How to Make Your Shopify Store Accessible (Step-by-Step)

Shopify handles a lot of the accessibility baseline for you — the platform’s default theme (Dawn) is built with WCAG 2.0 in mind. But the moment you add a custom theme, an app, or any storefront customization, you’re responsible for what gets rendered in the browser. Here’s how to audit and fix the most common issues.

Before You Start: Test With Real Tools

Free browser tools like WAVE and axe DevTools will surface most issues in seconds. Install one, visit your store, and note what it flags. Don’t pay for an accessibility audit until you’ve run the free tools — most issues are obvious once you know what to look for.

Step 1: Alt Text Audit

Go through every product image. Each one needs descriptive alt text that a sighted user would get from looking at the image. If the image is purely decorative — a divider or background — it should have alt="" to signal to screen readers to skip it.

In Shopify admin: go to Products → select a product → click an image → Edit alt text.

The common failure mode is products imported via CSV with blank alt text fields. Run a filter in your spreadsheet: any row where alt text is empty is a gap.

Close your mouse. Open your store. Hit Tab.

What do you see? Can you reach the menu? The search bar? The add-to-cart button? The checkout button? Can you open a product page, select a variant, and add it to cart without touching your mouse?

If any interactive element is unreachable via keyboard, that’s a WCAG failure. The fix depends on the theme — some handle this correctly out of the box, others require Liquid template changes.

Step 3: Color Contrast Check

Run your checkout and product pages through a contrast checker. The WAVE tool flags contrast failures directly on the page. Most issues are in:

Muted “Sale” badge text
Grey placeholder text in form fields
Light grey secondary text used for price information

These are easy fixes — usually a color value in the theme’s stylesheet.

Step 4: Form Field Labels

Open your checkout. Every input field — email, name, address, card number — must have a visible, programmatically connected label. Placeholder text is not a label. If your theme relies on placeholders, that’s a failure.

Shopify’s native checkout is mostly compliant. Custom checkouts built via apps are the common problem area.

Step 5: App-Injected Content

This is where Shopify stores fall apart. Apps inject banners, popups, chat widgets, trust badges, and promotional bars. Each one is a potential accessibility failure if it wasn’t built with accessibility in mind.

Before installing an app, test its demo store with keyboard navigation and a screen reader. If the demo is broken, your store will be too.

Step 6: The Checkout Experience

Checkout is where ADA lawsuits concentrate. The Shopify checkout is reasonably accessible, but third-party checkout apps (like custom one-page checkouts) frequently introduce violations. If you use a custom checkout app, audit it specifically.

Quick Wins That Have High Impact

Add a “Skip to content” link in your theme header
Ensure all interactive elements have visible focus indicators
Add ARIA labels to icon-only buttons (search, menu toggles, cart icons)
Ensure error messages on forms are specific and associated with their fields

What Actually Works

The most effective approach is fixing the underlying Liquid templates and theme code — not adding an overlay. Overlays inject JavaScript into your storefront and have been explicitly cited in accessibility lawsuits as evidence that the merchant knew about the issue and chose a workaround instead of a real fix.

If you use a theme from the Shopify Theme Store, check if it has accessibility updates pending. Most theme developers push updates that fix known WCAG failures. If you’re on a custom theme, work through the list above systematically. Most stores find 15–30 issues on first audit; the majority are fixable in a few hours.