Dealership websites
ADA Compliant Powersports Dealer Websites: What the Law Asks and How to Fix Your Site
What the ADA asks of a powersports dealer website, where inventory pages and lead forms fail, why overlays fall short, and a step-by-step fix plan.
Quick answer
The ADA covers businesses open to the public, and the Justice Department says that includes what they offer online, but no federal rule sets a website standard for dealers. The practical approach: build to WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 Level AA, test inventory pages, forms and video by hand, fix the source code, and don't rely on an overlay widget.
Scope note: this is general information, not legal advice. Whether and how the ADA applies to your dealership's website depends on your facts and your jurisdiction. If you have received a demand letter or a lawsuit, talk to your attorney before you change anything or reply. Nothing here, and no vendor, can guarantee compliance or protect you from a claim.
This article first ran in January 2020 as a short announcement. It is now a practical guide for dealer principals and marketing managers: what the law says today, where powersports sites fail, what not to buy, and how to find and fix problems.
What the ADA requires of a dealer website
The part of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 that matters to a dealership is Title III, which covers businesses open to the public. A powersports showroom is one of them.
Title III requires these businesses to give people with disabilities "full and equal enjoyment" of their goods and services. The statute does not mention websites. The Department of Justice addressed that gap with its Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA, dated March 18, 2022. Three points from it matter to a dealer:
- The DOJ's position is that the ADA reaches the web. The guidance says the Department "has consistently taken the position" that the ADA applies to everything a public accommodation offers, "including those offered on the web."
- There is no detailed federal website rule for businesses. In the guidance's own words, the Department "does not have a regulation setting out detailed standards."
- You have flexibility in how you comply. The guidance points to existing technical standards, naming the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the federal government's Section 508 standards, as helpful guidance.
Courts have not all treated website claims the same way, so ask your attorney how courts in your state handle them.
The 2024 DOJ rule does not apply to dealers
On April 24, 2024 the Justice Department published a rule under Title II of the ADA. Title II covers state and local governments: cities, counties, state agencies, public school districts, transit authorities and similar bodies. The rule adopts WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for their websites and mobile apps.
An interim final rule published April 20, 2026 pushed its deadlines back by a year. Governments serving 50,000 or more people now have until April 26, 2027, and smaller governments and special districts until April 26, 2028.
None of that applies to a private dealership under Title III. The rule is a useful signal, because when the DOJ did write a website standard it chose WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and that is a sensible target for you too. But a vendor who says dealers are "required by the 2024 DOJ rule" has the law wrong.
WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 Level AA: the working standard
WCAG is published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is built on four principles (perceivable, operable, understandable, robust) and sets testable success criteria at three levels: A, AA and AAA.
| Item | What it is | Date | Binding on a dealer? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADA Title III | Federal law covering businesses open to the public | 1990 | Yes, the law applies; it sets no website checklist |
| DOJ web guidance | Plain-language guidance for governments and businesses | March 18, 2022 | Guidance, not a regulation |
| DOJ Title II web rule | WCAG 2.1 AA for state and local governments | Published April 24, 2024; deadlines moved to 2027 and 2028 | No |
| WCAG 2.0 | W3C accessibility guidelines | December 11, 2008 | A technical standard, not a law |
| WCAG 2.1 | Adds 1 guideline and 17 success criteria | June 5, 2018 | A technical standard, not a law |
| WCAG 2.2 | Adds 9 success criteria, including target size and accessible authentication | October 5, 2023 | A technical standard, not a law |
Which version should you build to? The W3C "encourages you to use the latest version." Content that conforms to WCAG 2.2 also conforms to 2.1 and 2.0, so building to 2.2 Level AA covers the 2.1 AA target the DOJ chose for governments. A lot of dealer-industry advice still cites WCAG 2.0; that is now two versions behind.
Why dealers get demand letters
Seyfarth Shaw, a law firm that tracks ADA Title III filings, counted 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in federal court in 2025, a 27 percent increase on 2024's 2,452. Website cases made up 36 percent of all federal Title III suits that year. New York federal courts had the most (1,021), followed by Florida (961) and Illinois (585). The count covers federal courts only, and demand letters that never become lawsuits are not counted at all.
