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The ADA rule most owners meet by letter
Most owners hear about 28 CFR 36.302(e) from a lawyer’s letter rather than from a regulator. It is not new — it has been in force since 2010 — and what it asks for is mostly writing.
What the rule actually says
The Department of Justice’s reservation-system rule requires a place of lodging to do three things through the same channels it uses for everything else:
- Identify which units are accessible.
- Describe their accessibility features in enough detail to let a person with a disability decide whether the unit meets their needs.
- Allow them to be reserved in the same way, and hold them back from general inventory, so an accessible unit is not sold to someone who does not need it.
The middle one is where cases are won and lost. “Wheelchair accessible” is a conclusion, not a description. “Step-free from the parking space to the front door, 32-inch doorways, roll-in shower with a fold-down seat, no bath” is a description. The first invites an argument; the second lets the guest decide.
How far it reaches to a single vacation rental
Honestly: this is not fully settled, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. The rule is written for places of lodging and has been enforced against hotels for fifteen years. Legal commentary notes there is no obvious exception for individually owned units offered through third-party sites, which is why lawyers writing on this treat vacation rentals as exposed rather than exempt.
What is not in doubt is the economics of a demand letter. Plaintiff firms send them at volume to businesses of every size; the demand is remediation plus legal fees; and being right does not refund the cost of establishing it. That is the practical reason to spend an afternoon on this rather than a legal opinion.
What to do, in order of value
- Write the honest access description. Number of steps to the entrance, whether there is a step-free route, doorway widths, bathroom layout, parking surface and distance, whether the shower has a lip. If the place is up eighteen stairs with no lift, say so plainly — that is useful information, not an admission.
- Do not overclaim. “ADA compliant” on a listing that has one step at the door is worse than saying nothing at all.
- Make the site itself usable. Real headings, alt text on every photo, labels tied to form fields, visible focus, text that passes contrast, and everything reachable by keyboard. WCAG 2.1 AA is the working target courts and settlements reference.
- Be careful with overlay widgets. The one-line script that promises accessibility has not fared well: businesses using overlays still receive letters, and the overlay is not a defence. Fixing the page is the fix.
Who this really helps
Set the legal exposure aside for a second. A guest with a mobility need who can see, before booking, exactly how many steps there are and how wide the bathroom door is, is a guest who books with confidence and does not arrive to a problem. That description also does something a portal listing rarely does: it answers a question that most listings dodge. Some of the most loyal repeat guests in this business are people who found one place that told them the truth about access.
What this means for your website
Accessibility is not a feature we add on request. Every site we build ships with real heading structure, keyboard navigation, alt text on every image, labelled form fields and colours we measure rather than eyeball — in a real browser, in both light and dark mode, on every text element. That is a check that runs before anything goes live.
The access description itself has to come from you, because only you know how many steps there are. There is a field for it on every property, and it appears on the listing where a guest looks for it.
Not legal advice. If a demand letter has already arrived, that is a conversation for a lawyer, today, not for a web person.