Industries · Restaurants
Website compliance for restaurants
Restaurant websites are among the most-sued sites on the internet: an online menu a screen reader can't read, an ordering flow a keyboard can't finish, or a reservation widget without labels is exactly what ADA web lawsuits cite. Complidar scans restaurant sites with the same 22 checks a plaintiff's investigator would run: accessibility first, plus the tracking and marketing rules that ride along with online ordering.
Why restaurants get sued
Food service is a perennial leader in ADA Title III website filings (Seyfarth Shaw's and UsableNet's annual counts both track the sector), for structural reasons: nearly every restaurant has a website; menus are usually PDFs or images that screen readers can't parse; ordering and reservations run through third-party widgets the owner never accessibility-tested; and the brand behind the site is usually small enough to settle rather than fight.
The canonical case is a restaurant case: Robles v. Domino's Pizza (a customer who couldn't order a pizza through the website or app). The Ninth Circuit held the ADA applied, the Supreme Court let that stand, and the four-year fight ended around $325,000 plus fees. Demand letters citing the same theory now arrive priced below the cost of answering one.
The risk beyond accessibility
Online ordering brings the rest of the legal surface with it: marketing SMS programs sit under the TCPA, where statutory damages run $500–$1,500 per text and class actions have reached nine figures (Wakefield v. ViSalus: $925M); reservation and ordering pages routinely embed session-replay and ad trackers that trigger CIPA wiretap and state-privacy theories; and email lists need CAN-SPAM mechanics. A scan that only checks WCAG misses most of what a restaurant site can be sued over.
What the scan checks for restaurants
- Full WCAG/axe-core accessibility pass: menu pages, ordering flows, and reservation forms included
- Image-only and PDF menus flagged as the screen-reader barriers plaintiffs cite
- Form labeling and keyboard operability on ordering and reservation paths
- TCPA consent language on SMS-marketing signup forms
- Session-replay and advertising trackers on ordering pages (CIPA / state-privacy exposure)
- CAN-SPAM basics and cookie-consent behavior site-wide
Common questions
My ordering system is a third-party widget. Am I still liable?
The demand letter names the restaurant, not the widget vendor. Your site is the public accommodation. Complidar scans the pages your customers actually use, embedded widgets included, so you can see what a plaintiff sees and take vendor conversations from there.
Is a PDF menu really an ADA problem?
Image-based and poorly tagged PDF menus are among the most-cited barriers in restaurant web suits: screen readers can't read them. An HTML menu (or a properly tagged PDF) removes one of the most common claims. The scan flags untagged menu documents it finds.
What does a restaurant website scan cost?
The Complidar preview is free: violation count, severity, and a liability range across up to 120 pages. The full report with evidence and fixes is $39 one-time, and $29/month monitoring covers menu and platform changes (relevant because restaurant sites change constantly).
All 22 checks · up to 120 pages · no card
Last updated 2026-06-11 · Informational, not legal advice: how to read this