Reviewed November 1, 2026

What an Accessibility Statement Should and Should Not Promise

Publish the facts: the standard you target, WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the reference courts and settlements use, the date of your last evaluation and who did it, the parts of the site covered, known limitations stated plainly, and a contact method for reporting barriers that a person actually answers. Never promise that the site is fully compliant or accessible to everyone if you cannot prove it today, and never publish a statement with no contact route; a statement that invites reports and then ignores them is worse evidence than no statement at all.

Merchants treat the accessibility statement as a compliance charm, a page whose existence signals virtue. Plaintiffs' counsel treat it as something else: a set of admissions, written by the business, about what the business knew and when it knew it. A statement claiming full WCAG conformance for a site with a keyboard trapped checkout is not a shield. It is exhibit material, demonstrating that the gap between claim and reality was, at best, never checked.

Written honestly, the same page genuinely helps. It tells disabled customers how to get assistance and report barriers, documents an ongoing program rather than a one time panic, and supports the good faith posture that matters in how a dispute gets resolved. The difference between the two statements is not length or design. It is whether every sentence on the page is true on the day it is read.

What belongs on the page

Name the target standard and level, WCAG 2.1 AA, and if your program has moved to evaluating against 2.2 criteria, say so accurately. State the scope: which domains, which parts of the journey, storefront, checkout, account pages, and any third party hosted pieces described as such, because a statement that silently excludes the payment iframe will be read as covering it. Give the evaluation date and method in plain terms: audited by whom, with what combination of automated scanning and manual assistive technology testing, because automated only is a methodology weakness worth fixing, not hiding forever.

Known limitations, disclosed, are a strength most businesses are too frightened to use. A short, dated list, the legacy PDF catalog is being remediated, a named third party widget has a known keyboard issue under vendor fix, converts a gotcha into documented diligence. Pair each limitation with the alternative way to get the same information or complete the same task, a phone number or email that reaches a person who can actually place the order. That alternative access route is the part of the statement disabled customers use and the part settlement agreements routinely require.

Promises and phrases to keep off it

Delete any sentence you cannot evidence today: fully compliant, 100 percent accessible, accessible to all users, meets all ADA requirements. The ADA does not publish a website checklist a business can claim to meet in the abstract, which is why that phrase, however comforting, is meaningless as a defense and useful as an attack. The same caution applies to overlay vendor claims pasted into statements, instant compliance language that regulators and courts have treated skeptically and that has appeared in enforcement attention in its own right.

Do not let the statement fossilize. A statement dated three years ago, listing a contact address that bounces, describes a program that died, and opposing counsel will say exactly that. Assign the page an owner, review it on the same cadence as your audits, and update the evaluation date only when an evaluation actually happened. The discipline is unglamorous. So is most of what holds up under scrutiny. Glamorous is for the marketing pages; this page's job is to be accurate under oath adjacent conditions.

The contact route is the commitment

Every statement should end in a door that opens: a monitored email address, a phone number with hours, and a commitment to respond within a stated, realistic window. Then staff it. Barrier reports are free accessibility testing from the people best qualified to give it, and a report answered quickly, with the issue logged, fixed, and confirmed back to the reporter, is among the strongest evidence a business can create that its program is real.

Log the reports with dates and resolutions in the same system as your audit findings. If a demand letter arrives later, that log is the timeline of a business that finds problems and fixes them, which is the posture regulators ask for and the context in which disputes settle on remediation rather than damages. The statement is the public summary. The log is the proof. Build both, and make sure they never contradict each other.

Frequently asked questions

Is an accessibility statement legally required for a store website?

For most private US businesses, no specific statute mandates the page itself, though some public sector and EU rules do require statements for covered services. For stores, the statement is best practice and common in settlement agreements, valuable for helping customers and documenting your program, but the page alone creates no compliance.

Should I state that my site conforms to WCAG?

Only if a current, thorough evaluation supports the claim for the scope you name, and even then, careful businesses phrase it as a target with an evaluation date and known limitations. An unqualified conformance claim you cannot prove is a liability, not an asset, in a dispute.

How often should the statement be updated?

Whenever the underlying facts change: after each audit or major remediation, when scope changes, and at least annually. The evaluation date on the page must match reality. An outdated statement with a dead contact route is worse than a brief current one.

Can an accessibility statement prevent a demand letter?

No page prevents a letter. A truthful statement backed by real remediation, a working contact route, and a documented record of fixing reported barriers materially improves how a business fares when a claim arrives, and it helps disabled customers today, which is the primary reason to have one.