Missouri’s New Accessibility Law: What the 90-Day Rule Means for Websites

What is Missouri’s new accessibility law?

Called the Act Against Abusive Website or Web Content Access Litigation, the new Missouri accessibility law involves how certain lawsuits for non-compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) are handled in the state.

It allows courts to consider whether website accessibility litigation may be abusive, including whether the main purpose of the lawsuit was to get payment from the defendant rather than resolve an accessibility issue.

So, in practice, this law was created to protect businesses from certain types of abusive accessibility lawsuits, giving them a 90-day window to make genuine effort to resolve digital accessibility issues.

This was found necessary as businesses would directly face a lawsuit when receiving digital accessibility notifications under the ADA.

Now, on the other hand, if a business receives written notice of an accessibility issue and takes meaningful steps to fix it, the law may make it harder for someone to bring a later claim about that same issue.

What is the 90-day accessibility rule?

As mentioned above, the new accessibility law in Missouri introduces a 90-day window to allow businesses to resolve accessibility issues.

If a business receives written notice about an accessibility problem and takes meaningful steps in good faith to fix it within 90 days, the law creates a presumption that a later lawsuit about the same issue may be considered abusive.

In simple terms, the business gets an opportunity to respond to the accessibility complaint and take steps to resolve the problem before facing certain legal consequences.

After that, the law creates a presumption that a later claim on the same complaint is abusive. However, the statute says that the violations need to be corrected within 90 days so the presumption can be applied.

It’s important to know that the 90-day period applies only to certain accessibility claims and does not automatically protect a business from a lawsuit. The presumption can also be challenged in court.

If a court finds that a lawsuit is abusive, it can order the person who brought it to pay the defendant’s reasonable legal fees and costs. It can also impose additional penalties of up to three times those fees.

Does this mean businesses have 90 days to fix accessibility issues?

Yes. And this is probably the most important point for organisations to understand.

Under the new law, when a company is notified of an accessibility issue under the ADA, it has 90 days to take meaningful steps to fix the reported barriers.

The presumption will only be applied if the 90-day window is respected.

It’s important to mention that the new law does not remove existing obligations under the ADA. Businesses still need to meet the accessibility requirements that apply to them.

The new Missouri legislation does not remove those existing obligations; it just adds a time window to address these issues.

What counts as “substantial steps” under Missouri’s new law?

The law uses the term “substantial steps”, but it does not provide a specific checklist of actions that businesses must complete. What qualifies as substantial steps will depend on the circumstances and the accessibility violation involved.

In practice, businesses should be able to demonstrate a genuine and meaningful effort to detect and correct the reported barriers.

For example, an organisation should:

• Investigate the reported issues

• Carry out an accessibility audit

• Identify affected pages and components

• Prioritise critical barriers

• Assign responsibility for remediation

• Begin implementing fixes

• Test those fixes

• Review similar content across the website

• Establish a plan for addressing remaining issues

The exact steps will depend on the organisation, its website and the issues identified. But the main thing here is that companies need to be able to demonstrate what they have been doing with this 90-day period to qualify for a presumption.

Why waiting for an accessibility complaint is a risky approach

The new law may give businesses an opportunity to respond to certain accessibility complaints before facing the consequences of litigation.

But that does not make having a reactive approach to accessibility a good strategy either.

Companies that don’t work on digital accessibility improvements and wait until someone detects issues in their website can face problems such as:

• Losing customers because they cannot use the website

• More expensive accessibility remediation

• Teams having to respond under time pressure

• New content introducing additional accessibility issues

• A poorer user experience, as accessibility improvements can also improve usability

Apart from legal exposure, not having an accessible website excludes many people from engaging with it.

So, while these websites can create frustrating experiences for people with disabilities, they may also be missing out on a significant part of the market.

According to the WHO (World Health Organization), around 1.3 billion people, or approximately 16% of the world’s population, experience significant disability.

And that figure does not account for people experiencing temporary disabilities, age-related changes or different ways of interacting with digital content.

How businesses in Missouri can prepare

The best time to address website accessibility is before receiving a legal notice.

Organisations operating in Missouri can take several practical steps to improve their accessibility processes.

1. Perform an accessibility audit

Start by detecting current digital accessibility issues across your website.

Automated accessibility testing can help identify problems such as missing alternative text, colour contrast issues, form problems and structural issues.

Start using our Free ADA Compliance Checker to scan your homepage and understand what’s your current compliance status. After that, a full website accessibility audit will be necessary to analyse each page and help you work towards compliance.

2. Understand your accessibility issues

Finding an issue is important but knowing what to do next is what makes difference.

Instead of just receiving a list of the website’s issues, as you can find in basic automated scans, with Nexus Inclusion’s full website scanner, you’ll have access to a comprehensive analysis of your pages.

In the results, you’ll find details on each issue explaining why they’re not in accordance with the legislation, how they’re impacting each group of disability, why it’s important to fix them, and the exact location where it’s occurring on your website.

This is particularly important because the accessibility work involves designers, developers, and content teams. With full details on each issue, teams can avoid repeating the same problems when implementing.

3. Prioritise accessibility remediation

While it’s important to resolve every issue found on the website, prioritising is a great approach. This way, teams can start by the ones that are impacting users most across the pages.

The Nexus Inclusion platform presents issues by severity (critical, high, medium, and low) to make it easier for organisations to know where to focus first and divide the work by phases.

There, you can simply filter by severity and decide how to prioritise your work.

4. Fix issues at the source

If the same accessibility problem appears across dozens of pages, fixing every page individually may not be the most effective approach.

Sometimes the better solution is to correct the underlying component, template or content process.

This is why Nexus Inclusion platform provides code snippets in each scan result, so developers can know exactly where the issue is happening in the code.

Fixing issues at source can help speeding things up, saving your team time and effort, while also providing a better user experience as soon as possible.

5. Monitor your website continuously

Fixing accessibility issues is an important part of the process. But to avoid missing new issues as the website evolves, it’s important to keep monitoring it.

New content, design changes, plugins, features and code updates can introduce new barriers.

Regular monitoring can help organisations detect issues earlier and address them before they become bigger problems, like a lawsuit.

The Nexus Inclusion monitoring tool is customisable, sending alerts to the team if a new issue is found on the website.

It also provides comparison graphics to help you understand how digital accessibility is improving over time. These results can also be downloaded and shared with your team.

Digital Accessibility is an Ongoing Process

Missouri's new 90-day safe harbour may change how organisations respond to website accessibility complaints, but it should not change the fundamental approach to accessibility.

A website should be designed and maintained with accessibility in mind from the beginning.

That means identifying barriers, understanding their impact, fixing them and continuing to monitor for new issues.

For businesses, this is more sustainable than waiting for a complaint. And for users with disabilities, it means being able to access the digital world independently.

Nexus Inclusion Can Help You Get There

By understanding the accessibility regulations that apply to your business, adopting a recognised accessibility standard, testing your digital products, and training your teams, you'll be able to build a strong foundation for long-term accessibility.

Now that you understand the new Missouri Accessibility Law, it is time to act. The right tools and expertise can make the process easier and more efficient.

At Nexus Inclusion, we help organisations detect accessibility barriers, monitor compliance over time, and create more inclusive digital experiences through accessibility audits, comprehensive guidance, and continuous accessibility monitoring.

Start your website accessibility journey today and take the first step towards creating digital experiences that work for everyone. Compare our Plans.