Is Any of This Actually Real?

What's genuinely real

Three categories are not hypothetical.

• Website accessibility (ADA) lawsuits: 5,000+ digital accessibility suits filed in 2025, including 3,117 federal website cases — up 27% over 2024. Nearly 70% targeted e-commerce, and 46% of federal cases hit companies already sued once.
• Automated copyright demands: Getty Images and PicRights send tens of thousands of image-infringement letters a year, generated by crawlers, typically $750–$5,000 per image. One unlicensed footer photo can trigger one.
• Privacy / wiretapping demand letters (CIPA): serial filers allege that trackers firing before consent "wiretap" visitors, anchored to a $5,000-per-violation statute. Hundreds of cases in three years.

What's overblown or contested

The California wiretapping (CIPA) theory itself is genuinely unsettled — in 2025 courts split repeatedly on whether ordinary analytics count as a "pen register," and a reform bill (SB 690) stalled. That doesn't make the demand letters disappear; it makes them a settlement business rather than a sure loss. And "be WCAG-perfect or else" overstates it: courts look for good-faith accessibility, not a flawless score.

Why the fix beats the fight

Nearly every one of these risks is cheaper to prevent than to argue. Blocking a tracker until consent, licensing an image, adding alt text, or publishing a real privacy policy costs far less than a settlement — and removes the evidence a filer needs in the first place. That's the whole premise: find the litigation-grade gaps, fix them quietly, move on.

Sources

• UsableNet 2025 Year-End & Mid-Year Reports
• California DOJ (Sephora)
• Fisher Phillips & Holland & Knight CIPA analyses
• PicDefense / Heitner Legal copyright-demand guides