The reason most businesses arrive at this subject is a letter, and the first question is always what this will cost. The honest answer is that the settlement is rarely the largest number: the demand is typically modest by design, and the cost that follows is remediation, legal fees and the second letter from a different firm if nothing changes. This page is what the process looks like and what to spend on. On the worked example the fix behind it is $15,872, which is the number that ends the exposure rather than pausing it.
What a demand letter is, and what it asks for
A letter alleging the site is inaccessible, usually citing specific failures a scan found, asking for remediation and a payment. The alleged failures are almost always real, because they came from an automated scan of your live site, which is the first useful thing to check: run the same scan and see.
Where the money actually goes
Three places: the settlement itself, your own legal costs, and the remediation you were always going to have to do. The third is the only one that stops it happening again, and it is the one that gets cut when the first two dominate the conversation. A site fixed to Level AA is not a site that receives a second letter of the same kind.
What to do in the first week
Give the letter to your lawyer, scan your own site, and start on the templates. On the worked example the template fixes are 126 of 401 issues and reach every page, so a fortnight's work materially changes what your lawyer can say about the current state of the site.
Questions people ask about ada lawsuit settlement amounts
Should we just settle?
That is your lawyer's call, not this site's. What is not optional either way is the remediation, because the letter's allegations were true when it was written.
Can an accessibility statement help?
A dated statement listing known issues and a fix schedule is evidence of a programme, which is a materially better position than silence.
Does an overlay prevent this?
No, and installed overlays have appeared in these cases. The run-time script is not the same as the site being usable.