The case law that shaped what "accessible" legally means.
Website accessibility lawsuits made up roughly a third of all federal ADA Title III filings in 2025. These are real cases — not hypotheticals — explained in plain language, so you can see exactly how "we didn't know the standard" has held up in court.
Robles v. Domino's Pizza, LLC
Guillermo Robles, who is blind, could not order a pizza through Domino's website or mobile app because neither worked properly with his screen-reading software. Domino's central defense was that no federal regulation had ever specified a technical web accessibility standard, so it argued it couldn't be held liable for failing to meet one.
The Ninth Circuit rejected that argument. It held that Title III of the ADA applies to a company's website and app when they have a strong connection — a "nexus" — to a physical place of business, and that the absence of a formal federal web standard doesn't excuse inaccessibility. The Supreme Court declined to hear Domino's appeal, leaving the ruling in place. Domino's and Robles reached a confidential settlement in 2022.
Gil v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.
Juan Carlos Gil, who is visually impaired, couldn't use Winn-Dixie's website to refill prescriptions or access digital coupons tied to his in-store rewards account. In 2017, a federal judge ruled in Gil's favor after a full trial — the first bench trial ever held on a website accessibility claim — and ordered Winn-Dixie to bring its site up to WCAG 2.0 AA.
Winn-Dixie appealed, and in 2021 the Eleventh Circuit reversed course, holding that a website is not automatically a "place of public accommodation" under the ADA. The court found that a site only needs to be accessible when its inaccessibility creates an actual barrier to using the physical store — and ruled that wasn't proven here.
National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corp.
The National Federation of the Blind notified Target in 2005 that Target.com was unusable for blind customers. Target initially argued the ADA only governed its physical stores, not its website. The court disagreed, allowing the case to proceed, and Target ultimately settled in 2008 — paying $6 million in class damages, training its developers, and agreeing to ongoing monitoring by the NFB.
National Federation of the Blind v. H&R Block
The NFB sued H&R Block, alleging its website and tax-filing mobile apps were unusable with screen readers. In one of the first cases where the Department of Justice formally intervened on web and mobile accessibility, H&R Block entered a consent decree requiring WCAG 2.0 AA conformance before the next tax season, a dedicated accessibility coordinator, staff training, and $100,000 in damages.
Compliance is the floor. Inclusion is the reason it exists.
Every case above started with a person who simply couldn't do something everyone else could — order food, refill a prescription, buy a gift, file a return. The legal exposure is real, but it's downstream of a simpler fact: an inaccessible website turns away real customers, constituents, and community members.
Disability Is Common, Not Rare
More than a billion people worldwide live with a disability, and many more experience a temporary or situational limitation — a broken arm, bright sunlight on a phone screen, a slow connection on an old device. Accessible design tends to help all of them.
Overlays Don't Change This Math
A widget that adjusts contrast in the browser doesn't restore a broken checkout flow to a screen reader. The people these cases are about needed the underlying code to work — which is exactly what an overlay leaves untouched.
Don't wait to find out which side of these cases you're on.
An audit today is a lot less expensive than a consent decree later.
Request a Compliance Audit