Shopify accessibility checker: how to test your store for free (and what scanners miss)

Updated 2026-10-18

If you searched for a "Shopify accessibility checker", you probably want a quick answer to one question: does my store have accessibility problems, and which ones should I fix first? Free tools can answer a large part of that in a few minutes. This guide shows which tools to use, which pages to test, and the manual checks no scanner can do for you.

In this guide

What a checker can and can't tell you
Which pages to test
Free tools compared
The 10-minute manual check
How to read the results

What an automated checker can and can't tell you

Automated checkers are good at finding problems that are clearly right or wrong in the code: text with too little colour contrast, images with no alt text, form fields with no label, buttons with no name, missing page language. These are also the most common problems on the web. WebAIM's February 2026 scan of the top one million home pages found detectable WCAG failures on 95.9% of them, and six issue types (low-contrast text, missing alt text, missing form labels, empty links, empty buttons and missing document language) made up 96% of all errors found.

What a checker can't judge is meaning and experience: whether alt text actually describes the product, whether you can finish checkout with a keyboard, whether a pop-up traps focus. Deque, which makes the open-source axe-core engine, found that automated testing identified about 57% of the issues in its sample of more than 2,000 audits (measured by volume of issues, not by WCAG criteria). So a clean scan is a good sign, not proof that a store is accessible.

Which pages to test

Shopify stores are built from templates, so one fix in a template fixes every page that uses it. Test one page of each type:

Home page (banners, slideshows, featured collections).
A collection page (filters, sorting, product cards, pagination).
A product page (images, variant pickers, price, Add to cart, reviews).
The cart (quantity fields, remove buttons, cart drawer if you use one).
A content page such as Contact or FAQ (forms, text links).

Also open the things that only appear on interaction (the menu drawer, cart drawer, newsletter pop-up, cookie banner) and test with them open. Apps add a lot of code there. Shopify maintains the checkout itself, so your effort is best spent on the storefront.

Free tools compared

Free accessibility checkers that work on any Shopify store
Tool	How it works	Good for
ClearAisle free check	A bookmark that runs axe-core in your browser on the store page you're viewing	A quick count of issues and the top issue types, with nothing to install and nothing sent to us
WAVE (WebAIM)	Paste a URL or use the browser extension; shows icons on the page	Seeing where each problem is; contrast details
Lighthouse (built into Chrome DevTools)	DevTools > Lighthouse > Accessibility	A 0-100 score Shopify itself uses for Theme Store themes
axe DevTools (free extension)	DevTools > axe DevTools > Scan	Detailed rule explanations and affected code
Accessibility Insights for Web	Browser extension with FastPass and guided manual checks	Tab-order visualisation and step-by-step manual tests

Shopify's own theme guidance lists Accessibility Insights, Lighthouse and WAVE as testing tools. A Lighthouse score is a summary, not a pass mark: a page can score in the 90s and still have a contrast problem on the Add to cart button, so read the individual findings.

The 10-minute manual check

Keyboard only (4 minutes). Put the mouse away. Press Tab from the top of a product page. Can you see where focus is at every step? Can you open the menu, pick a variant, press Add to cart, open the cart and reach Checkout? Does Escape close pop-ups?
Zoom (2 minutes). Zoom the browser to 200%, then 400%. Text should reflow into one column without overlapping or forcing sideways scrolling, and nothing important should disappear.
Screen reader (3 minutes). On a Mac, turn on VoiceOver with Cmd+F5; on Windows, the free NVDA screen reader. Tab through the product page and listen: does each button say what it does ("Add to cart", not just "button")? Are images described?
Read your alt text (1 minute). Scanners only check that alt text exists. Open a few products and make sure it describes the photo. Our Shopify alt text guide shows how.

How to read the results

Fix in this order: anything that blocks buying (unlabeled Add to cart or variant buttons, keyboard traps), then issues repeated on every page (header, footer, colour scheme), then one-off content issues. Repeated issues usually come from one theme setting or one app, so a single change can clear dozens of findings. Colour problems are covered in our colour contrast guide, and the most common theme fixes are in Shopify accessibility fixes.

If you'd rather not run five tools page by page, our $39 report scans five key pages of your store and lists every automated finding with Shopify steps to fix it. It's an automated audit, not a compliance certificate.

Check your store in 2 minutes

Run our free in-browser check on any page of your store, or get the full $39 report: every automated issue on 5 key pages, with step-by-step fixes for Shopify and WooCommerce.

Free check See the full report

FAQ

Is there a free Shopify accessibility checker?

Yes. WAVE, Lighthouse (in Chrome), axe DevTools, Accessibility Insights and the ClearAisle free check are all free and work on any Shopify storefront without installing an app.

Does a Shopify accessibility app make my store compliant?

No automated tool or app can guarantee compliance. Scanners find many common issues; you still need to fix them and do manual checks such as keyboard and screen reader testing.

How often should I check my Shopify store?

After theme updates, new apps or big product uploads, and at least every few months. Apps and new content are the most common source of new issues.

What score should I aim for in Lighthouse?

Shopify requires Theme Store themes to score at least 90, which is a useful baseline. But treat the score as a summary and fix the individual findings.

Sources

General information, not legal advice. ClearAisle provides automated audits only; a report is not a compliance guarantee or certification. Sources checked 2026-10-18.