Is My Website ADA Compliant? An 8-Question Self-Check You Can Score in 5 Minutes

Last updated: September 21, 2026

If you have never audited or remediated your website, the honest answer is almost certainly no. In 2026, 95.9% of the top one million home pages had detectable WCAG failures — and detectable failures are the easy ones. This page is not a lecture. It is an eight-question self-check you can run in about five minutes, score honestly, and act on before lunch.

Key numbers: 95.9% of the top one million home pages had detectable WCAG 2 failures in 2026, averaging 56 errors per page (WebAIM Million 2026). Plaintiffs filed 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, up 27% from 2024 (Seyfarth Shaw). Automated tools detect roughly 60–70% of WCAG issues; the remaining 30% requires human testing (TestParty remediation data). Shopify's free Dawn theme ships with 30–100 detectable violations before a single customization, per TestParty audits.

So, is my website ADA compliant?

Statistically, almost certainly not — and the burden of proof runs the wrong way. Nobody can tell you your site is compliant without testing it, but the base rate says 19 in 20 home pages fail.

The awkward part is that no one can hand you a definitive yes. The Americans with Disabilities Act contains no technical standard for websites. The Department of Justice's web accessibility guidance confirms that businesses open to the public must make their sites accessible, but names no required benchmark for private companies; its 2024 Title II rule adopted WCAG 2.1 Level AA for state and local government sites. Courts, settlements, and demand letters have filled the gap with the same answer: WCAG.

So "is my website ADA compliant?" is really "does my site meet WCAG 2.1/2.2 Level AA?" That question has a testable answer, and the first five minutes of testing cost nothing.

The 5-minute self-check: 8 questions, 1 point each

Score one point for every honest yes. You need a keyboard, a browser, and five minutes — no developer, no budget, no software. Run each check on your home page and your best-selling product page.

1. Unplug your mouse. Using only Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, and the arrow keys, can you reach and operate everything — navigation, search, filters, add-to-cart, checkout? Getting stuck inside a pop-up or drawer with no way out is a keyboard trap, and an automatic zero here (WCAG 2.1.1, 2.1.2).
2. Can you see where you are? As you tab, a visible outline or highlight should follow you across every element. If it vanishes on your buttons or menu items, keyboard users are navigating blind (WCAG 2.4.7).
3. Do your images have real descriptions? Right-click a product or hero image, choose Inspect, and read the `alt` attribute. "Red linen midi dress, front view" counts. `IMG_2047.jpg`, "product image", or a missing attribute does not (WCAG 1.1.1).
4. Do your form fields have visible labels? Check your search box, newsletter signup, and checkout fields. A label outside the field that stays visible counts. Placeholder text that vanishes the moment someone types does not (WCAG 3.3.2).
5. Zoom to 200%. Press Ctrl/Cmd and + until the browser reads 200%. Nothing should overlap, get cut off, disappear, or force horizontal scrolling to read a sentence (WCAG 1.4.4).
6. Do your videos have captions? Play any product or brand video muted. Real captions carrying the spoken content count; none, or auto-generated text that garbles product names, does not (WCAG 1.2.2).
7. Can you pause the moving things? Auto-rotating carousels, animated banners, and auto-playing video running longer than five seconds need a visible pause, stop, or hide control (WCAG 2.2.2).
8. Is it readable in grayscale? Screenshot the page and view it in black and white with your phone's photo filters. Body text, button labels, and link text should all stay comfortably legible (WCAG 1.4.3).

In TestParty's onboarding work across 100+ brands, question 1 fails most often — and rarely because of original theme code. It is usually an app-injected cart drawer, subscription selector, or pop-up that swallows keyboard focus and will not give it back.

What does my score mean?

Read your score as a triage signal, not a grade. It tells you which of three situations you are in, and what the right next move is.

+----------------+----------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+
|   Your score   |                   What it means                    |                   Your next move                   |
+----------------+----------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+
|   8 out of 8   | You passed the checks a human can run unaided — better than most sites, but these eight questions touch a fraction of WCAG's 86 success criteria. | Run a real scan to confirm, then test screen reader behavior. |
+----------------+----------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+
|     5 to 7     | The typical result, and an ordinary fix list. This is a backlog, not a crisis. | Scan, prioritize anything on the purchase path, fix in code. |
+----------------+----------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+
|    Below 5     | Your site looks like the population plaintiff-side testers flag first: barriers reachable from the home page in under a minute, with no tooling. | Treat as time-sensitive. Scan today, scope remediation this week. |
+----------------+----------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+

One caution about a perfect score: passing all eight does not mean clean. It means the failures left are the ones you cannot see without a screen reader or a scanner.

