ADA Website Demand Letter: A Shopify Evidence Checklist (Not a Legal Template)

If a Shopify merchant receives a website accessibility demand letter, the safest first move is not to paste a generic response from a blog. Preserve the communication, notify the appropriate internal and insurance contacts, and obtain qualified legal advice promptly.

Immediate intake checklist

Preserve, without altering:

• the complete letter, envelope, email, attachments, and headers;
• the date, time, delivery method, and person who received it;
• any complaint, summons, deadline, reference number, or linked report;
• relevant insurance policies and notice provisions;
• the storefront URL, published theme ID, theme version, and app inventory;
• existing accessibility statements, audits, tickets, scan reports, and remediation records;
• relevant deployment and change history;
• screenshots or recordings counsel asks you to capture.

Notify the owner responsible for legal matters and follow the business’s incident and insurance procedures. Let counsel determine whom to contact, what to preserve, and how to communicate.

Technical facts to gather for counsel

Create a factual packet without declaring the claim valid or invalid:

1. URLs and UI states identified in the letter.
2. Whether each state is public, authenticated, checkout, or third-party controlled.
3. The published theme and relevant theme files at the referenced time, if available.
4. App blocks, scripts, content sources, and vendors involved.
5. Reproduction steps, browser, viewport, and assistive-technology context when supplied.
6. Results of a dated automated check, including tool, rule version, and pages not reached.
7. Results of qualified manual testing when commissioned.
8. Changes made, approver, before-and-after evidence, and post-change verification.
9. Items still unresolved and the owner assigned to each.

An automated scan can help reproduce some technical facts. It cannot determine liability, standing, damages, settlement value, or legal compliance.

Controlled remediation

Coordinate the evidence-preservation process with counsel. Then address verified barriers through normal change control:

• prioritize issues that block product discovery, forms, cart, account, and checkout tasks;
• work in a development theme where appropriate;
• review the exact or scoped change before writing;
• prevent stale candidates from overwriting newer merchant work;
• record the prior value for supported writes;
• verify the actual rendered result;
• manually test important keyboard and assistive-technology flows;
• document limitations and unresolved third-party work accurately.

Do not claim that a newly installed app proves the historical storefront was accessible or that a clean automated result resolves the legal matter.

What AccessComply can provide

AccessComply can report automated-rule findings within a dated scan scope, retain scan and fix history, propose eligible merchant-approved changes, create restore records for supported writes, and run targeted post-change checks.

It does not provide a complete manual audit, legal conclusion, expert-witness opinion, settlement analysis, or guarantee against another complaint.

Questions for counsel and providers

• What deadlines and preservation duties apply?
• Should an insurer, platform, vendor, or other party receive notice?
• What communication is appropriate, and who should send it?
• Which technical allegations require independent evaluation?
• What evidence should be collected before any code or content changes?
• What remediation scope and retesting are appropriate?
• What can be shared, and what should remain privileged or confidential?

If you need a cost worksheet, use the accessibility response budget planner only to total estimates you enter. It does not estimate settlements, damages, claim probability, or legal outcomes.