A Help Lawyer member attorney watched his favorite local pizza place receive a demand letter about its website, out of nowhere. ADA Shield by Help Lawyer grew out of that moment. The question that owner asked is the same one I hear from nearly every business I approach: why would a letter come to me?
The short answer is that these letters are written about websites, and a website is open to everyone. The longer answer has two parts, accessibility and privacy, and they work in different ways.
How a website letter works
A demand letter about a website names a page, describes a barrier or a piece of tracking technology, and asks for money and changes. It arrives before any court has looked at your business. You have to answer it either way, and the first thing anyone on either side will want to know is what you have done, and when.
Accessibility: what courts have said
In Robles v. Domino's Pizza, decided in 2019, the federal appeals court for the Ninth Circuit held that the ADA applied to Domino's website and app because they connected customers to the goods and services of its physical restaurants. The Supreme Court declined to review the case on October 7, 2019.
Whether a business that exists only online is covered is a separate question. Courts in the First, Second and Seventh Circuits have not required a connection to a physical location. Courts in the Third, Sixth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits have limited these claims to websites connected to one.
Plaintiffs file where they expect the strongest footing. UsableNet counted 5,114 digital accessibility lawsuits in 2025, including 1,919 in New York and California state courts, and reports that New York courts continue to accept cases against businesses whose websites reach New York residents even without a physical presence there.
For an online-only business, the honest position is that the law is unsettled. That uncertainty gets argued after a letter arrives, at your expense.
Privacy: what plaintiffs use now
The second kind of website letter is about tracking: pixels, analytics, chat tools and session recording that collect information about visitors. These claims usually turn on four things. What fired on the page, whether the visitor agreed before it fired, what the site disclosed, and when anything changed. They don't depend on having a physical location, and any visitor can be the plaintiff.
California's SB 690 was signed on September 30, 2026 and takes effect on January 1, 2027. It ends private lawsuits under one section of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, Penal Code 638.51, for conduct on websites and apps. The wiretapping and eavesdropping provisions in Sections 631 and 632 remain, and plaintiffs have been moving to those sections and to the federal Wiretap Act.
Healthcare booking pages have produced some of the largest settlements. In Donnelly v. Aspen Dental Management, plaintiffs alleged that tracking pixels shared information about people booking appointments with Meta and Google. Aspen denied wrongdoing and agreed to a settlement of more than $18 million, which received final approval on October 20, 2025.
Who receives these letters
Online stores
E-commerce accounted for 70% of the digital accessibility lawsuits UsableNet tracked in 2025. A product page, a cart or a checkout that a screen-reader user couldn't complete is what these letters describe. Lawsuits were filed against companies already using accessibility widgets more than 1,400 times that year, so a widget on its own leaves the question of your record open.
Restaurants
Food service made up 21% of 2025 digital accessibility lawsuits. Online menus and ordering pages are the usual front door.
ABC7 Los Angeles reported in January 2024 on Sticky Rice in Echo Park, sued by a legally blind plaintiff who alleged its website wasn't accessible.
Dental and medical practices
Healthcare made up 2% of 2025 accessibility lawsuits, but booking pages carry more privacy weight than most. For a practice, privacy and accessibility belong in the same record. ADA Shield by Help Lawyer for dental practices →
Therapists and counselors
Many therapists don't have a waiting room anyone walks into. Clients still find you, book with you and often start intake online, and a visit to a therapist's booking page is itself sensitive. In July 2023 the FTC finalized an order requiring BetterHelp, an online counseling service, to pay $7.8 million over sharing consumers' health data with advertisers. That was a large online company. For a small practice the question is simpler: what fires on your pages, and did the visitor agree first?
Small shops everywhere
West of Camden, a clothing store in Huntington Beach, faced two separate website accessibility lawsuits, the second from a different plaintiff and attorney.
What a record does on the day a letter arrives
You don't have to lose the legal argument to need a record. You need one the day the letter arrives. ADA Shield by Help Lawyer keeps it for you:
- A published accessibility statement and conformance seal
- A dated, tamper-evident Defense Ledger and a Defense Export you can hand to an attorney
- Cookie consent that holds tracking until a visitor agrees
- Privacy, Terms, Cookie and AI Transparency documents you can edit
- Response templates for ADA, CIPA and other website wiretap letters, Litigation Hold and Insurer Notice templates, and a step-by-step Response Playbook
What ADA Shield by Help Lawyer doesn't do
It doesn't give legal advice, review your letters or promise that a letter won't arrive, and it doesn't decide whether your business is legally covered. You can hire any attorney in the Help Lawyer network directly.
The letter is the first thing that arrives. The record is the first thing you'll want to hand over.