In July 2026 alone, plaintiffs filed 401 new ADA web accessibility lawsuits in US federal courts. At that pace, 2026 will close above 5,500 filings — the highest annual total on record, and the sixth consecutive year above 4,000.
Those numbers sound like a nationwide wave of individual grievances. They are not. According to litigation trackers that follow these filings, 31 plaintiffs and 16 law firms accounted for more than half of every ADA website lawsuit filed in 2025. The top ten plaintiffs alone filed 26.6% of cases. Ten law firms filed 83%.
That concentration is the single most useful thing a business owner can understand about this risk. You are not defending against the general public. You are defending against a small number of highly systematic filers who screen thousands of websites for the same handful of detectable failures.
How Concentrated the Filings Actually Are
| Concentration measure | Share of all 2025 filings |
|---|---|
| Top 10 plaintiffs | 26.6% |
| Top 16 plaintiffs | 51% |
| 31 plaintiffs + 16 law firms | Over 50% |
| Top 10 law firms | 83% |
This is not a claim that any individual plaintiff's underlying accessibility barrier was not real. Many were. It is an observation about volume: when ten firms generate 83% of a category of federal litigation, the selection of defendants is being driven by a repeatable process, not by chance encounters.
How Targets Get Selected
• Automated scanning at scale. Crawlers test large lists of commercial websites for machine-detectable WCAG failures — missing alternative text, unlabeled form fields, empty links and buttons, insufficient colour contrast, missing page language.
• Filtering for defendants who can pay. Sites with active e-commerce, physical locations, or visible revenue signals are prioritised over hobby sites.
• Jurisdiction shopping. Filings cluster in districts with favourable case law and, increasingly, in state courts where compensatory damages are available.
• Repeat targeting. Of the 401 businesses sued in July 2026, 77 had already faced a prior digital accessibility lawsuit. Settling once without fixing the underlying site puts you back in the pool.
Every item on that screening list is something an automated scan finds in seconds — which is precisely why the same automated scan run from your side removes you from the list.
The Overlay Trap
Of the 401 defendants sued in July 2026, 113 were running a third-party accessibility widget on their site at the time they were sued. That is more than one in four.
Installing an overlay does not create a legal safe harbour under the ADA. The FTC penalised accessiBe $1 million for misrepresenting its AI-powered tool's ability to bring a website into WCAG conformance. Separately, a small business that bought an overlay and was sued anyway brought a class action against its overlay vendor — and a magistrate judge recommended the core claims proceed rather than be dismissed.
If you are paying for a widget and treating the matter as closed, you hold the risk profile of the 113 businesses sued in a single month while doing exactly that. We covered the widget problem in detail here.
Find Out What a Screening Scan Sees
The failures serial filers screen for are the same ones an automated audit reports. Run a free scan of your site and see the machine-detectable issues before someone else runs the same check on you. Scan your website now.
What Actually Reduces Your Exposure
• Fix the machine-detectable failures first. Alt text, form labels, link and button names, contrast, page language, heading structure. These are what the screening crawlers find, and fixing them is what removes you from generated target lists.
• Do not rely on a widget as your compliance position. Use it as a convenience layer at most, never as the remediation itself.
• Publish an accessibility statement with a real contact route and a stated response commitment. It will not defeat a claim on its own, but it establishes a good-faith record and gives a would-be complainant a cheaper path than filing.
• Document remediation with dates. Courts and the DOJ both respond to evidence of an ongoing programme rather than a one-time cleanup. Our documentation guide covers what to keep.
• Re-scan on a schedule. New content reintroduces old failures. A site fixed once and left alone drifts back into scope within months.
None of this is exotic. The point of understanding the concentration is that it makes the problem finite: a known screening method, a known failure list, and a known fix.
Who is Michael Sandoval and why does his name appear on ADA lawsuits?
Michael Sandoval is among the plaintiff names that recur across ADA website accessibility dockets in 2026, alongside filers such as Perla Mageno, Julie Dalton, Nelson Fernandez and Oscar Herrera. Repeat filers of this kind account for a large share of total filings — trackers attribute more than half of all 2025 ADA website lawsuits to just 31 plaintiffs and 16 law firms. Being named in a filing by a repeat plaintiff does not mean the accessibility barrier was not real; it means the defendant was identified through systematic screening rather than incidental use.
What is a serial plaintiff in ADA website litigation?
A serial plaintiff is an individual who files a high volume of accessibility lawsuits, typically working with a small number of specialised firms. In 2025 the top 10 plaintiffs filed 26.6% of all ADA website cases and the top 10 law firms filed 83%. The model depends on automated scanning to identify defendants with machine-detectable WCAG failures.
Does an accessibility widget or overlay protect me from an ADA lawsuit?
No. Of the 401 businesses sued in July 2026, 113 were running a third-party accessibility widget when they were sued. Overlays create no safe harbour under the ADA. The FTC fined accessiBe $1 million for overstating what its tool could achieve, and a class action brought by a small business against its overlay vendor has survived an attempt at dismissal.
How many ADA website lawsuits will be filed in 2026?
Federal courts are on pace to exceed 5,500 ADA website and digital accessibility lawsuits in 2026, which would be the highest annual total on record. Plaintiffs filed 4,928 in 2025, and every year since 2021 has exceeded 4,000 filings.
Can I be sued twice for the same website?
Yes, and it is common. 77 of the 401 defendants sued in July 2026 had already faced a prior digital accessibility lawsuit. Settling a claim without remediating the underlying failures leaves the site detectable by the same automated screening that found it the first time.
The headline number — more than 5,500 lawsuits in 2026 — reads like an unmanageable risk. The concentration data reframes it. A small, stable group of filers, working with a handful of firms, is screening the open web for a short list of machine-detectable failures and filing against whoever shows up.
That makes the exposure addressable. You cannot control whether your site gets scanned; you can control what the scan finds. The businesses that stay out of the pool are the ones that fixed the detectable failures, documented the work, and kept checking.
Related reading: How one law firm generated hundreds of filings • Florida's 1,627-case serial plaintiff pattern • Illinois filings up 745%
Disclaimer: This article provides general information about litigation trends and is not legal advice. Filing statistics are drawn from public litigation trackers and reflect reported figures as of August 2026. Consult qualified counsel about your specific situation.