Skip to content
Start
Guides · For owners

The accessibility letter that shows up once you're selling

Online stores are the most common target of accessibility lawsuits, and most suits hit businesses with $25 million or less in revenue. A widget won't protect you; fixing the store itself will.

Updated

September 25, 2026

01 FM · The problem

What the research shows.

Thousands of businesses are sued every year because a blind customer couldn't use their website. Online stores are the biggest target by far. The counts depend on who's counting:

  1. 2,452Website accessibility lawsuits in federal court in 2024, down 13% on 2023 (Seyfarth Shaw)
  2. 2,019Digital accessibility lawsuits in state and federal courts, first half of 2025 alone (UsableNet)
  3. 69%Share of those 2025 lawsuits aimed at online stores (UsableNet)
  4. 64%Share aimed at companies with $25 million or less in revenue (UsableNet)

UsableNet sells accessibility software, so it has a reason to make the problem look big. Seyfarth is a law firm that defends businesses in these cases, and its federal count alone is still in the thousands.

This is close to home for us in Florida. UsableNet reports a resurgence of federal suits against online stores here, after a court ruled that ordinary websites aren't covered but stores that sell online may be.

02 FM · Behind it

What's really going on.

What stops a blind shopper is usually ordinary: images with no description, buttons a screen reader can't name, menus you can't reach with a keyboard, text too faint to read, and checkouts that trap you halfway through.

Many owners respond by installing an accessibility widget, the little icon in the corner that promises compliance. It doesn't work. UsableNet counted suits against companies using widgets in every month of the first half of 2025, including 132 in February alone. The suits argue that widgets don't fix the underlying code, and they can make a store harder for blind shoppers to use.

The real fix is in the store itself, and most of it is ordinary good building: proper labels, real text instead of text baked into images, enough contrast, and a checkout that works with a keyboard.

This guide isn't legal advice. If a demand letter arrives, don't ignore it: talk to a lawyer.

03 FM · Do it yourself

What you can do this week.

01

Put your mouse away and use the Tab key to move through your store. Can you reach the menu, add something to the cart and get to checkout? Can you always see where you are?

02

Add a short description (alt text) to every product image in Shopify. Open the product, click the image, and choose Add alt text.

03

If you've installed an accessibility widget, don't count on it to protect you.

04

Check any light grey text, or text over photos, with a free contrast checker like WebAIM's.

04 FM · With a partner

What we take off your plate.

Most of what these suits look for is code in your theme and apps that you can't see from the admin. We check the store against WCAG 2.1 AA, the standard these cases lean on: we measure contrast from the page as it actually appears, tab through every control, and test the checkout end to end.

Then we fix it in the store itself, not with a widget on top, and check it again after every change. It's part of how we build every store, so you don't have to become an expert in it.

Talk to us about your store

Sources