A European Accessibility Act checklist for Shopify: 12 checks you can do in an afternoon
Published
You can find many of the most common accessibility barriers on a Shopify store yourself, in one afternoon, with a keyboard, a browser and a free screen reader. The 12 checks in this checklist cover the pages a shopper meets: home, product, collection, cart, search and a policy page. They will not prove that your shop meets the European Accessibility Act, but they find real problems that stop real customers, and they give you a list to start fixing.
Before you start
What this European Accessibility Act checklist is based on
The European Accessibility Act sets the legal requirements. The technical guide most accessibility work is measured against is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, published by the W3C. WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023, and the current edition is dated 12 December 2024. The European accessibility standard, updated in September 2026, adopts WCAG 2.2 as its benchmark for websites.
Each check below is one everyday part of WCAG 2.2 in plain words, not the full standard.
What you need
- A laptop with Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari.
- A screen reader. On a Mac, VoiceOver is built in (press Cmd + F5). On Windows, NVDA is free.
- About three hours, and a document to write notes in.
Which pages to open
Pick six pages: home, one product, one collection, the cart, a search results page and one policy page. Shopify themes build pages of the same kind from the same template, so one of each shows the problems that repeat across a template.
For each problem, note the date, the page and what you saw. That note is your to-do list, and later your record.
Keyboard checks
1. Can you buy something with only the keyboard?
Put the mouse away. Use Tab and Shift + Tab to move, Enter to press links and buttons, and the arrow keys inside menus. Choose a product, pick a size, add it to the cart and reach the checkout.
When it goes wrong: the main menu opens only when you hover with a mouse. A size picker cannot be reached. The cart drawer opens, but you cannot close it, or the keyboard keeps moving through the page behind it.
2. Can you always see where you are?
While you press Tab, there should always be a visible outline or highlight on the element you are on.
When it goes wrong: the outline disappears on some buttons, so you lose your place. Or the highlighted element slides under a sticky header or a cookie banner and is completely hidden.
Home and collection page checks
3. Do images say what they show?
Turn on your screen reader and move through a collection page. Each product image should be read out with a short description of what it shows. Purely decorative images should be skipped.
In Shopify admin, open a product, click an image and add or edit its alt text, which is the text description a screen reader reads out.
When it goes wrong: you hear a file name like "IMG_4032", the word "image", or the same text for every photo. A good description says what the shopper needs to know: "Blue linen shirt, back view, with a pleated yoke".
4. Is the text easy to read against its background?
WCAG asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. A free online contrast checker gives you the ratio for two colours.
Look especially at text on photos, sale badges, grey prices and footer links.
When it goes wrong: white text on a light banner photo, pale grey text on white, or a yellow "Sale" label on a white background.
5. Do links say where they go?
Screen-reader users often list the links on a page. Read yours as if they stood alone.
When it goes wrong: five links that all say "Shop now", or "Click here", or "Read more". Better: "Shop the summer collection", "Read our returns policy".
6. Are the headings in a sensible order?
Headings let screen-reader users jump through a page, like a table of contents. Use your screen reader's headings list (in NVDA press H; in VoiceOver use the rotor), or a free headings browser extension.
When it goes wrong: no headings at all, or text styled to look like a heading that a screen reader does not treat as one, or the product name not marked as the page's main heading.
Product page checks
7. Do icon-only buttons have a name?
Tab to each button that shows only an icon (shopping bag, magnifying glass, wish-list heart, quantity plus and minus, gallery arrows) and listen to what the screen reader says.
When it goes wrong: you hear only "button", so the shopper cannot tell what it does.
8. Do product videos have captions?
Play each product or brand video with the sound off. Can you follow it?
When it goes wrong: a video where someone explains how the product works, with no captions. If a video starts playing by itself, there should also be a way to pause it.
Cart, search and form checks
9. Does each form field have a visible label?
Look at the newsletter sign-up, search box, discount code field and contact form. Each field needs a label that stays visible while you type, and that a screen reader reads out.
When it goes wrong: the only label is grey placeholder text inside the box, which disappears as soon as you start typing.
10. Are errors explained in words, not only in colour?
Enter an email address without the "@" in your newsletter form and submit it.
When it goes wrong: the field turns red and nothing else happens. People who cannot see the colour, or who use a screen reader, are not told what went wrong. A good message says what to fix: "Enter an email address that includes the @ sign".
The same applies elsewhere: a colour swatch for a product option should also have its colour name in text.
11. Does the page still work at 200% zoom?
Press Ctrl and + (Cmd and + on a Mac) until your browser shows 200%. Go through the same purchase as in check 1.
When it goes wrong: text is cut off, buttons overlap, the menu disappears, or you have to scroll sideways to read a line.
12. Does the page say which language it is in?
Screen readers use the page's language setting to choose the right pronunciation. Right-click the page, choose "View page source", and look at the first lines for lang="de", lang="nl" or your language's code.
When it goes wrong: a German store whose pages say lang="en", so a screen reader reads German words with English pronunciation. If you sell in several languages, check one page in each.
Which checks to run on which page
| Page | Checks to focus on |
|---|---|
| Home | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12 |
| Collection | 3, 4, 5, 6 |
| Product | 1, 3, 7, 8, 10, 11 |
| Cart | 1, 2, 7, 9, 11 |
| Search results | 5, 6, 9 |
| Policy page | 4, 5, 6, 11 |
Which checks software can speed up
Some checks are easy for software, because the answer is in the page code: missing image descriptions, low contrast, unnamed buttons, unlabelled form fields, empty links and a missing page language. They are also among the most common problems automated tools find. In WebAIM's 2026 study of the top one million home pages, low-contrast text was detected on 83.9% of them, missing image descriptions on 53.1%, missing form labels on 51%, empty links on 46.3%, empty buttons on 30.6% and a missing page language on 13.5%. That study looks at home pages across the web, not at Shopify stores or the EU in particular, so read the figures as a picture of the web as a whole.
Other checks need a person. Software can tell that an image has a description, but not whether "Blue shirt" is enough for your customer. It cannot judge whether the keyboard path through your checkout makes sense, whether captions are accurate, or whether an error message is clear. WebAIM says so itself: "Absence of detected errors does not indicate that a page is accessible or conformant."
After the afternoon
- Fix content issues yourself. Image descriptions, link text and captions live in your Shopify admin.
- Send theme and app issues to whoever built them. Give them your note: the page, what you did and what happened.
- Repeat the checks after changes. A new theme, a new app or a campaign page can bring problems back.
- Keep your notes with their dates. They show what you checked, what you found and what you changed.
How software can help
We build Barrierlist, a Shopify app that does the automated part of this work. It scans the page templates a shopper meets (home, product, collection, cart, search and your policy pages), 12 sampled pages in all, in a real browser. It lists what it found in plain language: the issue, the pages and elements it appears on, and what to change. Your first full report is free and nothing in it is hidden. Automated checks find a subset of accessibility issues; manual review is required for full conformance, so the keyboard and screen-reader checks above still need you.
This is general information, not legal advice.