Join Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees for the 30th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast to explore statistics and dive into state-level compliance with accessibility laws and the prevalence of ADA lawsuits. The hosts discuss specific state requirements in Texas, Illinois, and Minnesota, and elaborate on the differences between Section 508 and WCAG guidelines. They also analyze the statistics of ADA lawsuits targeting WordPress, Shopify, and custom-coded websites, and provide crucial compliance deadlines for the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and ADA Title II.
Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. I’m Natalie Garza, and with me today is,
Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees.
Natalie Garza: And in this episode, we’re gonna go over some more statistics and dive into them. So first statistic, I’m going to read out:
“The key areas of focus for businesses in 2025 include state-level compliance, proactive accessibility measures, and preparation for the EAA, which will begin enforcement in June 2025.”
And I looked into the United States. That’s where we live. I actually found, in addition to the ADA, that each state may or may not have its own accessibility requirements. So I wanted to talk about state level accessibility.
So, Natalie, I know you talked about California last time and also New York. Do you wanna go over some of the other states?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, Sure. We can go over some of the other states. So we have Texas, which has Administrative Code Section 206 that generally is aligned with Section 508, Section 504, saying that websites are required to meet specific standards.
(Texas Administrative Code Chapter 206 is only applicable to state agencies and higher education websites as of 08/2025)
Do you know Natalie, if that is just government websites or does it apply to private business websites as well?
Natalie Garza: I am gonna have to look into that. But you mentioned that there is a difference, and most states, and most laws apply to government sites, don’t they?
Natalie MacLees: In the United States, that’s generally true. Most of our accessibility laws that apply to websites apply only to government websites.
There are a few states and, like local governments, that have requirements for private websites, but most of the laws are focused on government websites or websites that are associated with the government in some way, like public universities, public libraries and things like that.
So you know, our borders, our political borders that we use as humans, kind of become meaningless on the web, and it gets a little bit sticky about who can apply, which laws where and how.
So we could talk about Illinois, which has a law that applies to the state agencies, so any of their state agencies must have accessible websites. So following similar rules to Section 508.
(Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act applies to state agencies and universities; however, it does not apply to local governments, school districts, community colleges, or private organizations.)
And, Minnesota has a similar law, and that also applies to all of their state websites, and they were one of the earliest states to have a law, an accessibility law that applied to their government websites.
(Minnesota Statutes 16E.03, 363A.42, and 363.43 apply to state agencies, continuing education, or professional development courses administered by the state)
Natalie Garza: Could you go over what the differences are between the requirements being closer to 508 versus WCAG?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Section 508 is based on WCAG 2.0 AA. I think still at this point, I don’t think it’s been updated yet to 2.1. But it’s kind of a specialized set of WCAG where they have, you know, if you look at the WCAG success criteria, each one has those recommended techniques, sufficient techniques, advisory techniques.
And Section 508 basically takes a special set of those things and says, “You have to meet this standard and here are the ways you can meet it.” And it overlaps with WCAG but it’s not a hundred percent the same. So there’s some differences in which techniques are are acceptable.
Some of them are a little more strict and some of them are a little less strict, interestingly. I mean, in the same way that EN 301 549, which is the like analogous law in the EU. It’s similar to WCAG, but it’s not exactly the same. Like it’s its own thing, but it’s based on WCAG.
So there are a lot of similarities, but it is slightly different.
Natalie Garza: Okay, so whenever a state says you have to adhere more to 508 than WCAG 2.1, that’s what they mean. They have the modified set of criteria.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, the slightly modified set of criteria and Section 508 gives you this like, I don’t know, 200 page PDF that goes through because it’s the government and they love a PDF.
What each success criteria is walks you through exactly how to test it, and then tells you like which techniques are acceptable and which aren’t.
So it’s similar, but like I said, slightly different.
Natalie Garza: Okay. So, yeah, we’re going from the national to the state level and getting a little bit more detailed.
Natalie MacLees: There is a lot of overlap between all of these laws because Section 504 would apply to all the government websites anyway. So to now say, “Well, now there’s Title II of the ADA that also applies to all of these.” It’s a little bit redundant, but luckily, they don’t really contradict each other too much.
So they’re basically just two laws saying to do the same thing: make your website accessible.
Natalie Garza: Gotcha. Next statistic,
“In 2023, the most common platforms targeted by ADA lawsuits were Shopify at 35.7 %, and WordPress at 18.1% and other custom coded websites at 31.3%.” (EcomBack, 2023 ADA Website Accessibility Lawsuit Report)
What does that have to say about WordPress and Shopify?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so it’s interesting, and I was trying to grab some statistics on this, but they’re surprisingly difficult to find. So for WordPress, it’s easy. So you hear that 18% of all of the ADA lawsuits brought against websites are brought against WordPress sites. And you might wanna say, “Whoa, WordPress must be really bad”, but WordPress sites make up 40% of the internet.
