A guest perspective from deeproots partners. And a quick disclaimer: We are not attorneys and are not complete experts in ADA Law. By following the advice in this article we do not guarantee, represent, or warrant that the changes are or will make your website ADA compliant. Please consult with experienced website/mobile app ADA accessibility attorneys that practice in this area.
If you run a dispensary or cannabis brand website, you’ve likely already dealt with an ADA demand letter, or you’re wondering when one might land in your inbox. At deeproots partners, we work with cannabis clients across multiple states, building and maintaining their digital presence, and ADA accessibility questions come up constantly.
This isn’t a niche legal issue anymore.
It’s a real, recurring cost of doing business online, and cannabis operators seem to get targeted more than most.
We wanted to share what we’ve learned from being in the trenches with our own clients: what ADA compliance actually means, why lawsuits happen, how to reduce your risk, and what to do if you get hit with one.
What ADA Compliance Really Means
The uncomfortable truth is that no official, government-certified standard says, “If your website meets X, Y, and Z criteria, you are ADA compliant.”
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was written in 1990, long before most businesses had websites, and it has never been updated with a specific digital accessibility checklist. Instead, courts have generally looked to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), a technical standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, as a reasonable benchmark. But WCAG is a private-sector standard, not law, and it has multiple versions and conformance levels (A, AA, AAA).
That gap between “no official digital standard” and “courts using a private guideline as a reference point” is exactly where the ambiguity and the lawsuits live.
Compliance is genuinely subject to interpretation, ongoing legal developments, and evolving standards. Anyone who tells you your site is “100% ADA compliant, guaranteed” is overselling you. We’ve said this directly to our own clients: even the largest, most specialized accessibility companies in the industry, whose entire business model is built around this exact problem, do not promise full legal protection.
To put that in perspective, two of the biggest names in accessibility overlay technology, accessiBe and UserWay, have each built substantial businesses around helping companies address these issues. AccessiBe recently reported revenue north of $51 million, and UserWay has reported figures in the range of $14 million. These are well-funded, specialized companies with teams of engineers and legal advisors focused on nothing but this problem. If businesses of that size and focus can’t fully guarantee protection from ADA suits, it’s unrealistic for a small business or the agency building their site to promise that either.
So what does compliance really mean in practice? It means making a good-faith, documented effort to follow recognized accessibility guidelines, reducing the most common and most litigated barriers on your site, and treating accessibility as an ongoing practice rather than a one-time fix.
Why Cannabis Sites Get Targeted
Most ADA web lawsuits aren’t filed because someone with a disability was truly unable to use a site and complained. Unfortunately, a segment of the plaintiff’s bar has built a business model around scanning websites for technical violations, then sending demand letters hoping businesses will settle quickly rather than pay ongoing defense costs. This is sometimes described as predatory litigation, and it’s taking advantage of real gaps in an overburdened court system.
Cannabis retailers are attractive targets for a few reasons: many are relatively new businesses without in-house legal or accessibility resources, websites often feature heavy photography and bold, dark branding, and the industry as a whole has less institutional experience with this specific legal exposure than more established retail sectors.
While the most commonly cited issue is missing alt text on images, we’ve also seen claims built around low color contrast — which is especially common on cannabis sites that lean into dark, moody branding — as well as unlabeled navigation, inaccessible forms, and keyboard navigation failures.
Accessibility is not just one thing; it’s a broad category, and a plaintiff’s firm only needs to find one plausible gap to build a demand around.
How to Prevent Getting Sued
You can’t eliminate risk entirely, but there is a meaningful difference between a site that’s never been reviewed through an accessibility lens and one that’s been proactively addressed. If you want to materially lower your exposure, here’s where to start:
Build accessibility in before launch, not after. The best time to address ADA and WCAG considerations is during design and development, not as a retroactive patch job once a demand letter arrives. If you’re currently building or redesigning a site, this is the moment to get it right.
