Our company has been hit with an ADA accessibility lawsuit, and of course we are very shocked. We relied on a Shopify theme that was represented as accessible and didn’t use our own developer or anything like that. The lawsuit has a lot of claims that are inaccurate, like saying that our checkout needs a mouse. I tested it myself, and you can checkout with the keyboard. It’s a standard Shopify checkout, we didn’t alter it in any way.
I now know this is a problem that has affected many Shopify stores. Does anybody who’s been through it have any advice? We do not have money for a settlement or lawyer.
Hi Tough_Traveler! I’m new to the discussion board here, and just seeing your question. I know it’s been 3 months since you posted, but did you get the help you needed? If not, I’m glad to try to answer questions. I run an agency that helps eComm sites with accessibility and ADA compliance. Happy to point you toward resources if you still need help.
Just remember that any “free audit” is likely only an automated scan. These scans only pick up about 30% of all accessibility issues. For instance, they cannot flag anything about whether your site has a problem with keyboard navigation (which is used by both vision impaired and mobility impaired users). An automated scan is a great place to start, but just know that that’s not going to get everything that you need to fix.
Ask yourself where in any terms is platform A is assuming ALL your legal liabilities, real or imagined?
Ask yourself: has MY lawyer looked this over to set me straight?
Ask yourself: regardless of accessibility have I invested in understanding and improving my digital presence so when I need to I can improve anything including accessibility
It’s a LOOOONG list for “full” compliance or other scare phrases, some which don’t always make sense.
If your being “legally” “threatened” ; BIG air quotes.
Then keep in mind most “lawsuits” are trolls pushing scare tactics bs relying on merchant ignorance to collect an unresisting payday.
Talk to an actual lawyer before you do anything even replying to this forum post.
Stop reading, go get a lawyer, no don’t reply, lawyer, now.
Does anyone know any store that was affected with ADA, the settlement they asked, what all were the major accessibility issues they found and so. Is there any forums or website where I can see these lists.
Settlements tend to be private AND have confidentiality clauses; ~NDA’s.
And most numbers on the internet are anecdotes or just plain made up without the paper work to back up the amounts.
That’s the reflex after a letter like this, and it makes the file worse, not better. These suits are mostly templates sent to hundreds of stores, and what resolves them is a remediation plan with dates on it - not an icon in the corner.
The uncomfortable part is that the thing most people buy first is the thing that gets them sued. Overlay widgets promise compliance in one line of JavaScript. They don’t deliver it: a screen reader still hits the same markup underneath, and accessiBe paid a $1M FTC settlement in 2025 over exactly those claims. Plaintiffs’ firms now scan for overlay scripts, because the presence of one shows the merchant knew about accessibility and bought the cheap answer.
What actually reduces risk is boring, and it lives in the theme rather than in any widget you can buy: real alt text on product images, contrast that passes on your palette, keyboard access through the whole buy flow including the cart, form labels a screen reader can announce. Headings in an order that makes sense with the page unseen. None of it glamorous. All of it what the complaint is actually about.
You said your checkout already passes the keyboard test. That tracks - it’s standard Shopify checkout, and these claim templates often don’t reflect the specific store they were mailed to. The theme is usually where the real gaps are.
Cheap first step: run the storefront through a free axe or Lighthouse audit, then try to buy something from your own store using only the keyboard. Most people find the real blocker inside two minutes. Usually the variant picker or the cart drawer.
Answering as an accessibility app developer (Appify Commerce), so read with that in mind.
Denyslg’s point above is the one to hold onto: the lawsuit template usually isn’t a description of your store — it’s a description of every store. What actually reduces risk is boring and specific: run a real audit (axe-core or an equivalent engine, plus a manual keyboard pass of browse → cart → checkout), fix what it finds in your own theme — alt text, form labels, focus states, contrast — and keep dated records of each fix. Courts and plaintiff firms respond to documented remediation; they don’t respond to a widget icon in the corner.
Two honest cautions from inside this industry. First, be skeptical of anything that promises “compliance” — the FTC fined accessiBe $1M in January 2025 for exactly that kind of claim, and no overlay (ours included) can make a store “immune”. Second, the checkout itself is Shopify-rendered and already fairly strong on keyboard/screen-reader basics, which matches what the OP found when they tested — the exposure is almost always in the theme layer you control, not the checkout you don’t.
We build AC - Accessibility Toolkit which pairs an axe-core audit with per-issue fixes — but whichever tool you use, audit + fix + document beats any badge. Not legal advice; for an active suit, a lawyer who has handled ADA web cases is worth the consult fee.
This lines up with what others here have said — most of these are template demand letters sent to hundreds of stores, and the items that actually hold up are usually the same handful: icon buttons/links with no accessible name (cart, search, menu), low-contrast text, missing alt text on product images, and unlabeled form fields.
A free first pass that costs nothing: (1) tab through your whole checkout using only the keyboard — anything you can’t reach or activate, fix first; (2) make sure your cart/search/menu icons have real accessible names, not just an icon; (3) add alt text to product images and label your search + newsletter fields; (4) fix any low-contrast text in your theme settings.
Automated tools only catch part of this (they miss keyboard traps and contrast set in external CSS), so a manual keyboard + contrast pass matters. Full disclosure: I got frustrated that most “compliance” options are overlay widgets (which are themselves getting sued), so I built a free scanner that flags the HTML-level items — unnamed links/buttons, missing alt text, unlabeled fields, and inline-style contrast. Happy to share the link if that’s allowed here, or DM me. Not legal advice — just the technical stuff you can actually fix.
One angle this thread hasn’t covered yet, because everything above is US/ADA — the same playbook is now running in Europe, and it changes what “prepared” means for any store selling into the EU.
Since June 2025 the European Accessibility Act applies to shops selling to EU consumers (Germany enforces it as the BFSG, and warning-letter waves started there within weeks). The letters look different — German ones cite competition law — but they hinge on the same handful of technical findings named in this thread: unlabeled icon buttons, missing alt text, contrast, keyboard traps. And exactly as muzz_j says, most are templates; some claims won’t even be true for your store.
What holds up on both continents, from what’s publicly visible in resolved cases: (1) a lawyer answers the letter — and when a claim is inaccurate, like a keyboard-operable checkout described as mouse-only, a documented test disproving it is powerful in a lawyer’s hands; (2) real fixes in the theme code, starting with the repeat offenders; (3) a dated paper trail — audits, fixes, an accessibility statement. In the EU that statement ideally exists in the customer’s language: a German letter gets answered with German documents.
Disclosure: I build a Shopify app in this space (Disciplina EAA Audit — free unlimited WCAG scans with the exact file/line per issue; the paid tier adds dated PDF reports and EU-model statements in five languages). Take the bias into account. Whatever tool anyone uses: automated scanners catch roughly 20–30% of real barriers — no tool makes a store “compliant,” and anything promising that is the biggest red flag in this niche.