public entity can’t contract away its responsibilities under the ADA.” Courts apply the same principle to private businesses — the duty not to discriminate belongs to the public accommodation and stays there, no matter who wrote the code.
So the honest answer to “who is responsible for website accessibility” is layered. Practically, everyone who touches the site shapes its accessibility — as Search Engine Journal’s explainer put it, “we are responsible for the content on our webpages.” Legally, one party holds the bag: you.
Why the ADA doesn’t reach your web designer
Because of nine words in the statute. Title III attaches liability to any entity that “owns, leases, or operates” a place of public accommodation (42 U.S.C. § 12182), and your designer does none of those things with respect to your website. As accessibility consultancy Converge Accessibility explains, “web developers usually don’t own, operate, or lease their customer’s websites,” so a person with a disability generally can’t sue the developer under Title III — even for a site the developer built badly.
There’s an instructive contrast in the physical world: architects have occasionally been held liable under the ADA’s design-and-construction language for new buildings, and courts split on it. But no comparable language covers websites, and Converge’s assessment is blunt: there is “little chance” a court would extend Title III to web developers for their clients’ sites.
One state-law caveat. In California, website accessibility claims ride on the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which carries statutory damages of “in no case less than four thousand dollars ($4,000)” per violation under Civil Code section 52. Those claims, too, run against the business — which is exactly why California legislators tried to change the target. More on that below.
One restaurant tried to blame its web vendor — and lost
In Herrera v. Grove Bay Hospitality Group, LLC (S.D. Fla. 2025), a Miami restaurant group was sued over an inaccessible website and did what many owners fantasize about: it filed a third-party complaint against its website platform, Popmenu, arguing the vendor had misrepresented the site’s accessibility. The court dismissed it. Popmenu’s terms of service said the company “does not warrant that the services will satisfy or ensure compliance with any legal obligations or laws or regulations,” and the restaurant had agreed to those terms, as Converge Accessibility’s December 2025 legal update details.
Read your own web contract and there’s a good chance you’ll find the same kind of disclaimer. Platform terms of service and agency boilerplate routinely disclaim all warranties of legal compliance. The lesson from Herrera isn’t that vendors can never be held accountable — it’s that accountability has to be written in before the project starts, because the default language points the other way.
Indemnification vs. contribution: the distinction that decides who pays
If you do negotiate liability-sharing language, the specific mechanism matters more than most owners realize. In Equal Rights Center v. Niles Bolton Associates (4th Cir. 2010), a court refused to enforce an owner’s full indemnification claim against its architect, reasoning that a party can’t offload a non-delegable civil-rights duty entirely. But in Clover Communities Beavercreek v. Mussachio Architects (2023), a contribution claim — sharing the cost rather than shifting all of it — survived. Converge Accessibility’s analysis concludes contribution clauses “may be honored by the court,” while full indemnification stands “a very good chance” of being thrown out.
| Indemnification clause | Contribution clause | |
|---|---|---|
| What it asks | Vendor covers 100% of your ADA liability | Vendor pays its fair share of the loss |
| How courts have treated it in civil-rights cases | Rejected in Niles Bolton (4th Cir. 2010) as an impermissible full transfer of a non-delegable duty | Allowed to proceed in Clover Communities (2023) |
| Practical takeaway | Feels safest, most likely to fail when you need it | Less sweeping, more likely to actually hold up |
The comparison comes from architecture and housing cases, but as Converge notes, there isn’t an obvious reason the logic wouldn’t carry over to web accessibility disputes. Ask your attorney for contribution language, not just a blanket indemnity.
A sample accessibility clause for your web design contract
Most web design agreements never mention accessibility, which means the default outcome — you carry everything — applies. Here’s starting-point language to bring to your attorney:
Contractor warrants that all deliverables will conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA at delivery, verified by automated testing plus manual testing with a keyboard and at least one screen reader. Contractor will provide a written summary of the testing performed and the results. If Client identifies a conformance failure that existed at delivery within twelve (12) months, Contractor will remediate it at no additional charge within thirty (30) days of written notice. This warranty excludes content or code added or modified by Client or third parties after delivery. In any accessibility-related claim arising from a conformance failure that existed at delivery, Contractor agrees to contribute its proportionate share of losses, up to the total fees paid under this agreement.
Whatever final form your lawyer lands on, make sure the clause covers these five elements:
- A named, versioned standard. “Accessible” and “ADA compliant” are arguable; WCAG 2.1 Level AA is testable.
- Manual testing, stated explicitly. Automated scanners catch only a fraction of WCAG failures — that gap is well documented in our guide to automated vs. manual testing — so a warranty verified only by a scanner is close to worthless.
- Written proof. A test summary tells you the work happened and gives you evidence if a dispute ever comes.
- A remediation window. The most valuable remedy usually isn’t money — it’s the developer fixing conformance failures free, fast, on a deadline.
- Contribution, with a cap and carve-outs. A proportionate-share clause capped at project fees is language courts are likelier to honor and agencies are likelier to sign. A demand for unlimited indemnity mostly produces a refused contract.
None of this substitutes for the site actually being accessible. A great clause after a lawsuit lands is a cost-recovery tool; it will not make a demand letter go away.
What about California’s AB 1757?
AB 1757 was the bill that would have flipped this entire article. Introduced in California in 2023, it would have made it unlawful for a “resource service provider” — web developers included — to “construct, license, distribute, or maintain for online use an internet website” that fails to conform to WCAG 2.1 AA, per the bill text. It also would have banned falsely representing that a site is accessible. For the first time, a person with a disability — or a business left holding the liability — could have sued the developer directly.
It didn’t pass. According to the California legislative record, AB 1757 was held under submission in committee on August 15, 2024, and died there. And despite several articles claiming a renewed version is pending, the bill numbered AB 1757 in the 2025–2026 session is a nuclear-energy bill — a recycled number, not a revival. As of July 2026, no California law makes web developers directly liable for inaccessible client sites.
The bill still matters as a signal. Nearly 2,000 accessibility cases landed in New York and California state courts in 2025 by UsableNet’s count, and the idea behind AB 1757 — that the people building the web should share responsibility for its barriers — has vocal advocates. If your agency builds sites for California businesses, this is the direction the wind is blowing.
If you’re the designer or agency reading this
The legal shield is real, but it’s thinner than it looks. You can be sued for breach of contract if you promised accessibility and didn’t deliver. Contribution claims like Clover Communities may reach you even without a promise. And commercially, a client who eats a five-figure settlement — typical numbers are in our settlements and costs breakdown — over a site you shipped is a client you’ve lost, along with every referral they’d have sent.
The stronger position is to sell accessibility instead of disclaiming it: build to WCAG 2.1 AA, test manually, document the testing, and offer the warranty above from your side of the table. Agencies that can prove conformance are increasingly winning work because of the lawsuit wave, not despite it.
What owners should do before signing — or after launch
If you’re hiring a designer now: put the standard, the manual testing, the proof, and the remediation window in the contract before work starts, and have a lawyer shape the contribution language. If your site already launched — with or without those promises — the priority is finding out what you actually got, because the lawsuit risk sits with you either way. Our guide to making your website ADA compliant walks through the full process, and an accessibility audit with real assistive-technology testing tells you whether the “accessible” site you paid for would survive contact with a plaintiff’s tester.
Want a fast, free first look at what your designer delivered? Run a free accessibility scan.