Get a specialized attorney involved. General business counsel often isn’t enough here. ADA web accessibility is a specific enough legal niche that we strongly recommend working with a specialized ADA accessibility attorney who focuses on it, ideally before you’re in crisis mode. A proactive legal review can help you prioritize the fixes that matter most and document your good-faith efforts, which can matter if you’re ever challenged.
Fix color contrast issues. Make sure text has sufficient contrast against its background, particularly for cannabis brands using dark themes, deep greens, or moody color palettes. This is one of the most commonly cited issues and one of the more straightforward to audit.
Style your links to stand out. Hyperlinks should be visually distinguishable from surrounding text, underlined or in a color with strong contrast to the body copy so users who rely on visual cues (not just color) can identify clickable elements.
Add descriptive titles to links and navigation. Screen reader users often navigate by link text alone, so vague labels like “click here” or “learn more” create real barriers. Descriptive, contextual link text helps both accessibility and, frankly, your SEO.
Use proper semantic HTML. Structuring your site with a correct heading hierarchy (H1 through H6) and proper use of <header>, <footer>, <nav>, and paragraph tags isn’t just good development practice; it’s foundational to how assistive technology interprets your page.
Write real alt text for every image. This is the single most litigated issue, and it’s also one of the more fixable ones. Alt text should describe the image in a way that’s relevant to the section’s context, not just a generic filler description.
Consider a third-party compliance tool as a supplement, not a solution. Tools like accessiBe and UserWay can help mitigate a range of common issues and may discourage some predatory firms from targeting your site, since these firms are often looking for the easiest possible case. But be clear-eyed about what these tools do and don’t do: they do not guarantee compliance, no matter what their marketing claims. We’ve handled lawsuits involving dispensary clients who had these tools installed when they were sued.
What To Do If You Get Sued (or Get a Demand Letter)
If you receive a demand letter or a lawsuit, the first thing to do is not panic, and the second thing is not to ignore it. Here’s what we’ve seen work:
Get an accessibility-focused attorney immediately. Don’t try to negotiate or respond on your own, and don’t rely solely on your web development team to guide the legal strategy. This is a legal matter first.
Get a professional audit of your specific claims. Not every demand letter is accurate or proportionate. An experienced attorney and accessibility auditor can assess which claims have merit and which are overstated, which shapes your response and negotiating position.
Prioritize fixes based on the audit, not panic. Once you have a clear, professional list of what actually needs to change, work with your web team to address those items directly rather than making sweeping, undirected changes to the entire site.
Document everything going forward. Keep records of the changes you make and when you make them. If accessibility becomes a recurring issue, being able to show a track record of continuous improvement matters.
Treat it as an ongoing practice, not a one-time event. ADA and WCAG standards continue to evolve, and a site that was reasonably addressed a year or two ago may have drifted out of alignment with current best practices. Accessibility isn’t a box you check once.
The Takeaway for Your Business
ADA compliance for websites lives in a frustrating gray area: the law exists, but the technical standard is borrowed from a private guideline, and full legal certainty doesn’t really exist for anyone.
What you can control is how proactive you are. Building accessibility in from the start, addressing the most commonly litigated issues, using compliance tools as a supplement rather than a shield, and having a specialized attorney in your corner before you need one are the best defenses available to cannabis operators today.
Until there’s clearer federal guidance specific to digital accessibility, we expect to keep seeing these cases affect businesses of every size, cannabis included. The operators who fare best treat this as an ongoing part of running a website, not an afterthought.
deeproots partners combines top-ranked national dispensary SEO expertise with deep cannabis marketing experience to help dispensaries and brands dominate search rankings on Google. From hand-built backlinking campaigns to cannabis-specific citation databases, we know what it takes to grow visibility in a highly restricted industry. This post reflects our general perspective based on client experience and is not legal advice. For guidance specific to your business, consult a qualified accessibility attorney.
deeproots partners is a proud California NORML Business Member; Learn more about their services from their Cannabis Marketplace listing.