Who is responsible when a client's site gets an ADA demand letter?

The brand gets sued, but the agency gets the call. Legal liability sits with the site owner, yet the first 72 hours land on whoever runs the site: pulling records, briefing counsel, and planning fixes. Agencies with monitoring and dated evidence across their portfolio turn that week into a service. Agencies without it spend the week explaining why nobody was watching.

How the liability conversation actually goes

Plaintiffs name the merchant, because the merchant owns the store. But the merchant's first question is for the agency: were you maintaining accessibility, and can you prove it? Contracts rarely settle that question cleanly, and the relationship cost of a bad answer exceeds any legal exposure. The agencies that keep these accounts are the ones holding documentation before the letter arrives.

Why this is a service line, not just a risk

Accessibility monitoring across a portfolio is a natural retainer: continuous coverage, regression alerts per store, and client-branded monthly reports that show conformance status and every dated fix. It gives the agency a proactive reason to contact clients monthly, and it converts the most dreaded inbound call in e-commerce into a demonstration that the agency was on watch all along.

What to put in place before the call comes

One dashboard across client stores, per-store evidence logs with scan history and verified fixes, and a report format a client can forward to their attorney untouched. Start with a free accessibility audit of one store to anchor the conversation with a real issue count instead of a hypothetical.