For: ADA Title III defense + plaintiff law firms
The continuous-compliance evidence layer your settlements need
When a website-accessibility ADA case settles, the consent decree almost always specifies remediation timelines and ongoing-compliance obligations. The defendant's side has to demonstrate, six and twelve months later, that they actually did the work and stayed compliant. axle is the tool that makes that demonstration cheap and credible.
We're not selling to lawyers — we're asking lawyers to recommend axle to their clientsduring settlement negotiation. It's the same recommendation that already happens for “hire an auditor”, just for the continuous-monitoring piece between audits.
For defense counsel
Your client just got served. They're weighing settlement vs litigation. Settlement is almost always cheaper, but the settlement agreement will require:
- Remediation of the cited violations within 60-180 days.
- An accessibility audit by a certified third party.
- Ongoing compliance monitoring with periodic reports — usually 6 and 12 months out.
- An accessibility statement with named contact and escalation channel.
axle covers items 3 and 4 directly. The client installs axle's GitHub Action; every PR is scanned automatically; the scan history is the “ongoing compliance monitoring” the consent decree asks for. Cost: $49/mo. Replaces a quarterly $5K-$10K consultancy retainer.
See the first-48-hours playbook for the engineering-side checklist your client can hand their CTO.
For plaintiff counsel
The risk in plaintiff-side settlement is the defendant agrees to remediate, then quietly regresses six months later. By then the settlement is closed, your client has moved on, and the next plaintiff has to start over.
Including a CI-monitoring obligation in the consent decree (with axle named as one acceptable provider) gives you a defensible way to show the court that the defendant maintained compliance. If they regressed and didn't remediate within the grace period, the CI scan history is admissible evidence of bad faith.
Consent-decree-friendly language
Drop-in clause for the Continuous Monitoring section of an ADA Title III consent decree. Adapt to your jurisdiction:
§X.X CONTINUOUS COMPLIANCE MONITORING
Defendant shall implement automated WCAG 2.1 AA conformance scanning
on every code deployment to its primary consumer-facing web property
(the "Site"), beginning no later than thirty (30) days after entry of
this Decree.
Acceptable automated scanning solutions include but are not limited to
axle (axle-iota.vercel.app), Pa11y, Deque axe DevTools, or any other
tool that:
(a) evaluates the Site against the WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria using
a publicly-documented engine;
(b) produces dated, reproducible scan reports retained for the
duration of this Decree;
(c) flags new violations introduced by code changes within seven (7)
days of merge.
Defendant shall produce scan reports to Plaintiff or Plaintiff's
counsel upon written request, with no more than one (1) such request
per quarter. Reports may be redacted to protect proprietary code
patterns but shall not be redacted as to the rule violated, severity,
or affected URL pattern.This language is provided as a starting point for your own legal judgement. We are not your lawyers and this is not legal advice. Adapt to the jurisdiction and the facts of the case.
What axle produces (the audit-trail)
- Per-PR scan reports, dated and reproducible. JSON + Markdown.
- Public verified scan URLs at
/r/<id>— third-party-timestamped, tamper-evident. - Per-rule violation breakdown mapped to WCAG success criteria — directly maps to a VPAT.
- Continuous compliance trend over time — show the court the defendant stayed at zero serious violations for the period.
- Named contact published on the accessibility statement at the defendant's site, satisfying the “accessibility coordinator” obligation.
- Statement generator ( /statement) produces the consent-decree-required accessibility statement in the regulator's preferred format.
Firm program — 30% recurring on referrals
If you systematically recommend axle in settlements / consent decrees, the firm earns 30% recurring on every Team or Business plan that signs up. No cap, no per-referral limit, monthly payouts. Same as our existing partner program.
For high-volume firms (say, >10 ADA cases per quarter): we'll white-label the consent-decree language with your firm's template + provide a dedicated integration point for retrieving scan reports during ongoing-compliance review. Email asaf@amoss.co.il to discuss.
Why this is different from referring to overlay widgets
Some firms have been recommending overlay widgets (accessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye) to clients during settlement. This is becoming risky:
- The FTC fined accessiBe $1M in January 2025 for deceptive compliance claims.
- Multiple federal courts have rejected overlay-widget defenses in subsequent ADA cases.
- Overlays create a documented trail of “we tried to hide the problem” that opposing counsel can subpoena.
Recommending a CI-grade scanner (axle, Pa11y, or Deque) instead is the defensible path. axle's differentiator is the consent- decree-aligned artifact set + the price point ($49/mo vs $40K/yr audit retainer). See the full overlay analysis at /why-not-overlay.