Accessible Shopify themes, tested

The ADA does not certify themes, and no one can promise a theme meets it. What you can know is how a theme does on the tests that exist. Shopify requires themes in its Theme Store to pass accessibility checks when they are submitted, including a Lighthouse accessibility score of at least 90. Those checks run once, on the developer's demo, before your colours, photos, apps and edits are added.

So the honest answer has two parts: how good the theme's code is, and how well you keep it that way. Our scan below answers the first part, for the automated checks only.

Please read these limits before you use the numbers:

• Automated checks find only part of the problems. In Deque's 2021 study of its own audits, automated tests caught about 57% of issues by volume. Zero failures here means none of the automated rules failed, not that the theme is accessible. A high score is not a pass: see what automated accessibility testing misses.
• Demo stores include Shopify's demo content. Some failures, such as missing alt text or low contrast, come from the demo's images and colour choices, not the theme code. We mark those below.
• Demo stores may not run the latest version. We list the theme name and version each demo store reported. Several older theme demos reported an early Dawn version number, and the Horizon demo ran 3.2.0 while most of its family ran 3.4.0. Your copy may be newer or older.
• One theme was left out. Savor's demo store did not let us load its products when we scanned, so it is not in the results.

Horizon is Shopify's newer free theme. Atelier, Dwell, Fabric, Heritage, Pitch, Ritual, Tinker and Vessel share its code. Every one of them had automated failures on desktop and on phones.

Dawn is the theme many older free themes were built on. 6 of these 13 demo stores showed no automated failures at all: Dawn, Publisher, Ride, Sense, Spotlight, Taste. The rest had one or two kinds of failure, mostly low contrast from the demo's colour choices.

Three of these matter most to shoppers:

• The sticky add to cart button on phones had no name. axe found no accessible name on it in all 9 themes, so a screen reader user may hear only “button” on the most important control on the page. If a theme's icon buttons have no name, our aria-label guide shows the Liquid fix.
• Product image carousels could not be scrolled with a keyboard. Shoppers who do not use a mouse cannot see the other photos.
• Slide dots were too small to tap on phones. WCAG 2.2 asks for at least 24 by 24 pixels, or enough space around each one. Target size is one of the nine new criteria in WCAG 2.2.

These are code problems, so Shopify can fix them in a theme update, and a developer can fix them in your copy now.

Shopify publishes an accessibility conformance report for Dawn, based on the VPAT template. It covers Dawn version 2.4.0 and tests against WCAG 2.1 A and AA, and it lists several criteria as partially supported. There is no published report for Horizon at shopify.com/accessibility as of October 17, 2026.

Shopify also owns checkout, which no theme controls. Our page on what Shopify covers and what it leaves to you explains its checkout report.

A theme that tests well on its demo can fail on your store within a day. The usual causes are things you choose:

• Colours. A light grey for body text or a pale brand colour on buttons. Check every pair with the contrast checker, and read how to fix low colour contrast in theme settings. Font and size changes matter too: read how to pick accessible fonts for your theme.
• Images. Product photos and banners with no alt text, and sale banners with the words baked into the picture. See our alt text examples. If a theme drops your alt text, see when the theme ignores your alt text.
• Sections. Auto-rotating slideshows with no pause button, and buttons that all say Shop now.
• Apps. Reviews, chat, pop-ups and upsells add code to every page. Many add barriers the theme never had.
• Code edits. Custom sections and snippets added by a developer, often without keyboard testing.

1. Open the theme's demo store and use it with only the Tab, Enter and Esc keys. Open the menu, a product, the cart drawer and a pop-up.
2. Run the demo's product page through the free accessibility checker.
3. Check that a Skip to content link appears when you first press Tab.
4. Look at the colour presets. Are prices, sale prices and small text easy to read?
5. Ask the developer for an accessibility conformance report or test results, and how they handle accessibility bugs.
6. Check how often the theme is updated. Fixes only reach you if you update.