Powersports dealers are not exempt. In February 2023 Powersports Business reported that the National Powersports Dealers Association had heard from dealers who received demand letters and lawsuit threats, with the claims focused on blind users who could not get pictures, video or text read aloud or enlarged.
Plaintiffs typically seek a court order to fix the site plus attorneys' fees, and some state laws allow additional remedies.
Where powersports dealer sites usually fail
This is the part the top search results leave out. Law-firm articles explain the statute and vendor pages sell a fix, but none walks through the pages a powersports store runs or who controls each one. A dealer site is assembled from your website platform, OEM content and feeds, third-party tools, and the photos your staff upload daily. Each can break accessibility, and each has a different owner.
| Page or feature | Common barrier | WCAG criteria involved | Who usually controls the fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unit photos on inventory and vehicle detail pages | No alt text, or "IMG_0412" as the description; gallery arrows that only work with a mouse | 1.1.1, 2.1.1 | Your staff (photo descriptions) and the platform (gallery) |
| Auto-rotating hero banners and unit carousels | Movement that can't be paused; offer text baked into the image at low contrast | 2.2.2, 1.4.3, 1.1.1 | Your marketing team and the platform |
| Search filters (make, model year, type, price) | Checkboxes and sliders with no accessible name; results that update without telling a screen reader | 4.1.2, 4.1.3 | Website platform |
| Spec and feature tables | Specs laid out as images or loose text instead of a real table; light gray text | 1.3.1, 1.4.3 | Platform and OEM data feed |
| Payment calculators | Drag-only sliders for term, rate and down payment | 2.1.1, 4.1.2 | Platform or calculator vendor |
| Credit applications and lead forms | Placeholder text instead of labels; errors shown only in red; re-typing the same details | 3.3.2, 3.3.1, 3.3.7 | Platform or finance-tool vendor |
| CAPTCHA on forms | Puzzle with no accessible alternative | 3.3.8 | Platform |
| Chat widgets and pop-ups | Chat bubble covering the focused field; widget not reachable by keyboard | 2.4.11, 2.1.1 | Chat vendor |
| OEM videos and walkarounds | No captions | 1.2.2 | OEM or whoever posts the video |
| PDF brochures, spec sheets and service menus | Scanned or untagged PDFs a screen reader can't read | 1.1.1, 1.3.1 | Your staff, or the OEM if it supplies the file |
| Mobile buttons and icons | Tiny tap targets; a phone icon with no name | 2.5.8, 4.1.2 | Platform |
Three powersports-specific points follow:
- Inventory changes every day. A site can pass an audit in March and fail in May because new units went up with blank alt text. Accessibility belongs in the photo-upload routine.
- OEM content arrives ready-made. Manufacturer videos and brochures may not be captioned or tagged. Ask the OEM what accessible versions exist before you post them.
- Third-party tools sit inside your site. Credit apps, trade-in tools and chat are often built by other companies, but customers see one dealership. Put accessibility requirements in each vendor's contract.
Why an overlay widget is not a fix
An overlay is a script that adds a toolbar or "accessibility menu" to your site and claims to repair problems automatically. They are cheap and quick to install. At least one dealer website company announced in 2020 that an overlay partnership would let it "provide full ADA compliant websites."
The Federal Trade Commission has since acted on that kind of promise. On January 3, 2025 the FTC announced a proposed order requiring accessiBe, an overlay maker, to pay $1 million. The FTC alleged that accessiBe claimed its accessWidget tool "can make any website compliant with WCAG" when it did not make all user websites compliant. It also alleged that accessiBe presented articles and reviews as independent without disclosing its connections to the authors. The FTC approved the final order on April 22, 2025. It bars accessiBe from claiming its automated products can make any website WCAG-compliant without evidence.
