ADA Compliance
ADA compliance is meeting US accessibility law as applied to websites, with WCAG as the working benchmark.
What ADA compliance is
ADA compliance is meeting the Americans with Disabilities Act as applied to websites: US courts and the Department of Justice have treated commercial sites as places of public accommodation, expected to be usable by people with disabilities.
Why ADA compliance matters
Web accessibility lawsuits and demand letters against stores number in the thousands per year, and ecommerce is a favorite target: an inaccessible checkout is both excluded customers and legal exposure. The practical standard courts and settlements point to is WCAG.
What compliance work looks like
- Conformance to WCAG guidelines as the working benchmark
- Keyboard operability and screen-reader compatibility through checkout
- Alt text, contrast, labels, and focus states maintained
- Audits on templates and fixes tracked, not one-off scans
Frequently asked questions
Do accessibility overlay widgets make a site compliant?
Overlays alone have not stopped lawsuits and are widely criticized by accessibility practitioners: the fixes that count live in the site’s own code and content. Treat overlays as, at best, a supplement.
Which stores get targeted?
All sizes: serial plaintiffs file in volume, and small stores receive demand letters too. The defense is the same as the good practice: an actually usable site and evidence of ongoing effort.