How to respond to a website accessibility complaint

A website accessibility complaint tells you that a real person could not do something on your site. Most arrive as an email, a contact-form message or a social post from a visitor, and the best response is the one a good team gives any bug report: acknowledge it, reproduce it, fix it and say so. Some arrive as a letter from a lawyer, a notice from an agency or court papers, and those need a lawyer before you answer. Either way, write down what you were told and what you did, with dates: the record helps you fix the problem, and anyone who later reviews the complaint, such as a lawyer, will want it. This page is general information, not legal advice.

What kind of complaint is it?

The first move depends on who is writing, so sort the complaint before you reply.

If a message mentions a lawyer, a law, damages, a deadline or an agency, our reading is to treat it as one of the last three kinds. If you are unsure which you have, ask a lawyer before you reply.

People can also complain to an agency, and the route depends on where you are. In the US, the Department of Justice takes ADA complaints through an online report or a paper form. Its complaint page says it might refer a complaint to its confidential, voluntary ADA Mediation Program or investigate it, that an investigation could lead to a settlement or a lawsuit, and that it cannot investigate every complaint. In the UK, the GOV.UK model statement for public sector bodies sends people who are unhappy with a response to the Equality Advisory and Support Service, or to the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland for organizations there. In the EU, the European Accessibility Act requires each member state to set up procedures to follow up complaints about services and to designate the authorities responsible. Our pages on UK law and EU law have the details.

Replying to a visitor who reports a barrier

Seven steps cover most messages. Take them in order: the reply comes before the fix, because the person is waiting.

1. Acknowledge it promptly

   Thank the person, say you are looking into it and say when they will hear from you next. Give a time you can keep. The GOV.UK model statement leaves a blank for the number of days a public body will take to answer a request for an accessible format, and any site can borrow the idea. Do not argue, and do not tell the person the problem is their browser. W3C's guidance for people reporting problems warns reporters that an organization may blame their browser or assistive technology, so ask for details instead.

2. Ask for what you need to find it

   The same W3C guidance suggests that a person reporting a barrier give the web address or a description of the page, what they were trying to do and why it was hard or impossible, their operating system and browser, any assistive technology or settings involved, and a screenshot. Ask for these in a short, friendly message and work with whatever comes back. Some people find writing a report hard, so offer a phone call. Never ask for a password.

3. Reproduce the barrier

   Open the page and try the task the way the person did: with the keyboard alone, zoomed in, on a phone and, if you have one, with a screen reader. Our five-minute keyboard test and guide to testing website accessibility give routines for each. A tool can speed this up but cannot close the report: the DOJ's web guidance (March 18, 2022) says a "clean" automated report does not necessarily mean everything is accessible. If you cannot reproduce the problem, say so politely and ask for more detail, because W3C notes that some problems come from settings in the browser or assistive technology. Try another browser before you rule it out.

4. Name the criterion and rank it by the task

   Find the WCAG success criterion the barrier breaks, so you can describe it precisely and test the fix; our criteria reference lists them all. The level (A, AA or AAA) tells you what a law or contract asks for, not how urgent a fix is. W3C's Understanding Conformance says WCAG 2 does not suggest any particular level of priority or severity, and that the effect of a failure also depends on how often it occurs and on the type of content or functionality that fails. Our reading is to fix first what stops someone finishing a task such as checkout, sign-in, booking or a contact form. What the conformance levels mean explains the three levels.

5. Give the person a way to finish now

   Do not make them wait for the fix. Offer another route to the same task: an order taken by phone or email, a form completed with them, the information in another format. The GOV.UK model statement does this for public sector sites, with email and phone routes for accessible formats and for directions when a map cannot be viewed. Keep the alternative in place until the fix is live and tested.

6. Fix it at the source

   Fix the barrier where it comes from, in the theme, template, component or content, because a fault in a shared template appears on every page that uses it. Retest the way you reproduced it, then check the other pages that use the same code. Do not add an overlay widget as the fix. In April 2025 the FTC finalized an order requiring accessiBe to pay $1,000,000; its complaint charged that claims its product would make a website meet WCAG were false or unsubstantiated. Our overlays comparison and guide to alternatives to overlays say more.

