Is an accessibility statement required by law? The answer depends on where your customers are: in the European Union it is now mandatory, and in the United States it is not explicitly required but is strongly recommended and treated by courts as good-faith evidence. Since the European Accessibility Act became enforceable on June 28, 2025, businesses serving EU consumers must publish an accessibility statement declaring how their digital services meet the standard. In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act does not name the document, yet in the current litigation climate a truthful, well-built statement, ideally produced with an accessibility statement generator grounded in a real audit, is one of the clearest ways to show you took accessibility seriously. This guide explains what the document is, exactly who is legally required to have one, what a defensible version must contain, and why a false statement is far more dangerous than none at all.
An accessibility statement is a public page on your website that declares which accessibility standard you are working toward, how you assessed your site against it, what you already know falls short, and how a user can report a barrier they hit. It is a statement of intent, effort, and honesty, not a certificate of perfection. Think of it as the accessibility equivalent of a nutrition label: it does not make the product healthy, but it tells people truthfully what is inside and gives them a way to raise a problem.
That distinction matters enormously in 2026, because the legal environment has turned the accessibility statement from a nice-to-have into a document with real consequences in both directions. A good one helps you. A dishonest one can be used against you. Let us walk through the whole picture, US-first, with the current data and its sources.
What is an accessibility statement?
An accessibility statement is a dedicated, public page, conventionally found at a URL like /accessibility, that communicates four things to any visitor, auditor, or regulator who looks for it. First, the standard you are targeting, which for almost everyone is WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the technical benchmark that both US courts and EU law treat as the measure of an accessible site. Second, how you assessed your site against that standard, whether by automated testing, manual expert audit, or a combination. Third, the known limitations, the specific areas you are aware do not yet fully conform. Fourth, a real contact route so someone who hits a barrier can tell you rather than tell a lawyer.
The reason all four parts matter is that an accessibility statement is fundamentally a claim about your site, and a claim is only as good as what backs it. A page that says "we are fully accessible" with nothing behind it is not a statement; it is an advertisement, and as we will see, an advertisement that is easy to disprove is a liability. The credible version is specific, honest about gaps, and built on an actual assessment of what your site does and does not do.
Is an accessibility statement legally required?
This is the question everyone actually wants answered, and the honest answer is that it depends on your jurisdiction and your customers, so here is the breakdown for North America and the EU.
In the United States, the ADA does not explicitly require a published accessibility statement. The ADA requires that places of public accommodation be accessible, and courts have overwhelmingly applied WCAG 2.1 AA as the yardstick for websites, but the statute names no specific document. So strictly speaking, you are not legally mandated to post one under the ADA. That said, publishing one is standard practice and is widely treated as evidence of good-faith effort, which matters more than ever given the litigation volume we will cover below. For US state and local government sites specifically, the picture is firmer: the Department of Justice's 2024 Title II rule sets WCAG 2.1 AA as the required standard, with compliance deadlines beginning in April 2026 for larger public entities, and a maintained statement is part of demonstrating that conformance. Our guide to US accessibility standards explains how the ADA, Section 508 and state laws fit together.
In the European Union, the situation is unambiguous. The European Accessibility Act became enforceable on June 28, 2025, and it requires covered businesses to make their digital services accessible and to publish an accessibility statement, or declaration, describing how they conform. Crucially, the EAA has extraterritorial reach: any business selling covered products or services to EU consumers must comply regardless of where it is headquartered, so a US-based e-commerce site accepting orders from the EU is squarely in scope. The presumed standard is EN 301 549, which incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Only microenterprises, broadly those under 10 employees and under 2 million euros in turnover, get limited relief; small and mid-sized businesses above that threshold must comply.
Two more North American frameworks round out the map. Section 508 requires US federal agencies and their contractors to meet accessibility standards and provide conformance information, effectively a statement in the form of an Accessibility Conformance Report. And in Canada, Ontario's AODA requires designated organizations to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA and, for larger organizations, to file accessibility compliance reports, which a maintained statement supports. So while the ADA itself does not compel the document, most of the legal frameworks around it either require a statement outright or make one the natural way to demonstrate compliance.
What should a legally sound accessibility statement include?
A statement that will actually help you needs specific components, because vague reassurance is worthless and overclaiming is dangerous. Drawing on the widely used W3C model and what regulators expect, a defensible statement contains the following elements woven into clear prose rather than empty boilerplate.
