The rules, regulations and objectives of the ADA are very important to us at Nosto. The ADA does not directly address online compliance and it is therefore not clear how or even if ADA rules will be applied to e-commerce stores. As there are no specific provisions in the ADA itself, defining the practical implications of the legislation usually fall to the states that have adopted their own accessibility laws and it's up to the courts to interpret how ADA standards apply. This means that there is no uniform legislation or interpretation to follow and the specific level of accessibility requirements varies depending on the merchant, the state they operate in and how they’ve built their website in general.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are, in our opinion, the best technical documentation out there for web accessibility. Rather than enforceable legislation, they are a set of guidelines for making online content more accessible, especially to people with disabilities. WCAG standards have been the guiding accessibility principles in the European Union and several other countries since 1999. They have been the backbone of many online accessibility laws globally and offers a model for any organisation to provide equal access for all users. Within WCAG standards and guidelines there are multiple levels of testable success criteria that vary depending on the need for website owners to provide accessible content.

Nosto as a service can support all the configurations that the merchant might require when it comes to the accessibility of their site. Our default templates are generic designs built to fit as many stores as possible. These templates can and should be tailored further in case the merchant has more specific needs. All of our templates have not been optimised specifically for ADA compliance, as this could sometimes also be a tradeoff in terms of other needs like page performance, look and feel or commercial performance. With no clear legislation to follow, it is unfortunately not possible for us to guarantee that our templates would in their standard form be universally ADA compliant. Our team is available to help any clients with specific questions or concerns regarding their settings in order to ensure that the merchant is able to follow through with their compliance configuration. We are naturally also available to provide assistance with any necessary amendments as with any other template customizations.