Overview
An accessibility statement is a short page on your website that describes your commitment to accessibility, the standard you target, and how visitors can report a problem. It is not a legal shield on its own, but it is one of the fastest, cheapest things a store can add, and it is treated as good-faith evidence in ADA cases and required outright under the EAA for EU-facing stores.
Why it matters
Under ADA Title III, a dated accessibility statement contributes to the same body of evidence as an audit report, showing a documented, ongoing effort rather than silence on the subject, covered in more depth in what proof do you need to show ADA compliance. Under the European Accessibility Act, a published accessibility statement is an explicit legal requirement for EU-facing services, not just a nice-to-have.
What to actually include
A clear statement of your target standard. State plainly that you aim to meet WCAG 2.1 AA. Vague language with no named standard is weak.
Known limitations, stated honestly. If specific parts of your site are not yet fully accessible, say so. Courts and regulators respond better to honest, specific limitations than to a claim of full compliance that turns out to be false.
A working contact method. A real email address or form that reaches a person who can act on it, not a dead link or a generic support inbox that never mentions accessibility.
A last-reviewed date. Dates the page, which matters, since an undated statement looks static and unmaintained even if it is current.
Common mistakes
Copy-pasted boilerplate. Statements lifted word-for-word from another company’s site, sometimes still referencing the wrong company name, signal that no actual review happened.
No real contact path. A statement that invites feedback but routes to a broken form or an inbox nobody checks does more harm than good if it ever comes up in a dispute.
Claiming full compliance with nothing behind it. A statement claiming full WCAG 2.1 AA conformance with no audit to back it up is a liability if a plaintiff’s screenshot proves otherwise. Pair the statement with real audit work, like what a real accessibility audit looks like, rather than publishing it in isolation.
Example
A skincare brand added a one-paragraph accessibility statement referencing WCAG 2.1 AA, listed one known limitation around an older PDF size guide, and linked a monitored support email. When a demand letter arrived six months later, the store’s lawyer used the statement alongside a recent audit report to demonstrate an ongoing, honest effort, which shaped the settlement conversation from a stronger position than silence would have.