Making your website accessible is the right thing to do, and increasingly it is the law. What a lot of small business owners do not realize is that the federal government will help pay for it. Under Section 44 of the Internal Revenue Code, the Disabled Access Credit, an eligible small business can claim a tax credit for money spent making its business accessible to people with disabilities, and that includes web accessibility work. Here is what the credit is, who qualifies, when you can claim it, how much it is worth, and how to actually file for it.

The short version: if your business qualifies, the IRS will give you back 50 percent of what you spend on accessibility (above a small $250 floor), up to a maximum credit of $5,000 a year. Applied to an annual accessibility subscription, that can cut your effective cost roughly in half.

What is the Disabled Access Credit?

The Disabled Access Credit is a federal tax credit created alongside the Americans with Disabilities Act to lower the cost of compliance for smaller businesses. It lives at Section 44 of the Internal Revenue Code.

The important word is credit. A deduction only lowers the income you are taxed on. A credit lowers your tax bill directly, dollar for dollar, which makes it considerably more valuable. The Disabled Access Credit is worth 50 percent of your eligible access expenditures for the year that fall between $250 and $10,250. In plain terms: the first $250 does not count, everything above it counts up to a ceiling of $10,250 in spending, and you get half of that amount back as a credit. The most you can claim in a single year is therefore $5,000.

Eligible access expenditures are amounts you pay to comply with the ADA and make your goods, services, and facilities usable by people with disabilities. The IRS reads this broadly: removing physical barriers, providing materials in accessible formats, supplying qualified interpreters or readers, and acquiring or modifying equipment all count. Bringing your website into conformance with recognized accessibility standards (the work an accessibility platform like Ardor performs) falls squarely within that definition, because an inaccessible website is one of the most common ways a modern business is unusable to people with disabilities.

One note for planning: the credit is non-refundable, meaning it can reduce your federal tax liability to zero but not below it. If you cannot use the full amount in a given year, it becomes part of the general business credit, and the unused portion can generally be carried forward to a future year. Your tax professional can tell you how that applies to your return.

Who qualifies for this tax credit?

The credit is reserved for an eligible small business. To count as one for a given year, your business needs to meet either one of these two tests in the prior tax year:

  • Gross receipts of $1 million or less, or
  • 30 or fewer full-time employees.

You only have to satisfy one of the two, not both. A business with high revenue but a small headcount can qualify on the employee test, and a business with many seasonal workers but modest receipts can qualify on the revenue test. In practice this covers the overwhelming majority of independent shops, local service providers, professional practices, clinics, restaurants, and other small organizations. If you are a small business owner reading this, there is a good chance you qualify.

When can you qualify?

You can claim the credit for any tax year in which you pay or incur eligible access expenditures. The accessibility spending and the credit are tied to the year the money is spent.

This matters because web accessibility is not a one-time project. New pages, posts, products, and documents are added all the time, and a site that passed last year can drift out of conformance this year, which is why ongoing remediation and monitoring are how compliance is actually maintained. An annual accessibility subscription is a recurring eligible expense, so as long as you keep the service active and continue to meet the eligible-small-business tests, you may be able to claim the credit year after year, not just once. Each tax year stands on its own and resets the $250-to-$10,250 calculation.

How much money can you get back?

The formula is simple. Take your eligible accessibility spending for the year, subtract the first $250, cap the result at $10,000 of countable spending, and the credit is half of that. Here is how it works out against our two published plans.

Plan Annual price Countable amount (above $250) Tax credit (50%) Effective cost after credit
Standard $2,490 $2,240 $1,120 $1,370
Premium $4,990 $4,740 $2,370 $2,620

So an eligible small business on our Standard plan can recover $1,120 of the $2,490 price, bringing the real out-of-pocket cost down to about $1,370. On the Premium plan, the $2,370 credit brings a $4,990 price down to roughly $2,620. If your total eligible accessibility spending for the year reaches $10,250 or more (for example, an accessibility subscription combined with other ADA compliance work), you hit the ceiling and claim the maximum credit of $5,000.

Worth knowing: the Disabled Access Credit is only one of two ADA tax incentives. Larger spenders can also look at the Section 190 barrier-removal deduction. The two can sometimes be used together in the same year, which a tax professional can help you structure.

How to claim the credit

Claiming the credit is straightforward, and it happens at tax time rather than through any separate application.

  • Keep your records. Hold on to the invoice for your accessibility service and any related documentation that shows what you paid and what it was for. Ardor provides an itemized annual quote and a full set of compliance documents in your portal, which give you a clean paper trail for the expense.
  • File IRS Form 8826. The credit is claimed on Form 8826, "Disabled Access Credit," which you file with your business tax return for the year you incurred the expense. The form walks through the same simple math shown above.
  • Carry it into the general business credit. The amount from Form 8826 flows into the general business credit (Form 3800), where it reduces your overall tax bill.
  • Loop in your tax professional. A CPA or tax preparer can confirm that your business meets the eligible-small-business tests and that your accessibility spending qualifies, and can handle any carryforward if you cannot use the full credit this year.

The bottom line

Web accessibility protects you from rising ADA litigation and widens your audience to every customer. The Disabled Access Credit removes one more objection: for eligible small businesses, the federal government covers a large share of the cost. Run a free scan to see where your site stands, then talk to your accountant about claiming the credit on what you spend to fix it.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or tax advice. Tax rules change and every business’s situation is different. Please confirm your eligibility, the current dollar limits, and the treatment of your accessibility expenses with a qualified tax professional before filing.