A customer emails you. They say they have poor eyesight and bad WiFi, can’t order online, and would like to place their order over the phone. Your gut says something is off — and honestly, your instincts aren’t wrong to kick in here.
This situation raises two separate but equally important questions: Is this an ADA-related legal threat? And if you do take phone orders, how do you avoid getting scammed?
Let’s break both down.
Is This an ADA Lawsuit Setup?
The short answer: it might be, but that shouldn’t stop you from doing the right thing.
In recent years, predatory lawyers have weaponized ADA law and are using it to harvest settlements at the expense of American small businesses. Cases peaked in 2021, with more than 12,000 filings — a nearly 400% increase from less than a decade prior.The pattern is unfortunately well-documented. More than 80% of ADA cases come from “high-volume plaintiffs” — those who file at least eight cases a year. The vast majority of cases are filed in New York, California, and Florida, the states where ADA laws can allow plaintiffs to be awarded significant damages.
The thing is, business owners often assume that physical storefronts are the only spaces subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, federal courts increasingly rule that digital storefronts must also provide equal access to all consumers. The general legal reason Shopify owners are targeted is that ecommerce websites are online stores, making it easy for plaintiffs’ lawyers to argue they fall under one of the 12 categories of places of public accommodation under Title III of the ADA.
So yes, an unusual email from an unverifiable address asking for phone-based ordering could be a precursor to a demand letter. But reacting with suspicion alone won’t protect you — being proactive about your site’s accessibility will.
What to Do About the Email
You have a few reasonable paths here:
Respond professionally and offer an alternative. Replying to the customer kindly and offering to help them via email or a Shopify draft order (more on that below) shows good faith. It documents that you made an effort to accommodate them. If this ever escalated legally, that paper trail matters.
Don’t ignore the red flags either. An email address that doesn’t match any known person or social profile is worth noting. But it’s not a reason to refuse service outright — it’s a reason to be careful about how you fulfill the order if you proceed.
Do not panic and do nothing. The worst outcome here isn’t a phone call — it’s discovering your store has real accessibility issues and getting a demand letter with no proof you ever tried to fix anything.
How to Handle Phone Orders on Shopify (Without Getting Burned)
If you decide to help this customer — or you want to offer phone orders more broadly — Shopify has a built-in tool for this: Draft Orders.
You can create draft orders on behalf of customers when you need to process orders through phone, email, or in-person sales. Draft orders let you add products, apply discounts, and then send invoices with secure checkout links for customers to complete payment online.This is the key part: instead of taking a credit card number over the phone yourself (which creates major fraud liability), you build the order in your Shopify admin and send the customer a checkout link via email. They enter their own payment details. You never touch their card number.
Here’s how to do it:
- Go to Orders > Drafts in your Shopify admin
- Click Create order and add the products
- Add the customer’s name and email
- Click Send invoice — Shopify emails them a secure link to pay
This approach protects you in two ways: the customer still completes the transaction through Shopify’s secure checkout, and you’re not exposed to stolen card fraud.
Why Phone Orders Carry Extra Fraud Risk
Scammers often target stores that allow phone orders because it means they don’t have to expose private information such as their IP address. They trick merchants into fulfilling high-risk orders without the usual security algorithms and technology checks.When an order comes in through your normal Shopify checkout, Shopify’s fraud analysis helps you identify orders that could be fraudulent — review high-risk orders to avoid potential chargebacks. Phone orders processed manually bypass all of that. The draft order + invoice method keeps the payment flowing through Shopify’s system, so fraud signals can still be captured.
The Bigger Issue: Your Store’s Actual Accessibility
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: whether or not this email is a scam, it should prompt you to look at your store’s accessibility. Because legitimate users with visual impairments are trying to shop online, and thousands of small business owners have been sued for websites that allegedly fail to meet accessibility requirements — most never get a warning, with no “notice and cure” period to fix the problem before litigation begins.
The targeting of small businesses is accelerating: in 2024, 67% of ADA website lawsuits targeted companies with less than $25 million in annual revenue.The most common issues that get Shopify stores sued:
| Issue | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Missing image alt text | Screen readers can’t describe products to visually impaired users |
| Poor color contrast | Text becomes unreadable for people with low vision |
| Inaccessible navigation | Keyboard-only users can’t browse or checkout |
| Unlabeled form fields | Screen readers can’t guide users through checkout |
| Third-party app violations | Even if your base theme is accessible, every third-party app installed can introduce new violations — apps from the Shopify App Store are not reviewed for accessibility before approval. |
What Actually Protects You
Because the ADA does not explicitly prescribe technical standards for websites, courts and the Department of Justice rely on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Currently, WCAG 2.1 Level AA is recognized as the standard metric for digital compliance. Meeting these guidelines demonstrates a good-faith effort to accommodate all users and provides a strong defensive posture against potential litigation.The quickest wins you can implement yourself:
- Add alt text to all product images. In your Shopify admin, go to Products → click a product → click each image and add a real description (not just “product”).
- Fix color contrast. Open your theme editor and darken any light gray text until it meets a 4.5:1 contrast ratio.
- Test keyboard navigation. Can you complete a purchase on your own store using only a keyboard? Try it.
- Publish an accessibility statement. Best practices include making your website WCAG 2.1 AA conformant and publishing an accessibility statement with at least one method of contact.
A Warning About Quick-Fix Overlays
You’ll find plenty of apps promising instant ADA compliance with one line of code. Be careful. Accessibility overlays have been explicitly cited in 25% of lawsuits as creating additional barriers. The FTC even fined leading overlay provider AccessiBe $1 million in 2025 for false advertising. An overlay is not a substitute for actual code-level fixes.
The average cost of a lawsuit runs $45,000–$75,000 including legal fees, settlement, and mandatory remediation. Proactive compliance is 5–20x cheaper than reacting to a demand letter.A Practical Response Plan
- Reply to the customer — offer to send a draft order invoice to their email so they can check out securely
- Run a free accessibility scan on your store (tools like ADA Scanner or WAVE can flag obvious issues)
- Fix the low-hanging fruit — alt text, contrast, form labels
- Consider a proper audit if you’re in a high-risk state (New York, California, Florida) or run a higher-volume store
- Document your efforts — if you are ever sent a demand letter, showing you were actively working on compliance matters
The customer email may or may not lead anywhere. But it’s a useful reminder that accessibility isn’t just a legal checkbox — it’s what makes your store actually usable for the 35+ million Americans living with a disability. That’s a lot of potential customers you could be losing before they ever reach checkout.