Shopify and the European Accessibility Act: what Shopify covers and what is yours

Published 28 October 2026

Using Shopify does not move your shop's duties under the European Accessibility Act to Shopify. In its own accessibility report, Shopify writes that merchants are responsible for their online store under laws like the European Accessibility Act. Shopify builds and tests its checkout; your theme, your apps, your images and your text are yours.

This article quotes what Shopify itself publishes, shows where the line sits in practice, and ends with a short list of first steps.

What Shopify says about the European Accessibility Act

Shopify publishes an accessibility report for its checkout, dated March 2026. In it, Shopify writes that merchants are responsible for assessing their own online store and making sure it meets the laws and regulations that apply to it, and it names two of them: the Americans with Disabilities Act and the European Accessibility Act.

Shopify's general accessibility statement, last updated on 7 July 2025, adds that "merchants have complete control over their theme codes". It also says Shopify works to meet accessibility standards for its own e-commerce services covered by the European Accessibility Act, and that it uses the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 as its guide.

So Shopify treats its own services as covered by the law, and says plainly that your store is yours to look after.

What Shopify looks after

The checkout

Checkout is a Shopify product. Shopify tests it against WCAG 2.2 at levels A and AA and publishes the results in the report quoted above.

That report is honest about its own gaps. It marks some points as "Partially Supports", for example:

Focus visible: "Focus rings may be inconsistent, difficult to see, or non-existent", which matters to people who move through a page with the keyboard.
Error identification: "Some error messaging may not be immediately brought to the user's attention."

It also says: "Remediation is on-going." So even the part Shopify controls is still being worked on. A merchant cannot point to the checkout report as proof that their store is accessible. It covers Shopify's checkout, not your shop.

The platform

Shopify runs the hosting, the admin and the core shopping system. You do not change their code, so you cannot fix them. If you find a barrier there, report it to Shopify. Its accessibility statement gives a contact for exactly that.

What is yours

Almost everything a shopper meets before the checkout is shaped by choices you make.

Part of the store	Who shapes it	An example of a barrier
Your theme	You, or the agency or developer you hired	A menu that opens with the mouse but not with the keyboard
Apps that add things to the storefront	You chose and installed them	A pop-up with a close button that a screen reader announces only as "button"
Product images	You	A product photo with no text description
Product text and page content	You	A size chart that exists only as a picture
Colours and fonts	You, in the theme and checkout settings	Light grey text on white that many people struggle to read
Videos	You	A product video with no captions
The written accessibility information the law asks for	You	Missing, or never updated

Your theme

Shopify's statement says merchants have "complete control" over theme code. That cuts both ways: you can fix what is wrong, and getting it fixed is up to you.

Shopify's Help Center has a page called "Accessibility for themes". It says its guidelines were written with WCAG in mind, and that following those guidelines alone does not ensure your store is fully accessible. A theme from the Shopify Theme Store is a good starting point. Once you add sections, change colours and move blocks around, it is your theme.

Apps you install

Review apps, chat bubbles, cookie banners, upsell pop-ups and size finders all add buttons and text to your pages. To a shopper, they are part of your shop.

Shopify's sentence about merchant responsibility does not make an exception for apps. If an app adds something your customers cannot use with a keyboard or a screen reader, ask the app's developer about it, and keep their answer.

Your images, text and videos

This is the part no theme or app can do for you:

A text description for each product image, saying what the shopper needs to know ("Blue linen shirt, front view, with two chest pockets").
Link text that says where it goes ("See the size guide", not "Click here").
Captions for product videos.
Important information written as text, not only inside a picture.

The information the law asks you to publish

The European Accessibility Act asks a shop that is covered to publish information on how its service meets the accessibility requirements. The law puts this information in your general terms and conditions, or an equivalent document. It must be available in written and oral format, be accessible itself, and be kept for as long as the service runs.

Shopify cannot write this for you, because it describes your shop.

Very small shops may not have these duties at all. The law exempts service businesses with fewer than 10 people and no more than €2 million in annual turnover or balance sheet total. Our guide Does the European Accessibility Act apply to my shop? walks through that test step by step, including the country where the exemption ends in 2030.

What this means in practice

Three points follow from Shopify's own words:

Choosing Shopify is not the same as being accessible. Shopify looks after its checkout and platform, and says openly that work there is ongoing.
Your changes are where most barriers come from. A theme, a handful of apps and hundreds of product images are all choices made in your shop.
Changes bring barriers back. A new theme, a new app or a quick campaign banner can undo earlier work. Checking once is not enough.

About overlay widgets

Some apps add a toolbar that lets visitors change contrast or text size. These overlay widgets change how the page looks to the person using the toolbar. They do not change the theme and content underneath. People who already use their own screen reader or zoom meet the original page. The European Disability Forum and the International Association of Accessibility Professionals said in a 2023 joint statement that overlays "do not constitute an acceptable alternative or a substitute for fixing the website itself". Some visitors do use those controls. They are just not a fix for the page itself.

Where to start this week

You do not need to do everything at once. A sensible order:

Check whether the law applies to you. If you have fewer than 10 people and stay within the money limits, you may be exempt.
Test your own shop with the keyboard. Put the mouse away and try to buy something with the Tab and Enter keys. Note where you get stuck. Our Shopify accessibility checklist has twelve checks like this one, each in plain words.
List your storefront apps. For each one, note what it adds to the page, and ask the developer what they have done about accessibility.
Start on product images. Add text descriptions, starting with the products that sell most.
Write down what you did and when. A dated list of what you checked and changed shows the work, to your managing director or to anyone else who asks.
Draft your accessibility information for your terms and conditions, describing what works today and what you are still fixing.

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.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

Barrierlist: storefront accessibility checks for Shopify