A few days ago one of our clients was affected by an ADA accessibility claim. I had honestly ignored this area for a while, but now that people are pushing it hard and actually filing cases against businesses, it is not something any US merchant can keep ignoring.
Why this caught people off guard
Accessibility has always been the right thing to do, but for years it carried no commercial consequence, so it sat at the bottom of every backlog. That has changed. The claims are real, they target ordinary online stores rather than only large brands, and the cost of defending one dwarfs the cost of fixing the site.
It is the same pattern as every other risk owners defer until it bites, exactly like the client who ignored a security audit. Invisible until it is the only thing anyone can see.
What we do about it now
We got access to a tool that scans any website and reports the potential accessibility issues, so this can be checked properly rather than guessed at. It becomes one more item on the compliance list for US merchants, alongside the security checks and PCI work that should already be running.
Most of what it surfaces is unglamorous and fixable: contrast that fails, images without alt text, forms without labels, controls that cannot be reached by keyboard. The same category of quiet breakage as the bugs nobody ever fixes.
The upside nobody mentions
Accessibility work overlaps almost entirely with good ecommerce practice. Proper alt text helps search engines. Clear labels and keyboard paths reduce checkout friction. Better contrast lifts conversion on mobile. You are not just buying legal cover, you are fixing things that were already costing you sales, which is why the problem is usually conversion rather than traffic.
Treat it as part of the foundation rather than a bolt-on, the same argument as getting the foundation right, and get it scanned before someone else does it for you.
If you sell into the US and have never had an accessibility scan, book a call.