Does cursor change count as a hover effect?

Solution 1:

For ADA compliance I've read we should have more than one effect on hover

I'd be interested to know where you read that. WCAG, the official accessibility guideline, doesn't really say anything about hover effects. It does say, in 1.4.11, that "states" must have sufficient contrast, and hover is an example of a state, so in that respect, WCAG does address the hover effect. But nothing in WCAG requires a hover effect.

Now, if you're talking about WCAG 1.4.1 Use of Color, there is a recommendation specific to anchor tags (<a>) that if a link is embedded in a paragraph, the link color must have at least a 3:1 contrast ratio with the paragraph color and an additional visual cue must be specified upon hover or focus, such as an underline. You can see the full text in G183.

So it's tough to answer the question about a cursor hover effect until I fully understand what you're trying to do and which sources you're using for your information.

A best practice is that any hover effect you implement should also be available upon focus too. This is typically done in CSS by having the :hover and :focus point to the same rules in the CSS.