The Hidden Risk You're Not Thinking About — ADA Compliance (and Why It's Costing You More Than You Think)

Let me tell you something no one likes to talk about.

Most dealership websites aren’t just slow... they’re legally vulnerable.

Yesterday we talked about speed. How the same exact ad budget can produce 10–20x the results just by loading faster. But speed is only part of the story.

Let me ask you a quick question: If a dealership listed a car with heated seats, but it didn't actually have heated seats… What would you call that?

False advertising? Fraud? Deceptive business practice?

Exactly.

So why is it acceptable for a web developer to claim “Lightning-fast, ADA-compliant websites”... When the homepage takes 45 seconds to load and the “ADA solution” is just a sketchy third-party plugin that actually blocks screen readers?

It would be a scandal.

However the scandal isn’t that the web developer built you a slow bloated website with no flow or goal.

The scandal is that YOU trusted them to build a website that wasn’t a cluttered up, rusted up, hunk of junk. You trusted that had your best interest in mind. That they were building you a quality website, that would convert users into customers, secure your data, and defend your business.

But these aren’t competent companies. These are the dumbest, most self-serving business to ever hold power over the dealership.

They’re not just betting you’re uninformed, they’re betting you’ll stay that way!

Their websites aren’t just costing you money, they could get you fined and sued, because 99% of dealership websites fail Google performance standards, aren't ADA compliant, and don't have valid code.

Your website is designed to burn through money like a California wildfire burns through homes!

Then they denied it. Lied. Engineered for Speed. Accessibility First. Inclusive by Design. And the dealerships blame Google, Facebook, and all the other platforms for leads not converting but never, the developer.

And they want you to believe it isn’t a big deal.

But it is.

This wasn’t a mistake by your web developer. This was a top down decision to put their profits over yours.

ADA compliance isn’t a buzzword. It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The web is supposed to be accessible. Just like you wouldn’t build a dealership with stairs only, no ramps, no accessible doors, no handicap parking, the same applies online.

And here’s the real kicker:

ADA compliance is not just about doing the right thing, it’s also about performance.

Websites that are actually ADA-compliant:

• Load faster
• Are better structured
• Rank higher in Google
• Convert better

Sound familiar? That’s because true accessibility overlaps with the things we talked about yesterday: Core Web Vitals, crawlability, UX.

But most OEM-approved sites (and many “SEO agencies”) completely miss this. They slap an accessibility badge on the footer, call it a day, and go right back to using inaccessible sliders, modal popups with no keyboard navigation, broken heading structures, and dynamic forms that screen readers can’t even see.

Here’s what I’m seeing in the field:

• Over 96% of dealership websites fail at least one basic accessibility test.
• Thousands of lawsuits are being filed every year against small businesses for web accessibility violations.
• Most of these lawsuits are avoidable with simple fixes: heading order, contrast ratios, skip links, semantic HTML.

But that’s not all...

A slow, non-compliant site is a ghost town on Google.

If your site is bloated, broken, and inaccessible, Google will deprioritize it. Why? Because Google measures real user experience now.

Core Web Vitals = accessibility + speed + stability.

You don’t get one without the others.

And if you’re still ignoring these things? Your site doesn’t just suck for disabled users...it sucks for everyone!

I’m saying this because I’ve seen the receipts.

Koons.com dropped their load time from 26 seconds to 2.6 seconds. The result?

1,400% increase in conversions.

And that wasn’t from running more ads. It was from fixing what was broken.

ADA compliance is part of that.

If you're building something for dealerships (or any local business) start thinking like a user. Start thinking like someone who can't use a mouse. Or who depends on a screen reader. Or who’s on a cracked Android with a weak 4G signal.

Because when you build for them, you end up creating something better for everyone.

And when you're ready to talk about how to fix this? I'm here.

Tomorrow: we dive into what Core Web Vitals actually are (and why SEO without them is basically lying).