Healthcare accessibility lawsuits: what the numbers mean for design teams

2 August 2026

Accessibility & health literacy Accessibility & Regulation

Website accessibility lawsuits in the US hit their highest volume since 2022 in 2025. The legal structure behind that number is stable; the number itself is a dated snapshot, and the standard actually named is older than most teams assume.

Not legal advice This article describes public reporting on litigation trends for design education. It is not legal advice and not a compliance verdict on any product. Figures are dated and change; check current reporting before relying on them.

In the United States, two separate legal structures drive most digital-health accessibility exposure: Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which lets private individuals sue businesses open to the public, including many health websites and apps; and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which covers any recipient of federal financial assistance, a category that includes most hospitals and health systems. Both are stable, decades-old laws. What moves year to year is the volume of lawsuits filed under them, and that volume is the number most often quoted in design conversations - worth separating from the legal structure itself.

The legal structure behind the numbers

Two federal rules, both finalised in 2024, put specific technical detail behind Section 504 and the related Title II of the ADA (state and local government). The Department of Health and Human Services rule under Section 504 covers recipients of HHS financial assistance and names WCAG 2.1 Level AA as its technical standard; its compliance dates were extended in 2026 to 11 May 2027 for recipients with 15 or more employees and 10 May 2028 for smaller ones. The Department of Justice rule under Title II names the same standard, WCAG 2.1 AA, for state and local government bodies, with dates extended to 26 April 2027 and 26 April 2028 depending on population size. Title III, the part of the ADA that produces most of the lawsuits against private businesses, names no technical standard in the statute itself - courts and settlements have filled that gap, and WCAG 2.1 AA is what they consistently land on, not the newer WCAG 2.2.

The 2025 number, as a snapshot

Seyfarth Shaw, a law firm that tracks ADA Title III filings, reported 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits filed in US federal court in 2025 - a 27 percent increase on 2024 and the highest count since 2022, making up 36 percent of all ADA Title III lawsuits filed that year. This figure is cited here as a dated snapshot of one year's litigation activity, not as a headline claim about accessibility generally: filing volume rises and falls with factors well beyond how accessible the web has actually become, including which law firms are active and how courts in different circuits are currently ruling. The firm's own tracking page could not be opened directly for this article (it blocks automated access); the figure is corroborated by independent secondary reporting that cites the same number and source.

Which standard actually gets named

A team building a health product might reasonably assume WCAG 2.2, the current version, is the bar that matters in litigation. It generally is not, yet. Reporting on 2025 settlements and demand letters consistently finds WCAG 2.1 Level AA cited as the requested standard, matching the version named in the 2024 HHS and DOJ rules above. WCAG 2.2 is not absent from every context - a financial-services team, for example, may face separate regulatory exposure that does reference it - but for the general run of ADA Title III accessibility litigation, 2.1 AA remains the standard actually being asked for.

What this means for health product teams

Treat WCAG 2.1 AA as the floor for anything public-facing (a marketing site, a patient portal, a booking flow), since it is both what current federal rules name and what litigation actually asks for.
Meeting WCAG 2.2 AA covers 2.1 AA automatically, since 2.2 is backwards compatible - there is no reason to design to 2.1 specifically once 2.2 is the target, only a reason not to assume 2.2 is what a court will ask about today.
A US hospital or health system is very likely a Section 504 recipient (most accept federal funding in some form), which brings the 2024 HHS rule's compliance dates into play directly, separately from any Title III litigation risk.
Read any lawsuit-count figure, including the one in this article, as a snapshot from its publication date, not a permanent fact - filing volume has moved substantially year to year and will keep moving.