Shopify ADA demand letter

You got an ADA demand letter about your store. What now?

Take a breath. A demand letter is the start of a conversation, not a court judgment. Stores receive these every week, and most of them get through it. Here is what the letter means, what to do first, and what usually happens after.

Published August 6, 2026 · 6 minute read

What the letter actually is

A lawyer representing a person with a disability says your store is hard or impossible to use with a screen reader or a keyboard. That is the whole shape of it. Most of these letters have the same four parts:

Who is complaining. A named person, represented by a law firm. Many letters come from a small number of firms that send them in volume. That does not make yours fake, and it does not make it safe to ignore.
What they say is broken. A list of barriers on your store, usually produced by an automated scan plus a short visit. The wording sounds technical and alarming. The underlying problems are usually ordinary, and the next section translates them.
What they want. Two things: money, and a real fix to the site. The money covers their client and their fees. The fix is the part that involves you and your theme.
The deadline. Letters like this usually give you a window to respond, often 30 to 60 days. The date is in the letter itself.

Two things are worth knowing right away. The letter is not a lawsuit yet, and it is not proof that you did anything on purpose. The US Department of Justice has said for years that the ADA applies to business websites, and it lists exactly the kind of barriers these letters describe: forms without labels, navigation that needs a mouse, pictures with no written description. The Department's own web guidance is short and readable if you want the source.

What the barriers usually look like on a Shopify store

The legal language hides ordinary problems. On a store like yours, the list in the letter usually comes down to things like these:

Product photos with no written description, so a screen reader says only the file name or nothing at all.
Menus, size pickers and cart drawers that only open with a mouse.
A focus outline you cannot see, so a shopper using a keyboard loses their place on the page.
A cart that updates silently, so a screen reader user never hears that anything was added.
Forms whose fields have no labels, so nobody knows what to type where.
A checkout problem that belongs to Shopify's own pages, which your theme does not control and no one you hire can edit on most plans.

None of this is exotic. These are the same issues our five-minute keyboard test finds, and the same boundary our guide to what your theme controls explains. Knowing which problems are actually yours matters, because the letter will not separate them for you.

What to do in the first days

Do not ignore it. The deadline in the letter is real even though the letter is not a court order. Silence is how a letter becomes a lawsuit.
Call a lawyer who defends these cases. Ask how many website accessibility matters they have handled this year. It is a specialist niche, and the lawyer who did your lease may not know it. How you reply, what you admit and what you agree to are legal decisions. We are not lawyers, and nothing on this page is legal advice.
Call your insurance broker. Some business policies help with claims like this. One phone call tells you, and it costs nothing.
Keep everything. The letter, the envelope, the date it arrived, and a record of what your store looks like now. Do not start changing the site in a panic before anyone has looked at it.
Do not reply to the letter yourself. Anything you write to the other side can be used later. Let your lawyer speak for you, even if the letter invites you to call a number and sort it out.
Do not rush to buy a widget. A toolbar or overlay installed in an afternoon does not repair your theme's code. The Department of Justice warns that automated tools "need to be used carefully" and that a clean report does not mean a site is usable. A widget also leaves you with nothing to show your lawyer: no record of what was wrong, what changed or when.
Learn what is actually failing. You can do this yourself in five minutes with one key. Our keyboard test walks you through it. Facts calm the situation down.

What usually happens next

Every case is different, and your lawyer's advice beats any article, this one included. But the broad shape is usually this:

Your lawyer replies, asks questions about their client's claims, and buys time to look at your store properly.
The two sides negotiate. The money part gets most of the attention, but the letter's second demand does not go away: the site has to be fixed.
A settlement normally includes an agreement to repair the site within an agreed period, and sometimes to keep it usable afterwards.
If the letter is ignored, a lawsuit can follow. That path costs more and ends at the same place: the site still has to be fixed.

Some letters also cite a state law alongside the ADA, which can change what is at stake. That is one more reason the first call is to a lawyer, not to a software vendor.

This is also why the technical side matters to your lawyer rather than sitting apart from the legal work. A dated record showing which barriers were found, which were fixed and when the work was verified is evidence of good faith. Vague promises are not.

What you can do while your lawyer works

You do not have to sit still. Run the keyboard test and write down what fails, page by page. Read about what your theme controls and what it does not, so you know which problems are yours to fix and which belong to Shopify or an app. Collect the facts your lawyer will ask for anyway: when your theme was installed, which apps you run, and whether anyone has complained before.

Two things to avoid in the meantime. Do not post about the letter publicly, and do not buy a score, a badge or a certificate. No such instrument exists, and waving one can make things worse.

Staying fixed afterwards

A fix is a point in time, not a permanent state. Theme updates, new apps and new homepage sections can each bring barriers back. If your settlement asks you to keep the store usable for a period, dated re-tests are how you show that you did.

The keyboard test is good enough for this. Run it after every theme change and every new app, and keep the notes. Five minutes each time is cheaper than a second letter.

Where AccessProof fits

We do the technical part. We fix the agreed barriers in your Shopify theme's source code, prove the result on a private preview of your real store, and hand you a dated record your lawyer can read. One fixed price of $10,000, starting with a $1,500 scope check that counts toward it. We do not handle claims, we do not give legal advice, and we do not promise a legal outcome.

Check whether your store fits — free