What should you do in the first 72 hours after an ADA demand letter?

Three things, fast: preserve everything, brief counsel, and get a real audit with a dated fix plan started immediately. Do not install an overlay after the letter, because filers read that as concealment. The response window is measured in weeks, and the brands that come out best are the ones whose first move produced documents: the audit and the plan.

What not to do

Do not ignore the letter, because default outcomes are worse. Do not fire back an angry denial, because these filers have volume and precedent. And do not rush a widget onto the site: an overlay installed after a demand letter documents that you knew the store was inaccessible and chose a cosmetic cover over repairs. Plaintiff firms watch for exactly that move.

The two documents that matter

A genuine audit maps every issue to its WCAG criterion, component, and theme file, ranked by severity. A dated fix plan sequences the repairs and commits to verification. Together they change the first attorney conversation from apology to program: here is what was broken, here is the repair schedule, here is the monitoring that prevents recurrence. That is the posture that shrinks settlements.

After the response

Most of these resolve with remediation plus a payment, and many settlements and consent decrees require ongoing conformance reporting. Standing monitoring with monthly evidence reports satisfies those terms and, just as important, breaks the repeat-filer pattern where settled brands get targeted again once their remediation stalls.