What an accessibility review of a Shopify store covers (and what it doesn't)

Store owners often arrive at this point with a question like "is my Shopify store accessible?" or "do I need an audit?". This page explains what a review like ours looks at, how it's done, what you get, and what it deliberately leaves out, so you can decide whether it's the right next step or whether you need something else.

What gets reviewed

A store has thousands of URLs but only a handful of templates. Shopify renders every product page from the same product template, so reviewing one product page well covers the pattern for all of them. A review samples:

• Home page: header, navigation and menus, slideshow or hero, featured collections, footer and newsletter form.
• Collection page: product grid and cards, filters and sorting, pagination.
• Product page: media gallery, variant pickers (color and size swatches), quantity, add to cart, error messages, reviews widget.
• Cart: cart drawer or cart page, quantity changes, removing items, discount field, the path to checkout.
• Forms: search, contact, newsletter popups and account sign-in.
• States, not just pages: the menu open, the cart drawer open, a popup on first visit, a filter applied, an error shown. Many of the worst barriers only exist after an interaction.

Each of these is checked at desktop and mobile widths, because many themes render a different menu, filter panel or drawer on small screens.

How it's tested

No single tool finds everything. WebAIM notes that automated tools cannot detect every WCAG failure, so a page with no detected errors is not necessarily accessible (WebAIM Million 2026). So a review layers several methods:

1. Automated scans. Every template and state is scanned with the axe-core rules engine at desktop and mobile widths. The scan catches things like missing alt text, low contrast, unlabeled fields and empty buttons, and it gives a baseline to compare against after fixes.
2. Keyboard-only testing. Can someone shop without a mouse? We Tab through each template, open and close every menu, popup and drawer, choose a variant, add to cart and reach checkout, watching where focus goes and whether it's always visible.
3. Screen reader testing. The same journeys with VoiceOver (macOS and iOS) and NVDA (Windows): are controls announced with a name, role and state? Is "added to cart" announced? Can you tell which size is selected?
4. Zoom and reflow. At 400% zoom (equivalent to a 320 px wide window), content should reflow without sideways scrolling (WCAG 1.4.10).
5. Contrast and color. Text, icons, focus indicators and form borders against their backgrounds, including text over images and the brand colors chosen in the theme editor.

Manual testing is where most of the high-impact findings come from. In our demo store (fictional), automated scans flagged 13 of 30 issues at least partly. The other 17, including a cart drawer you couldn't leave, swatches you couldn't select and an "added to cart" message nobody heard, only showed up with a keyboard and a screen reader.

What you get

A prioritized issue list you can act on, not a score. Each issue has:

The "who fixes it" column matters on Shopify, because not everything is theme code:

• Theme code: sections, snippets, CSS and JavaScript. A developer fixes these.
• Admin content: image alt text, headings and link text typed into the editor, video captions. Your team can often fix these without a developer.
• App code: reviews, popups, chat and upsell widgets. These are fixed through app settings, a theme override, a different app, or a ticket to the vendor.
• Shopify's checkout: Checkout is Shopify-hosted on every plan. On non-Plus stores we report checkout issues to Shopify rather than fix them. On Shopify Plus, custom checkout extensions can be in scope. (More on checkout.)

What a review doesn't cover

Being clear about this matters as much as the findings.

• It isn't a certified audit. A formal conformance evaluation follows a full methodology such as W3C's WCAG-EM 2.0, with a defined sample, every success criterion evaluated and a conformance statement. Many organizations want it done by a certified professional. If you need that, hire an independent auditor (we can be the team that fixes what they find).
• It isn't a VPAT or an Accessibility Conformance Report. Those are formal documents, usually requested in B2B and government procurement. A review won't produce one.
• It isn't legal advice or a compliance promise. A review maps issues to WCAG success criteria. It doesn't say your store is "ADA compliant", and no honest review can promise protection from a demand letter or lawsuit. Questions about legal risk belong with a lawyer.
• It doesn't test every page. It tests templates and representative content. If 400 products have no alt text, the review reports the pattern and the template fix; writing 400 descriptions is a content task.
• It doesn't include usability testing with disabled shoppers. That's valuable research, and different work.
• It's a snapshot. New apps, theme updates and new content can introduce issues later, which is why we offer re-verification after changes.

How a review differs from a free accessibility checker

Free scanners are worth running. WAVE from WebAIM, Lighthouse in Chrome and the axe DevTools extension will all find real issues in minutes. But they test one page in one state, they can't operate your menus or drawers the way a person does, and they can't tell you whether a screen reader user can actually finish a purchase. A clean automated score next to a cart drawer that traps keyboard users is common. Use a free scan to see whether there's work to do. Use a review to find out what the work is.

What happens after the review

You choose:

1. Fix it yourself or with your developer. Each issue already points at the file and the expected behavior.
2. Have us fix it. We fix the issues in your theme code on a duplicate theme (never the live store), map every change to the issue ID, and give you a before/after verification report: the same scans and keyboard and screen reader checks, run again.
3. Bring in an auditor. If you need a formal audit for procurement, the review gives the auditor and the developer a head start.

Store access is through a Shopify collaborator account that you approve. We never ask for your password.

A good review should tell you

If you're comparing providers, a useful review answers these clearly:

• Which templates and states were tested, at which widths?
• Which screen readers and browsers were used?
• Is every issue tied to a WCAG success criterion and a place in the code?
• Which issues are theme code, which are apps, which are content, and which are Shopify's?
• What wasn't tested?
• Does it avoid promising legal compliance? (It should.)

Sources

• WebAIM, The WebAIM Million (2026)
• W3C WAI, WCAG 2.2 and Understanding 1.4.10 Reflow
• W3C WAI, WCAG-EM 2.0: Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology
• ITI, VPAT
• Shopify Help Center, Collaborator accounts
• Deque, axe-core; WebAIM, WAVE

---

Want this done for your store? Our Accessibility Review covers your key templates with automated scans plus manual keyboard and screen reader testing, and gives you a prioritized issue list mapped to theme files. It's not a certified audit or a VPAT. If you want the fixes too, we make them in your theme on staging and show you the before and after. Ask about a review.