ADA compliance for Shopify stores: a practical WCAG 2.2 checklist
US courts have repeatedly treated e-commerce sites as places of public accommodation under ADA Title III — which is why online stores receive so many web-accessibility demand letters. If you run a Shopify store, the standard your site will be measured against, in practice, is WCAG: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
The good news: most Shopify accessibility problems cluster into a dozen fixable patterns. Here's the working checklist we scan for every day.
What WCAG 2.2 AA means for a store
WCAG organizes accessibility into testable criteria at three levels — A, AA, and AAA. Level AA is the widely used benchmark: it's what most demand letters reference, what the European Accessibility Act builds on, and what an accessibility statement typically targets.
Your Shopify theme determines most of your compliance posture — but your content (product images, descriptions, banners) and your installed apps matter just as much.
The checklist
- Alt text on product images — every image that carries meaning needs a description; decorative images should be marked decorative. This is the single most common finding in store scans.
- Color contrast — body text, prices, and buttons need at least 4.5:1 contrast (3:1 for large text). Brand-colored 'Add to cart' buttons fail this constantly.
- Keyboard navigation — every interactive element (menus, variant pickers, cart drawer, checkout) must be reachable and operable with Tab/Enter/Escape alone.
- Visible focus states — when a keyboard user tabs to a link or button, they must be able to see where they are. Themes that remove focus outlines for aesthetics fail here.
- Form labels — email fields, quantity inputs, discount codes, and checkout fields all need programmatic labels, not just placeholder text.
- Heading structure — one H1 per page, headings in order. Screen-reader users navigate by headings the way sighted users skim.
- Link and button text — 'Shop now' and 'Learn more' repeated ten times tells a screen reader nothing. Each link's purpose should be clear from its text.
- Media — captions on videos, and no audio that autoplays. Product videos without captions are a recurring finding.
- Motion — carousels and animations need pause controls, and the site should respect the user's reduced-motion preference.
- Zoom and reflow — the store must remain usable at 200% zoom and on small viewports without horizontal scrolling.
- Third-party apps and widgets — review pop-ups, upsell modals, and chat bubbles ship their own accessibility problems into your store. Audit what you install.
- Skip link — a 'skip to content' link saves keyboard users from tabbing through your entire navigation on every page.
How to test your store honestly
Automated scanning catches a large, well-defined subset of WCAG failures — missing alt text, contrast, labels, structure — and it does it across your whole catalog at once. Manual checks (keyboard-only walkthrough, screen reader session) cover the judgment calls automation can't make. Do both: scan first to clear the mechanical findings, then walk your purchase flow with the keyboard.
AdaChecked for Shopify runs the automated side from inside your admin: a real WCAG 2.2 scan with A/AA/AAA verdicts, every issue mapped to its criterion and affected pages, and a free plan that gives you your score and top issues with no card required.
Then document it
Once you've fixed what the scan found, publish an accessibility statement and keep monitoring on. A dated trail of scans and fixes is what turns 'we care about accessibility' into something you can actually show.