7. Tell the person and keep the record

   Write back when it is fixed, say what changed and ask the person to confirm it works. W3C's reporter guidance notes that an organization might fix a problem and not tell the person who reported it, so do not leave them to find out. If the fix will take time, say what you will do and when. Keep the message, your replies, a saved copy or screenshot of the page before the change, what you changed and the retest result in one place. The table is a layout you can copy.

When it is a letter, an agency notice or court papers

Do not use the seven steps as a script. Get a lawyer first: whether a claim is valid, what to say and whether to negotiate are legal questions, and the answers depend on your facts and where you are. Then, with the lawyer's advice:

• Write down every date in the letter or papers, and give the document to your lawyer the same day.
• Keep the original and how it arrived, such as the envelope or the email.
• Ask before you change the pages it names, and ask how to capture them as they stand now.
• Test each barrier it lists, using steps 3 and 4. If it attaches an automated report, check every item against the page: the DOJ's guidance says a report that includes a few errors does not necessarily mean there are barriers.
• Fix at the source and record the fix, as in steps 6 and 7.

Which standard to test against depends on the law that applies to you, so ask your lawyer, and use our laws questionnaire to prepare. Our demand letter guide puts these steps in order, and ADA website compliance, US accessibility laws and WCAG vs ADA vs Section 508 cover what the US rules say.

What not to say or do

• Do not tell anyone your site is accessible or meets the ADA. Whether a site meets the law is a legal question, and no scan or vendor can answer it for you. Say what you tested, what you found and what you are fixing. Our rule scanner comparison explains what automated checks leave out.
• Do not argue with the person's experience. Do not demand proof of it. Check it yourself.
• Do not promise a date you cannot keep. A missed promise costs more trust than a longer, realistic one.
• Do not fix quietly when the complaint is a letter or court papers. Ask your lawyer how to capture the pages first.

Make complaints easy to send and easy to find

The easiest complaint to handle is one that reaches you directly. The DOJ's web guidance says websites that provide a way for the public to report accessibility problems allow website owners to fix them. W3C's guidance on accessibility statements says a statement should contain at least a commitment to accessibility, the standard you applied and contact information in case users encounter problems. It adds that statements are not technical assessments or declarations of conformity. In practice, and in our reading:

• Publish a statement, link it from your footer and put a monitored email address or form in it.
• Decide who reads that inbox and who fixes what arrives, so a message does not sit.
• State a response time you can keep.
• Describe your conformance status only as far as you have tested, and say "partly" where known gaps remain.

Our accessibility statement guide covers who must publish one and what to include, and the accessibility statement generator drafts one in your browser. If you run a small business, web accessibility for small businesses shows where to start.

Check it yourself

Free tools help you reproduce and describe a barrier. None of them, and no scan, can show that a page meets WCAG or any law; they confirm whether specific, machine-detectable problems are present or gone.

• The accessibility statement generator drafts a statement with a contact route for complaints. It runs in your browser and sends nothing anywhere.
• The accessibility bookmarklet checks a live page in your browser, including a page behind a login, which is the page the person actually used.
• The alt text checker judges whether alt text is true of the image, for complaints about images a screen reader user could not understand.
• The contrast checker gives the exact ratio for two colors, and the image contrast checker does the same for text over an image, for "I cannot read it" reports.
• The heading checker and link text checker show the outline and the link names a screen reader user hears, for "I cannot find my way around" reports.
• The WCAG checklist tracks all 55 Level A and AA criteria and exports to CSV, which gives you a record to keep with your complaint log.

Scan my site for free runs rule-based checks on the pages it scans, and says what a scan leaves to a person.

Keep it checked

A fixed barrier can come back with the next change to a page. W3C's guidance on sustaining accessibility notes that changing content can introduce accessibility issues and advises monitoring changes to find them. GotAlt checks the pages you monitor every week. It compares the alt text of up to six images per page with the image itself, runs its rule checks, opens monitored pages in a browser for contrast and other checks that need a rendered page (see what we check), and reports what changed. Plans are from $69 a month. Audit my whole site from $69/mo. For how often to re-test, see how often to test your website's accessibility and accessibility monitoring vs a one-time audit.