Real WCAG 2.1 AA remediation — not an overlay widget that courts have repeatedly refused to accept as a defense.
Most web work is getting easier. This part is getting harder, and the stakes are going up rather than down.
Web accessibility lawsuits against private businesses run into the thousands every year, and they overwhelmingly target small and mid-sized companies — not because those businesses did anything malicious, but because their sites are easy to test and expensive to defend. Separately, the Department of Justice's ADA Title II rule sets hard WCAG 2.1 AA deadlines of April 2027 and April 2028. If you contract with a school district, a city, a county, or any public entity, that deadline lands on you too.
Here is why this is the pillar that AI does not erode: what you are actually buying is someone who takes responsibility. A model can flag a missing alt attribute. It cannot sit across from your lawyer and explain what was tested, what was fixed, and why the remaining items were judged acceptable. That signature is the product.
I have already built and shipped this work — a full WCAG 2.1 AA remediation for a healthcare practice, done as a proper attribute-level fix in the theme rather than a bolt-on script.
You have probably seen the ads: drop in one line of JavaScript, get an accessibility badge, sleep soundly. It is a tempting offer and it does not hold up.
Overlay tools have been named in hundreds of ADA lawsuits — in many cases the widget itself became evidence that the business knew about the problem and chose a cosmetic fix. Major disability advocacy organizations have publicly rejected them, and thousands of accessibility professionals have signed statements against their use.
The reason is simple. An overlay sits on top of broken markup and tries to guess intent at runtime. It cannot know that your unlabeled button submits a contact form. The barrier is still there for the person using a screen reader — you just stopped being able to see it.
I fix the markup itself. It takes longer, it costs more than $49 a month, and it actually works.
Audit first, then fix, then keep it from drifting back.
I start where the tools are genuinely good: contrast failures, missing alt attributes, malformed ARIA, form fields with no label. This catches roughly a third of real issues and it costs almost nothing to run.
Then I do the part software cannot. Navigate your entire site by keyboard only. Run it through a screen reader. Check that focus order makes sense, that modals trap focus properly, that your menu works without a mouse. This is where the lawsuit-grade problems actually live.
Real remediation: proper semantic structure, skip links, visible focus indicators, correct ARIA, meaningful alt text written by a person who looked at the image. No overlay, no script that papers over the problem at runtime.
You get a written report: what was tested, what was found, what was fixed, and an honest note on anything still outstanding and why. This is the document that matters if you ever receive a demand letter.
A public statement on your site describing your conformance level and giving people a way to report barriers. It is required by some standards, it is good practice everywhere, and it demonstrably helps demonstrate good faith.
This is the part people skip. Every new blog post, image, and plugin update can reintroduce problems. Compliance is a state you maintain, not a certificate you earn once — which is exactly why the monthly plan exists.
Nobody can make you lawsuit-proof, and I will not pretend otherwise. There is no government certification for private business websites, and a determined plaintiff can file regardless. What genuine remediation does is remove the actual barriers, dramatically reduce the surface area a tester can find, and give you documented evidence of good-faith effort. That is a materially different position than doing nothing — but it is not a force field, and you should be wary of anyone who says it is.
Most clients start with the audit and move onto Compliance Care once the fixes are in.
Already on a Website Care plan? Compliance Care is $145/mo bundled.
30 minutes with Dan. No sales script, no call center, no outsourcing. I will tell you honestly whether this is worth your money — including when the answer is no.