I wanted to know if anyone has heard about small businesses getting sued for the lack of accessibility features on their website. I have heard of a couple. Is Shopify letting others know to make their website accessible?
Hi @painted-swan ,
Thank you for reaching out and for asking your question. Making your website is accessible is something all merchants should consider when designing their online stores, and while it is ultimately the merchant’s responsibility to ensure they are meeting any accessibility laws and guidelines in the regions and jurisdictions they are present in and selling to, Shopify provides resources and assistance to merchants looking to get their store up to certain accessibility standards.
You can check out our accessibility policy to learn more about how Shopify is commiting to accessibility on a comany-wide basis, while our accessibility for themes article on the Shopify Help Center explains in more detail how you can make your website more accessible from a design perspective. This article provides information on how you can meet certain accessibility guidelines in terms of text accessibility, alternative texts for images, slideshow and video support, and other aspects.
In terms of testing your website’s accessibility, we recommend using the following tools to test if your store is meeting basic accessibility needs:
Please note that while these tools are useful tools to help you measure your store’s standards in terms of accessibility, they are not catch-all suites that are guaranteed to find all accessibility issues that may be present on your store.
If you’re looking to learn more about accessibility for your online store, I’d also recommend checking out the Web Accessibility Initiative’s Introduction to Web Accesibility and the Google Web Fundamentals’ article on accessibility.