If you run an online store, accessibility is worth getting right, and not just because of the legal risk. An accessible store is easier to use, easier to buy from, and reaches more customers who'd otherwise bounce off a confusing checkout or an unreadable page.
Legal risk is still part of the picture. Accessibility-related lawsuits are rising, and most merchants don't realize they're exposed until a demand letter shows up.
This guide covers what actually triggers those lawsuits, and just as important, what it takes to build a store that works well for everyone.
Accessibility Lawsuits Are Rising for Stores of All Sizes
Ecommerce businesses now account for nearly 80% of digital accessibility lawsuits, and more than 77% of those cases target companies with annual revenue under $25 million. This isn't a problem reserved for major retailers.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses open to the public, including online stores, to be accessible to people with disabilities. Courts have increasingly pointed to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as the practical standard for what "accessible" means, even though WCAG itself isn't law.
Top Reasons Ecommerce Merchants Get Sued Over Accessibility
Most accessibility lawsuits don't stem from obscure technical failures. They stem from a handful of common, easily identifiable issues that a screen reader user or someone navigating by keyboard hits immediately:
- Missing or incorrect image alt text. Product photos, icons, and buttons with no text alternative make it impossible for screen reader users to know what they're looking at or clicking.
- Forms that don't work without a mouse. Checkout fields, filters, and search bars that can't be reached or completed using a keyboard shut out anyone who can't use a mouse or trackpad.
- Poor color contrast. Low-contrast text and buttons are difficult or impossible to read for users with low vision or color blindness, and they're one of the most frequently cited issues in demand letters.
- Broken or missing focus indicators. If a user can't see where they are on the page while tabbing through it, they can't navigate it.
- Inaccessible pop-ups and modals. Cart drawers, newsletter pop-ups, and promotional overlays that trap keyboard focus or can't be closed without a mouse are a common lawsuit trigger.
- No captions or transcripts on video content. Product demos and marketing videos without captions exclude users who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Each of these is well documented in WCAG and each one is fixable. The problem is that most merchants don't know these issues exist until it's too late.
Why an Accessibility App Alone Won't Protect You
A lot of merchants respond to this risk by installing an accessibility overlay or widget, the kind that adds an accessibility icon to the corner of the site. These tools are marketed as a fast, low-effort fix.
In practice, they catch a narrow slice of surface-level issues and miss the rest. They can't restructure a form that's built without proper labels. They can't fix a checkout flow that traps keyboard focus. They can't rewrite alt text to actually describe what's in an image. Several of these overlay products have themselves been named in accessibility lawsuits, because they create the appearance of compliance without addressing the underlying code.
Relying on an app instead of real remediation doesn't reduce your legal exposure. It can actually increase it, by giving you a false sense of security while the real issues stay in place.
What Real Remediation Looks Like
Fixing accessibility issues means going into the actual code, templates, and content of your store and correcting the problems at the source: proper alt text, semantic HTML, accessible forms, working keyboard navigation, and sufficient color contrast, evaluated against WCAG 2.1 AA and monitored on an ongoing basis, since new issues creep in every time a store gets updated.
We cover our full audit and remediation process in detail on our Web Accessibility services page. The short version: accessibility isn't a one-time fix. It's an ongoing discipline, the same way SEO or site security is.
BigCommerce Web Accessibility Done Right
Most accessibility vendors hand you a report and walk away. We do the actual work.
The Business Case Beyond Mitigating Lawsuits
Fixing accessibility issues isn't just about limiting legal risk. It tends to pay off in ways merchants don't always expect:
- It improves the experience for every visitor, not just those with disabilities. Clear navigation, readable text, and well-structured content reduce friction for everyone.
- It expands your addressable market. More than 1 in 4 adults in the US live with a disability. An inaccessible store simply can't sell to a meaningful share of potential customers.
- It supports SEO. Search engines and screen readers rely on many of the same signals, like alt text, heading structure, and semantic markup. Fixing one tends to help the other.
Where to Start
If you've never had your store audited, start there. An audit will tell you exactly which of the issues above are present on your site and how severe they are, so you're fixing real problems instead of guessing.
If you already know you have issues and just haven't addressed them, the risk only grows the longer they sit. Every day your store is live with unresolved accessibility issues is another day it's a target.
Ready to find out where your store stands? Get in touch with our team and we'll walk you through what an audit and remediation plan would look like for your specific store.
Important Notice: This article is not a substitute for legal advice. To ensure full compliance with accessibility regulations and protect your online business, please consult with legal experts.