WCAG 2.2 AA Accessibility Audit for Shopify

The problem a WCAG audit solves

A demand letter arrives on a Thursday afternoon. It claims your website violates Title III of the ADA because a screen reader user could not complete checkout. It quotes five specific WCAG 2.1 failures. It names your brand, your parent entity, and two executives. It offers to settle for a sum that is painful but smaller than the cost of defense. Your attorney asks whether the site is compliant and the honest answer is that nobody has ever checked. That is the moment most DTC brands wish they had run an audit two years earlier.

The volume of these demand letters has grown every year since 2018 and shows no sign of slowing. DTC ecommerce is a preferred target because complaints are cheap to file, the jurisprudence favors plaintiffs, and defendants often settle to avoid legal fees that dwarf the settlement. Serial plaintiffs file dozens of cases a month. A handful of law firms account for a large fraction of the total. The selection process is not random. Sites using visible overlays are disproportionately targeted because the overlays are often listed as evidence in the complaint rather than as a defense.

The real problem is not the demand letter itself. The real problem is that a site that is genuinely inaccessible is failing a meaningful portion of its customer base every day. Between ten and twenty percent of adults in the United States have a disability that affects web use. Screen reader users, keyboard-only users, users with low vision, users with color blindness, users with motor impairments, users with cognitive disabilities. A site that cannot serve these users is losing revenue continuously, entirely separate from the litigation risk.

Our approach

We run a four week WCAG 2.2 AA audit engagement combining automated scanning, manual testing, and real assistive technology user testing.

Step one is scope and template mapping. We identify every unique template on the site: home, collection, product, cart, checkout, account, login, blog list, blog post, help center, and any brand-specific pages. We document which pages represent each template and which critical user journeys traverse them. The audit covers templates, not every page, because a fix to a template fixes every page using it.

Step two is automated scanning. We run axe-core, WAVE, and Lighthouse accessibility audits against every template page. Automated tools catch roughly thirty to forty percent of WCAG failures, which is not enough alone but catches enough obvious issues to focus manual review. We document every finding with the offending selector and the WCAG success criterion it violates.

Step three is manual testing. We test every template with a keyboard only, then with NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on macOS and iOS, then with browser zoom to four hundred percent, then with color contrast checks. We exercise the critical user journeys end to end: search, browse, add to cart, checkout, login, account management, and support contact. Manual testing catches the majority of real-world failures and is the core of any credible audit.

Step four is real user testing. We engage a paid panel of assistive technology users who traverse the same critical journeys and report their actual experience. This catches usability failures that pass technical conformance but fail in practice, and it produces the kind of evidence that matters most in a legal negotiation.

Step five is the remediation roadmap. Every finding is documented with its WCAG success criterion, its severity under the Access Board's published severity framework, its estimated remediation effort, its recommended fix, and its owner. The roadmap is written for developers, not for lawyers, so the remediation can start immediately.

What you get

▸ Template map document with every unique template and the pages using it. ▸ Automated scan report from axe-core, WAVE, and Lighthouse across every template. ▸ Manual test report covering keyboard, screen reader, zoom, and contrast on every template. ▸ Real user test report with recorded sessions from panel participants. ▸ Full findings log with every violation mapped to WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria. ▸ Severity-ranked remediation roadmap with estimated effort per finding. ▸ Accessibility statement draft for your footer, legally reviewed and WCAG conforming. ▸ VPAT template populated for enterprise RFP responses. ▸ Ongoing monitoring setup with monthly automated scans and alerts. ▸ Training session for the development team on the top recurring patterns.

Timeline

Four weeks in three phases.

Week one is scope and automated scanning. We map templates, run automated tools, and produce the initial findings log.

Weeks two and three are manual and real user testing. We run keyboard, screen reader, zoom, and contrast testing on every template. We run the real user panel sessions and review recordings.

Week four is the roadmap and handoff. We rank findings, estimate effort, draft the accessibility statement, and deliver the training session.

Mini case anatomy

A home goods brand in the thirty to fifty million revenue range received an ADA demand letter naming sixteen specific WCAG 2.1 failures. Their site used a popular overlay they had installed two years earlier. The demand itself cited the overlay as evidence that the brand knew about accessibility obligations and chose not to remediate properly. Their attorney recommended immediate remediation alongside settlement negotiation.

We ran the audit in three weeks compressed from our normal four. We identified eleven of the sixteen cited failures as genuine WCAG 2.2 AA violations, four as borderline, and one as incorrect. We produced a remediation roadmap with forty-seven additional findings the demand had not cited. The client's development team executed the roadmap over the following two months, overlay removed.

The demand settled at roughly sixty percent of the initial ask because the brand could document a completed audit and active remediation. Six months later a second demand letter arrived from a different firm and was withdrawn after the client produced the audit and remediation records. Annual re-audit has been standard practice since. The audit is not a guarantee but it changes the economics of every subsequent negotiation.

FAQs

See frequently asked questions below. Accessibility is one of several compliance exposures for DTC brands, and we often recommend pairing this audit with our privacy compliance audit and claim substantiation review for a complete picture. See also our compliance audits hub and our guides on ecommerce analytics with GA4 and server-side tagging.