To be precise: the DOJ guidance says automated checkers and overlays "can be helpful tools" but "need to be used carefully," and that a "clean" report "does not necessarily mean everything is accessible." The problem is treating a tool as the fix. An overlay can't describe the scratches on a used side-by-side, caption an OEM video, or rebuild a mouse-only payment calculator. Real fixes happen in your templates, content and vendors' code.
Before you buy any accessibility product or service, ask:
- Which WCAG version and level do you test against?
- Do you test by hand with a keyboard and a screen reader, or only with automated scans?
- Will you give me a written report listing each issue, its page and its success criterion?
- Do you fix the underlying code, or add a layer on top?
- Who re-tests after inventory, promotions or plug-ins change?
If a vendor promises "100% compliance" or "lawsuit protection," treat it as a warning sign.
Audit and remediation plan, step by step
1. Start with your attorney if a letter has arrived
Don't ignore a demand letter, and don't reply on your own. Forward it to counsel with a list of your website, OEM and tool vendors.
2. Map your highest-value journeys
Pick the paths that bring in money and service: search inventory, open a vehicle detail page, estimate a payment, submit a lead or credit application, book service, and find your hours and location.
3. Run an automated scan for a baseline
Free tools such as Google Lighthouse catch repeatable issues like missing alt text, unlabeled fields and low contrast. Save the results; they find only part of the problem.
4. Test by hand
Complete each journey with only the Tab, Enter, Space and arrow keys, and check you can always see where focus is. Try a screen reader (VoiceOver on Apple devices, NVDA on Windows) on one vehicle page and one form. Narrow the browser to about 320 CSS pixels and check nothing is cut off or needs sideways scrolling.
5. Assign every issue an owner
Sort findings by who controls them, using the table above. Fix templates first, because one template fix repairs every page built on it.
6. Fix the source and verify
Ask each owner for a date. When a fix ships, repeat the same manual test on the same page. A closed ticket is not proof.
7. Make it part of daily work
Train whoever uploads units to write short, specific photo descriptions (year, make, model, color, what the photo shows). Caption the videos you post, and prefer web pages to PDFs.
8. Publish a contact route and re-test
Add an accessibility page telling customers how to reach a person if something doesn't work. Re-test your main journeys after any redesign or new tool, and on a regular schedule.
A quick monthly checklist for the marketing team:
- New unit photos have useful descriptions, not file names
- Banners and carousels can be paused, and offer text is readable
- Lead forms, credit apps and the payment calculator work without a mouse
- New videos have captions
- New PDFs are tagged, or the content is also on a web page
- The chat widget doesn't cover form fields on mobile
How PSX Ascend approaches accessibility
PSX Ascend builds accessible powersports dealer websites with accessibility treated as an ongoing practice, not a one-time patch: automated checks plus human review of keyboard flow, zoom, labels, focus, forms and media; fixing the component behind an issue instead of masking it; and repeating checks as inventory and integrations change, across our AI-powered dealership websites. PSX Ascend provides website technology and support, not legal advice.
You can also see the same website accessibility service on our sister site, PSXDigital's website accessibility service page.
Want a second look at one journey on your current site, such as a vehicle page or credit application? Talk with a website specialist.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Justice, Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA (March 18, 2022)
- U.S. Department of Justice, Fact Sheet: New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps Provided by State and Local Governments
- W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, WCAG 2 Overview
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
- Federal Trade Commission, FTC Order Requires Online Marketer to Pay $1 Million for Deceptive Claims that its AI Product Could Make Websites Compliant with Accessibility Guidelines (January 3, 2025)
- Federal Trade Commission, FTC Approves Final Order Requiring accessiBe to Pay $1 Million (April 22, 2025)
- Seyfarth Shaw LLP, Federal Court Website Accessibility Lawsuit Filings Bounce Back in 2025 (March 2026)
- Powersports Business, Dealers face website compliance issue (February 8, 2023)
- Fisher Phillips, What Dealerships Need To Know About Website Accessibility Lawsuits (August 1, 2019)
- Digital Dealer, Dealer Venom Announces Partnership with accessiBe (October 2020)
- Boardman Clark, ADA Requirements for Dealership Websites (March 1, 2022)