An ecommerce site has the same duty as any other and much more to lose, because its failures sit on the path to payment. A keyboard user who cannot open the size selector does not complain, they leave, and the abandoned order looks like ordinary attrition. This page is the six components where ecommerce accessibility actually breaks, in the order a customer meets them. The checklist sheet prices the whole job; these six are where to start.
Search, filters and the product grid
Filters that are custom checkboxes with no labels, a grid whose cards are divs with click handlers, and a sort control that is a styled span. All three are unreachable by keyboard and unnamed to a screen reader. They are also the first thing a customer with a specific need uses, which makes them the most expensive failures on the site.
The product page: variants, images and stock
Colour and size selectors must be real controls with names and states; the image gallery must be operable by keyboard with meaningful alt text; and stock or price changes have to be announced rather than silently swapped. A variant picker that only responds to a mouse means the product cannot be bought at all.
The cart, the checkout and the errors
Quantity steppers with names, a cart total that is announced when it changes, form fields with real labels and autocomplete attributes, errors in text next to the field with focus moved to the summary, and no timed session that expires without warning. Six forms at two issues each is the worked example's count; on an ecommerce site, those are the six that carry the revenue.
Questions people ask about ecommerce ada compliance
Does the platform handle this for us?
The template it ships with may be reasonable; the theme you bought and the apps you installed are where the failures usually live.
What about third-party checkout?
Test it and name it in your statement. You are responsible for the path even where the code is somebody else's.
Where do we start?
Keyboard-test one full purchase. Every serious failure on the path shows up in that one run.