Restaurants occupy an interesting legal position: they are explicitly named as public accommodations under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. That obligation has always covered the physical dining room. Over the past several years, federal courts in multiple circuits have extended that logic to restaurant websites — particularly when the website is the primary gateway to reservations, ordering, or menus.
Plaintiffs' firms have developed a repeatable process for identifying non-compliant restaurant websites. Automated scanning tools flag common failures — image-based menus, unlabeled form fields, missing alt text, poor keyboard navigation — and demand letters follow. Restaurants without legal teams are often surprised to learn that a PDF menu posted to their website is a recognized compliance risk.
The volume of accessibility-related demand letters targeting hospitality businesses has grown meaningfully over the past five years, according to industry legal observers. Smaller independent restaurants are not exempt; in some cases they are preferred targets because they are more likely to settle quickly.
Three factors make restaurants particularly exposed:
- Heavy reliance on PDFs: Many restaurants upload their menu as a scanned image or non-tagged PDF — neither is accessible to screen reader users.
- Third-party ordering platforms: Embedding an inaccessible third-party widget does not transfer your liability. The restaurant's site is the point of entry.
- Seasonal or frequent menu changes: Restaurants that update menus often default to the fastest method — uploading a new image file — rather than maintaining accessible HTML content.
Understanding this exposure is the first step. The practical remediation steps are more straightforward than most restaurant owners expect.