It opens with a conformance declaration that names your target and states your honest status against it, using the standard's own three levels: fully conformant, partially conformant, or non-conformant. For almost every real site the truthful answer is "partially conformant," and saying so is what makes the document credible rather than suspect. It then describes your assessment method plainly, so a reader knows whether the claim rests on an automated scan, a professional audit, or both, since the method is part of the strength of the claim. It lists known limitations honestly, naming the specific areas that fall short and, where possible, the workaround and the timeline to fix them. It provides a monitored feedback mechanism, a real email address or form, so users can report barriers and you can respond, ideally with a stated response time. It names the assistive technologies and browsers you tested with, because a conformance claim with no test environment behind it cannot be reproduced. And it carries a preparation date and a commitment to review, because an undated statement tells a reader nothing about whether it still describes the live site.
The single most counterintuitive rule here is that admitting your gaps strengthens the document. A statement with a genuine "known limitations" section reads as the honest output of a real assessment. A statement claiming flawless conformance reads as one nobody checked, and in a dispute it invites exactly the scrutiny you do not want. This is precisely why the strongest statements are built from an actual audit of the site's real state. Producing one with a free accessibility statement generator that first inspects your pages and reports the concrete findings, then turns those findings into a publishable declaration, means the document describes reality rather than aspiration, and every claim in it can be substantiated.
Does an accessibility statement protect me in a lawsuit?
A truthful accessibility statement is helpful evidence, not a legal shield, and understanding that difference is the difference between using the document well and misusing it. On the positive side, a dated statement that names your standard, documents your testing, admits your known gaps, and shows a remediation plan is concrete evidence of a good-faith, ongoing effort to comply. In a landscape where plaintiffs allege willful indifference, being able to point to a maintained, honest statement and an active process is genuinely valuable. It also gives a frustrated user a route to report a barrier to you directly, which can defuse a complaint before it becomes a filing.
The scale of that litigation risk is why this matters so much. According to Seyfarth Shaw's ADA Title III tracking, federal website accessibility lawsuits rose to 3,117 in 2025, up 27 percent from 2,452 in 2024, and website cases made up 36 percent of all federal ADA Title III filings. Counting state courts as well, UsableNet's 2025 year-end data found more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits filed across federal and key state courts. Consumer-facing e-commerce and retail absorb the large majority of these cases, roughly 69 to 77 percent by UsableNet's tracking, because transaction-heavy sites have the most places to fail.
But the statement only protects you if it is true, and here is the sharp edge. A statement is a public representation. If it claims WCAG 2.1 AA conformance while a plaintiff's tester finds unlabeled forms, keyboard traps, or images with no real alternative text, your own document becomes evidence that you represented the site as accessible when it was not. It can convert a straightforward accessibility complaint into one that also implicates deceptive representation. So the document that helps an honest business hurts a dishonest one, which brings us to the most important warning in this guide.
Why a false or overclaiming accessibility statement is dangerous
The most damaging thing you can do is publish a statement claiming full conformance when real barriers persist, and the most common way businesses stumble into exactly that is by pairing a bold statement with an accessibility overlay widget. This combination is the single easiest attack surface in web accessibility, and 2026 enforcement has made the danger concrete.
Overlays are third-party scripts that promise automated compliance, and the evidence is now overwhelming that they do not deliver it. Automated tooling of this kind finds issues for only about a third of WCAG criteria (16 of the 50 Level A and AA criteria in Deque's coverage report), which means a site running an overlay and claiming full conformance is asserting something the technology underneath cannot support. Worse, overlays frequently interfere with the assistive technology they claim to help, creating new barriers. The lawsuit data reflects this: repeat defendants made up about 46 percent of federal cases in 2025 according to UsableNet's reporting, because settling once without fixing the source code invites the next plaintiff to find the same failures and file again, and a meaningful share of sued sites already had an overlay installed when they were sued.
Then came the regulator. In its most consequential action in this space, the Federal Trade Commission moved directly against a leading overlay vendor. According to the FTC's own announcement of the final order, in April 2025 the Commission required accessiBe to pay 1 million dollars to settle allegations that it misrepresented the ability of its AI-powered accessWidget to make any website WCAG compliant, and the order bars the company from claiming its automated product can make any website conform, or stay conformant, without evidence to support it. The message from the federal government is explicit: automated "instant compliance" claims are false or unsubstantiated, and a business that repeats such a claim in its own accessibility statement is standing on ground a regulator has already called out. This is the core reason Sitejar fixes issues at the source and never uses overlays, and it is why we lay out the full case on our page explaining why overlay widgets and false conformance claims are dangerous. A statement is only as trustworthy as the remediation beneath it.
How to write or generate an accessibility statement correctly
The correct way to produce a statement is to describe a site you have actually assessed, not to paste a template that asserts conformance you have not verified. That means the process runs in one direction: assess first, fix what you reasonably can, then write the statement from the result. A statement written before any assessment is a guess, and in this legal climate a guess that overclaims is a liability.
