Shopify and Web Accessibility
Over the last few years, Shopify responded to the wave of accessibility lawsuits, helping eCommerce customers solve accessibility issues. Shopify provides Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPATs) for many of its products, including its popular Debut theme and Checkout interface. Shopify is accessible right out of the box. But, the responsibility for maintaining accessibility shifts to you when you start customizing your theme and apps and adding content. If you are interested in a Shopify website that meets accessibility and compliance requirements, we can help.
Depending on your budget and development resources, there are two different ways we can approach accessibility for your Shopify website:
- Retheme
- Audit and remediation
Option 1: Retheme
If you don’t have in-house developers or your development resources are limited, retheming your Shopify site using an accessible Shopify theme is often the most cost-effective way to upgrade your website to meet accessibility standards.
Some Shopify themes are built with accessibility in mind, while others are not. Converting to an accessible theme will save you time, money, and stress in the long run while also ensuring your website conforms to accessibility standards.
The best part? You don’t need to compromise on your website’s look, feel, or branding. Our team of experienced developers can help you select and customize an accessible Shopify theme that aligns with your current website and brand image.
For design and development jobs, we partner with our sister company, Bytes.co. Together, our teams can step in for organizations without a development team, or help your organization deal with resource constraints.
Our developers are fluent in a variety of website languages and frameworks, including WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and more. We have extensive experience building beautiful, accessible websites that deliver an exceptional user experience. There is no need to sacrifice your website’s appearance and functionality for accessibility.
Option 2: Audit and Remediate
If you have a larger website and sufficient development resources in-house, we can audit, test, and certify your existing Shopify site for WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility conformance. Learn more about our comprehensive audit and certification process here.
Audits and certifications are priced by template (unique page layout), not overall page number. Highly templatized websites, like eCommerce sites where all product pages are built with the same basic template, are typically easier and less expensive to audit.
Once we complete a thorough accessibility audit of your website, we’ll provide a list of remediation suggestions by template. Then, we’ll support your development team throughout the remediation process. Once your development team has finished implementing all suggested upgrades, we will reaudit your website and submit it for Accessibility User Experience (UX). Real assistive technology users will test your site. Finally we’ll certify that it is in conformance with all applicable accessibility laws and guidelines.
This option works particularly well for larger organizations and websites.
By working with Accessible Web, you can add accessibility statements to your website, so everyone knows you care about maintaining a website accessible to users with disabilities. We will set up continuous page monitoring, through Accessible Web RAMP, so new accessibility issues can be automatically detected and quickly addressed.
Our experts can help you determine the best approach to ensuring your Shopify website is fully accessible. Get in touch today!
