Shopify accessibility remediation after an ADA demand letter or lawsuit
If your Shopify store received an ADA demand letter or was sued, the technical fix is remediation of the theme itself toward WCAG 2.2 AA: an audit of every failure, code changes in Liquid, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and documentation your attorney can present. Gersen Medina does this work alongside your counsel, scoped to fit the response window.
How it works
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Send the letter and your store URL
Email the demand letter or complaint together with the store address. Gersen replies with the scope for the audit and what he needs from your attorney: the deadline in the letter, any commitment already made, and access to the theme.
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Audit
Manual testing with screen readers (VoiceOver and NVDA) and keyboard only, plus automated checks, on the templates that matter in a lawsuit: home, collection, product, cart, checkout customizations, search, account and contact. Every failure is mapped to a WCAG 2.2 success criterion. The report is ordered by what the letter names, what blocks a purchase, and what a screen reader user hits first.
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Remediation in the theme
Fixes are made on a copy of the live theme, in Liquid, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then retested with the same screen readers and keyboard before publishing. Every change is logged. Third-party app markup is corrected where possible and documented where it is not. No overlays or widgets are installed.
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Evidence package for counsel
Your attorney receives a dated record with before and after evidence for each fix, test results by criterion, the remaining known limitations, and an accessibility statement page published on the store. It is written to be attached to the response or used in settlement negotiations.
What gets fixed
The failures named in demand letters against Shopify stores repeat from theme to theme. The audit checks all of them and the remediation covers whatever applies to your store. The code behind each fix is shown in the 10 WCAG failures in almost every Shopify lawsuit, with Liquid fixes.
- Product and collection images with missing or meaningless alt text
- Variant pickers and color swatches that cannot be operated with a keyboard or have no accessible name
- Text and buttons below the 4.5:1 contrast ratio in the theme palette
- No visible focus indicator, or focus removed by the theme's CSS
- Menus, cart drawers and modals that keyboard and screen reader users cannot reach or close
- Search, newsletter, contact and checkout fields without labels
- Quantity, add to cart and remove controls without accessible names
- Slideshows and announcement bars that move automatically with no pause control
- Missing or wrong heading structure and page landmarks
- Markup injected by apps: reviews, pop-ups, chat, size guides and upsells
What you receive
- Audit report: every failure mapped to WCAG 2.2, with severity and the template it appears on
- Remediated theme, published, with a changelog of every file touched
- Test results by success criterion, before and after, with screen reader and keyboard evidence
- Accessibility statement page for the store, with contact route and known limitations
- A short guide for your team on keeping new products, images and apps accessible
What each document contains and why it is there is explained in how to document Shopify accessibility remediation for plaintiff's counsel.
Timelines and what the letters ask for
Most demand letters give the merchant 30 to 60 days to respond before the plaintiff files a lawsuit, ask for a settlement payment that usually starts between $1,500 and $5,000, and require a commitment to remediate within 60 to 90 days, according to TestParty's review of 2025 and 2026 lawsuit data. The audit is scoped to be delivered inside the response window, and remediation is planned against the commitment your attorney negotiates.
Shopify stores are the most common target. In EcomBack's report on the first quarter of 2026, Shopify was identified in 459 lawsuits, 44% of the total, and 265 lawsuits, about one in four, hit stores that already had an accessibility widget installed. Restaurants and food and beverage (32%) and fashion and apparel (25%) were the most sued industries.
Why the theme and not a widget
An overlay or widget adds a script on top of the store. It does not change the theme's markup, so the failures a plaintiff's expert finds with a screen reader are still there. That is why a quarter of the lawsuits in the report above were filed against stores that already had one. Remediation changes the code, which is what the response to the letter needs to show.
Frequently asked questions
Do I still need a lawyer?
Yes. Gersen Medina is not a lawyer and does not give legal advice. Your attorney handles the response to the letter, the negotiation and any filing. Gersen handles the technical side and gives your attorney the findings, the fixes and the documentation to work with.
Can you make my store fully compliant so I cannot be sued again?
No one can promise that, and anyone who does should be treated with caution. What remediation toward WCAG 2.2 AA does is remove the failures plaintiffs test for, give your attorney evidence that the work was done, and make a repeat filing much harder to sustain.
Will I have to change my theme?
Usually not. The fixes go into the code of the theme you already use. If the theme is abandoned by its vendor or broken beyond repair, Gersen will say so after the audit, before any remediation starts.
What about the apps installed on the store?
Apps are part of the audit. Reviews, pop-ups, chat, size guides and upsells inject their own markup. Where an app can be configured or its output can be corrected in the theme, it is fixed. Where it cannot, the options are to replace it or to document the limitation for your attorney.
How long does remediation take?
It depends on the theme, the number of templates and the apps. The audit comes first and produces a plan with dates that fits the remediation commitment your attorney negotiates, typically 60 to 90 days from the response.
Do you work directly with attorneys and agencies?
Yes. Attorneys usually bring Gersen in to handle remediation and produce the record for the response. Agencies bring him in for stores they manage, and he works inside their process and their theme repository.
Start with the letter
Send the demand letter or complaint and your store URL. Gersen reads every message himself and replies with the scope for the audit and the next step.
Gersen Medina is a Shopify accessibility specialist who remediates ADA and WCAG 2.2 issues on Shopify stores that have received demand letters or lawsuits. Working with U.S. companies since 2014, his remediation work has helped dozens of merchants avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in accessibility litigation exposure. About Gersen