What this self-check can't tell you

A five-minute self-check is triage, not a defense. It cannot tell you how your site behaves with assistive technology, and it cannot cover the criteria that require judgment rather than observation.

Three gaps matter. First, the standard is bigger than eight questions — WCAG 2.2 Level AA sets out 86 success criteria, and your checkout flow, error messages, and dynamic components touch dozens of them. Second, coverage splits roughly 60–70% automated and 30% manual (TestParty remediation data), and the manual 30% — focus order, meaningful alt text, whether a status update is announced — is where complaints usually originate. Third, a self-check is a snapshot; themes update, apps install, and content ships daily.

For a longer version of this exercise, W3C's Easy Checks covers the same style of first-pass review in more depth. Neither substitutes for testing with a screen reader.

What should I do next, in order?

Escalate in four steps, cheapest first: a free scan today, a professional audit if the scan or your score warrants it, remediation in source code, then monitoring so the work holds.

Scan (minutes, free). An automated scan covers the machine-detectable 60–70% and gives you a dated baseline. Shopify merchants can start with the free Shopify accessibility scan and its 60-second setup, which checks template types across the store rather than one URL. For the full manual method, see our step-by-step ADA compliance checker guide.

Audit (weeks). Bring in expert manual testing when a demand letter arrives, when you sell into the EU, or when checks failed and you cannot diagnose why — here is what a professional accessibility audit actually involves.

Remediate (the only step that changes anything). Findings are not fixes; compliance comes from changing source code, as covered in this walkthrough of turning scan results into remediated code. As of August 2026, TestParty has remediated 35 million+ accessibility issues across customer stores.

Monitor (ongoing). Every theme update and new app can reintroduce failures, which is why TestParty runs daily automated scans plus monthly expert manual audits rather than annual check-ups.

Why does this matter right now?

Filing volume is the reason to act this quarter rather than next. Plaintiffs filed 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, a 27% increase over 2024, and website cases now make up 36% of all ADA Title III filings, up from 28% (Seyfarth Shaw). Ecommerce absorbs 69–77% of digital accessibility suits. Demand letters typically arrive before any lawsuit does — our guide to ADA demand letters covers what one looks like and the first 72 hours. Documentation moves outcomes: in one public TestParty matter, a dated remediation record helped Dorai Home settle a $74,999 demand for $2,000.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does an accessibility statement make my website ADA compliant? No. An accessibility statement is a disclosure, not a remedy — it describes your commitment and gives users a way to report barriers. It has no effect on whether a keyboard user can complete checkout. Publishing one over an untested site can even work against you, since it documents awareness of an obligation you have not verified you meet.

Is there an official ADA certification for websites? No. Neither the DOJ nor any federal agency certifies websites or accredits anyone to do so — there is no government seal, badge, or registry. Any vendor selling "ADA certification" is selling a document with no legal standing. What does help is evidence: dated scan reports, a documented fix log, and third-party audit findings.

Can I still be sued if I scored 8 out of 8? Yes. A perfect self-check score means the barriers a person can spot in five minutes are gone. It says nothing about screen reader announcements, focus order in your cart drawer, or the accessibility of the apps running on your storefront — all common grounds for complaints.

Which WCAG version should I test against? Test against WCAG 2.2 Level AA. It is the current W3C standard and is backwards compatible, so passing 2.2 AA also satisfies the WCAG 2.1 AA benchmark used in the DOJ's Title II rule and required in the EU through EN 301 549. One test run covers every regime you are realistically facing.

My business is small. Does this really apply to me? Yes, and smaller companies are disproportionately targeted: 67% of businesses named in ADA Title III website filings had under $25M in annual revenue (Seyfarth Shaw). Filings are driven by testers scanning many sites at once, not by market share, so a small store with a keyboard trap on checkout is a likelier target than a large one without.

This article was produced using TestParty's cyborg approach — AI-assisted research and drafting, validated and refined by our accessibility team. The analysis above represents TestParty's editorial opinions based on publicly available data. As a competitor in the accessibility market, we have a point of view — but we've cited our sources so you can verify every claim independently.