Shopify accessibility checker

When we scanned the homepages of 90 popular online stores for our online store accessibility report, 81% had at least one serious failure. The same few problems came up again and again, and a Shopify storefront usually shows some of them:

• Low colour contrast was the most common WCAG failure, on 38% of stores. Sale badges, muted "subtitle" text and button states are the usual places it falls below 4.5:1.
• Missing image alt text: product and lifestyle images uploaded without descriptions.
• Unlabelled icon buttons: the cart, search and menu icons are often just an SVG with no accessible name.
• Form fields without labels: newsletter signups that rely on placeholder text instead of a real label.
• Skipped heading levels: a theme section that jumps from an h1 to an h4, which makes heading navigation harder for screen reader users.

Run the free scan above. It loads your store in a real browser, runs axe-core against WCAG 2.2 A and AA, and outlines each failing element on a screenshot, graded by severity and mapped to its success criterion. It does not give you a compliance score. Anything a machine cannot judge is listed separately for a person to check.

• Contrast: adjust theme colours in Online Store → Themes → Customize → Colors, or override specific button and badge colours in your theme CSS.
• Alt text: add it per image in the product media editor, and in the theme editor for banners.
• Icon buttons: add an aria-label (for example aria-label="Search") to icon-only buttons in the theme code.
• Form labels: give every input an associated <label>. A placeholder alone does not count.

No. Overlay apps (the ones that add a floating accessibility icon) do not change your theme code, and stores using them still get named in accessibility lawsuits. They cannot write correct alt text, choose readable colours or name your buttons. The lasting fix is in the theme: scan, fix at the source, and re-scan to confirm.