Most Shopify store owners install a handful of apps without thinking much about accessibility. Reviews widgets. Loyalty schemes. Pop-up builders. Cookie consent banners. Email capture forms. Each of these injects its own HTML and JavaScript into your storefront. Almost none of them are built with accessibility as a priority.
The result is that even a store with a reasonably accessible theme can end up with significant barriers, introduced entirely by third-party apps.
I audit Shopify stores including the apps installed on them. If this sounds like a problem you’re dealing with, my contact form can be found here
Why apps are a particular problem
When a page is audited for accessibility, all of the content on the page is in scope, regardless of where it came from. If you install a reviews widget that uses a non-accessible star rating component, that is an accessibility problem with your store. The fact that you did not write the code does not change that.
Some store owners are surprised to learn this. The legal framing in most jurisdictions places responsibility on the entity running the website, not on whoever wrote individual components. You are responsible for what appears on your storefront.
The most common problem apps
Pop-up and overlay apps. Email capture pop-ups, exit-intent overlays, and announcement bars are among the most common sources of accessibility failures. They frequently fail to manage focus correctly when they open, do not return focus when they close, and lack a keyboard-accessible way to dismiss them.
Reviews and ratings apps. Star ratings are regularly implemented in ways that only communicate information visually. A person using a screen reader needs a text equivalent. Many reviews apps do not provide one.
Cookie consent banners. Ironically, the banner asking you to accept cookies is itself often not keyboard accessible. Buttons that cannot be reached by tab, or close buttons with no accessible label, are common.
Live chat widgets. Chat launchers that float in the corner of the screen are frequent sources of focus management problems. They can interrupt tab order, trap focus, or fail to announce when new messages arrive.
Loyalty and rewards apps. These often inject content into product pages and cart pages. The injected content frequently lacks proper labels, uses low-contrast text, or includes interactive elements that do not work with a keyboard.
What to do when an app is the problem
You have a few options. They are not all equally good.
Contact the app developer. Flag the specific issues you have found. Give them the WCAG criterion that applies. Some developers will fix things, particularly if they are running a reputable business and the issue is straightforward. Many will not respond or will deprioritise it.
Find an alternative app. For common functionality like reviews or loyalty schemes, there are usually multiple apps that do similar things. It is worth checking whether alternatives have better accessibility before you invest time and money into a specific one.
Work around it in your theme. Sometimes a specific barrier, such as a missing aria-label on a button, can be patched from your theme code without touching the app itself. This is fragile because app updates can overwrite your fix, but it is sometimes practical in the short term.
Remove the app. If an app is causing significant barriers and the developer is not addressing them, removing it is a legitimate option. Not every app provides enough commercial value to justify the accessibility cost.
Before you install an app
Before installing any app, spend five minutes testing the demo if one is available. Open it without a mouse. Can you navigate to and activate all interactive elements by keyboard alone? Check the colour contrast of any text it introduces. Look at what it injects into the page DOM using browser developer tools.
This does not need to be a full audit. A quick check will surface the most obvious problems before you commit.
If you want a review of your Shopify store’s installed apps for accessibility, or you are an app developer who wants to build accessibly from the start, get in touch via my contact form .