In practice, the honest workflow has three stages. Start by auditing your site's real accessibility state to find the concrete barriers, using automated testing to catch the high-volume issues and manual testing with a keyboard and screen reader to catch what automation cannot. Then remediate at the source, correcting the actual markup and design rather than masking problems with a widget, so the fixes hold up when a plaintiff's tester or an EU auditor inspects the code. Finally, write the statement to reflect exactly what that assessment found: your real conformance level, the limitations you know about, your testing method and environment, your feedback route, and the date. A statement built this way is defensible precisely because every claim in it maps to something you actually checked. A generator that couples a real report of your site's findings with the drafting of the declaration keeps the two honest and in sync, which is the whole point. For the broader context of why source-level fixes are the only durable remedy, our writing on the accessibility debt piling up in modern code explains how these barriers accumulate in the first place.
Once written, placement and maintenance are the last mile. Give the statement its own page at a stable, predictable URL, link it from your site footer on every page so users and auditors can find it, and do not bury it inside your privacy policy or terms. Then treat it as a living document: review it at least annually and whenever you ship a material change, and update the known-limitations section as you fix things, so the page always describes the current site rather than the one you had a year ago.
Frequently asked questions
Is an accessibility statement legally required?
It depends on where your customers are. Under the EU's European Accessibility Act, enforceable since June 28, 2025, covered businesses serving EU consumers must publish one. In the US, the ADA does not explicitly require it, but it is strongly recommended and treated by courts as good-faith evidence, and US public-sector sites face firmer obligations under Section 508 and the DOJ's Title II rule.
What should an accessibility statement include?
A defensible statement names your target standard (usually WCAG 2.1 AA) and your honest conformance level, describes how you assessed the site, lists known limitations with workarounds, provides a monitored feedback contact, names the assistive technologies and browsers you tested with, and carries a preparation date with a commitment to review. Vague reassurance and claims of flawless conformance both weaken it.
Does an accessibility statement protect me from an ADA lawsuit?
A truthful one helps as good-faith evidence of an ongoing compliance effort and gives users a way to report barriers directly, but it is not a shield. If the statement overclaims, it can become evidence against you, showing you represented the site as accessible when real barriers existed. The protection comes from honest content backed by real remediation, not from the document's mere existence.
Is an accessibility statement the same as being WCAG compliant?
No. A statement is a declaration about your site; WCAG compliance is the actual technical conformance of the site itself. You can publish a statement without being compliant, which is dangerous if the statement overclaims, and you can be largely compliant without having written one yet. The goal is to make the statement an accurate description of a site you have genuinely assessed and remediated.
Can I just use an accessibility overlay instead?
No. Overlays are widgets that promise automated compliance but detect and fix only a minority of WCAG issues, often introduce new barriers, and have not protected sites from litigation. In April 2025 the FTC required overlay vendor accessiBe to pay 1 million dollars over deceptive claims that its tool could make any site WCAG compliant. A statement claiming full conformance on top of an overlay is the easiest thing for a plaintiff to disprove.
How often should I update my accessibility statement?
Review it at least once a year and whenever you make a material change to your site, such as a redesign, a new checkout flow, or a new template. Update the known-limitations section as you actually fix issues, and refresh the preparation date each time. A statement dated years ago signals to a reader, and a regulator, that nobody has checked since.
Where should I put my accessibility statement on my website?
Give it its own page at a stable, predictable URL, conventionally /accessibility, and link to it from the footer on every page so it is easy to find. Do not hide it inside your privacy policy or terms of service, because it answers a different question and needs to be reachable by someone who is already having difficulty using the site.
The bottom line
An accessibility statement is a public declaration of which standard you target, how you assessed your site, what still falls short, and how to report a barrier, and in 2026 it sits at the center of a sharply escalated legal landscape. It is mandatory under the EU's European Accessibility Act, which has reached across the Atlantic to any business serving EU consumers since June 28, 2025, and while the ADA does not compel it, US courts treat a truthful one as good-faith evidence amid more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits filed in 2025. The document helps you only if it is true: a statement that overclaims, especially one propped up by an overlay the FTC has already fined a vendor 1 million dollars for overselling, becomes the easiest evidence against you. The right move is not softer wording; it is honest content built on a real audit and source-level fixes, placed at a findable URL and kept current. Assess your site, fix what you find, and write the statement from the result. Do that, and the statement stops being a liability and becomes exactly what it should be: proof that you did the work.
Sources
FTC, FTC Approves Final Order Requiring accessiBe to Pay $1 Million
UsableNet, ADA Web Lawsuit Trends for 2026
Seyfarth Shaw ADA Title III, FTC Orders accessiBe to Pay $1M
W3C WAI, Developing an Accessibility Statement
This article is educational and reflects Sitejar's point of view. It is not legal advice. For your specific situation, consult a qualified attorney.