So if. Everything was fair and level, right? You’d expect about 40% of the lawsuits to be against WordPress sites. So it actually seems like WordPress is fairing pretty well in there. And I don’t think that that means that WordPress sites are particularly accessible. Although that would be very nice if that were the case.
I think it’s more that a lot of WordPress sites are little independent blogs, that maybe don’t have a business behind them but are personal, and wouldn’t be very likely to be targeted by lawsuits. So there’s some good news and some bad news, I think, for WordPress there.
The Shopify lawsuits, at almost 36% I think, are really surprising because I couldn’t find any statistics on what percent of the internet is built on Shopify, but I, it’s nowhere near 36% like that I can say for sure.
So they have more of the share of lawsuits than I think we would expect. And I think like that’s not all bad news for Shopify. We do know that there is an emphasis on e-commerce in these lawsuits very often. So that makes sense. If people are specifically targeting e-commerce sites, Shopify would end up being overrepresented in the sample.
And then other custom-coded websites, it’s kind of hard to say because that could cover just about anything. I don’t know if there’s a specific set of CMSs that were used in that, or if that’s, you know, just a big lump of everything that’s not WordPress, Shopify, so it’s a little bit hard to say.
Natalie Garza: Yeah, I think it was a big lump of like Wix, Webflow, Weebly, Squarespace.
Natalie MacLees: Squarespace, Square, weirdly. Now we have Square and Squarespace websites.
Natalie Garza: Yeah. I think that’s what the other website category is, but I think the fact that you have a purpose in a Shopify website.
It’s built so people will interact with it. If a keyboard can’t tab through, if a screen reader user can’t hear everything on the page, and they can’t check out, then they’re more likely to file a lawsuit.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, it’s really frustrating when you’re trying to shop and you can’t check out. You’re like, “but I just wanna buy this thing. I just wanna give you my money and you can’t do it”.
So, and then I think also an e-commerce site is very clearly a business that is making money, whereas like somebody’s recipe blog
may or may not be making money, may or may not be a business. It may be just a little personal project, or it could be somebody’s full-time job or anywhere in between. So it’s not always super clear that it’s a business that would have money to even defend itself in a lawsuit.
Natalie Garza: Yeah, that’s a good point. And I also think it’s interesting that WordPress and Shopify are very customizable-friendly. Like anyone can make a theme. Anyone can customize those themes, which then leads to issues with accessibility.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, especially if the platform hasn’t followed ATAG, right? To help people, which is the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines can help guide people through making an accessible site, ’cause you can’t expect just any business owner who comes along and says, “Oh, I think I’ll set up my own Shopify store.”
You can’t expect them to know anything about accessibility. That’s not a realistic expectation. So the platform is really gonna have to lead them. And if they try to put, you know, pale yellow text on a white background, the platform itself is going to have to say like, “Ooh, are you sure about those color choices? You might wanna rethink that.”
I don’t think it’s really doing that to a great extent. So it is really easy if you’re not aware to make a website that’s not accessible at all.
Natalie Garza: Yeah, I also feel that Shopify websites— just because they’re people who just wanna sell their products online—they come in not knowing much. They’re also really prone to using a lot of images of text. Like I’ve come across a lot of websites lately, they’re like little e-commerce stores, like Shopify stores, and like their main homepage is just a picture and nothing about it is
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, that’s rough, that’s not good for many, many reasons, but accessibility is obviously one of them. But on one hand I kind of get it, because if you’re not accustomed to wrestling with HTML and CSS, and you just want something to look the way you wanna make it, it’s easy to open up something like Canva, make it look the way you want, and then just take that whole image and plop it on a web page.
Natalie Garza: Exactly. So I think with that said, if you’re on Shopify, if you’re on WordPress, make sure to double check your themes, make sure to check all the content that you personally add on there, and maybe check with the developer who’s familiar with accessibility to help guide you through using those platforms, which let you basically do whatever you want. Just be careful.
And with that, I think we’re gonna have to wrap up this episode. We’re a little over time, but if you’re a small business or a government website to go check out a special tool.
Natalie MacLees: Sure. You can check out AAArdvarkAccessibility.com. You can run a free scan on your homepage. Find out what your accessibility issues are and get instructions on how to fix them.
Natalie Garza: Wanna talk about the dates?
Natalie MacLees: So we have some important compliance deadlines to just touch on very quickly. So EAA, which is the European Accessibility Act, which applies to anyone who actually does business in the EU, not even if you’re not based there. So if you have an e-commerce site that sells to customers in the EU, it applies to you.
That went into effect in June of 2025. It does require that you have an accessible website. We have another episode where we talked about that. We also have in the United States, ADA Title II, which has some guidelines that go into effect. If you have a total population of 50,000 or more, you have until April of 2026 to make sure that all of your websites and digital services for your constituents are accessible.
If your total population that you’re serving is less than 50,000, you have until April of 2027. So if you are working with a government and you need to make sure that those sites are accessible by either 2026 or 2027, depending on how large the audience you serve is.
Natalie Garza: Yeah, so important dates coming up. Go check out AAArdvark. That is the end of this AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. Talk to y’all next time!
