Digital accessibility means designing and maintaining your website so that everyone can use it — including individuals with visual, hearing, mobility, or cognitive disabilities.
For years, many businesses treated accessibility as optional. That is no longer the case. Website accessibility has become one of the most commonly targeted legal issues for small and medium-sized businesses, with hundreds of thousands of demand letters issued annually for inaccessible websites.
Digital accessibility is now a matter of legal compliance, business protection, and customer experience.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), any business open to the public must provide equal access to its goods and services. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and federal courts consistently interpret this requirement to include websites and mobile applications.
Although the ADA establishes the legal standard, it does not provide specific technical instructions for making a website accessible. This leaves business owners responsible for interpreting broad requirements and applying them to constantly changing web platforms — an approach that creates uncertainty and legal risk.
Beyond federal requirements, several states have enacted additional laws that intensify enforcement.
For example, California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act allows individuals to sue businesses directly for digital accessibility violations. Because Unruh incorporates the ADA, a single accessibility issue can trigger both federal and state penalties.
This combination is one reason California leads the nation in website accessibility legal actions. Cases commonly settle in the range of $5,000 to $25,000, and even small websites have been targeted.
With over 250,000 accessibility-related demand letters reported in 2023 alone, the risk affects businesses in every industry.
For many years, the standard for accessibility has been the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), a lengthy technical document written by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WCAG provides foundational principles — but presents significant challenges for most businesses:
Even after extensive work to follow WCAG, a business receives no protection or ongoing support. New content, design updates, or plugin changes can immediately create new accessibility issues. WCAG provides recommendations — but no ongoing accountability or business protection.
These gaps are why DAPEN.org created a new standard: the Website Builder Accessibility Guidelines (WBAG).
WBAG (Website Builder Accessibility Guidelines) is a modern accessibility framework created by DAPEN.org specifically for how websites are built today.
Instead of relying on dense, developer-oriented documentation, WBAG translates accessibility into clear, builder-specific steps that work for platforms like Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow, and WordPress.
WBAG focuses on the elements that matter most for preventing the majority of accessibility-related legal issues, including:
By aligning accessibility with modern builders, WBAG makes compliance more achievable, affordable, and maintainable.
Digital accessibility is a legal requirement under the ADA and related state laws. Every public-facing website must provide equal access, and failure to do so can lead to costly legal issues.
WBAG — created by DAPEN.org — offers a clear, modern path for improving accessibility within today’s website builders.
Modern compliance. Practical guidance.
