Shopify themes
Are Shopify's free themes accessible?
We scanned the homepage of each free theme's official demo store with the same axe-core engine our checker runs, on 2026-10-23. 3 of 12 passed every automated check (Publisher, Refresh, Ride). The rest start a new store with failures already on the page, before you add a single product.
| Theme | Score | Rules failed | Elements |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horizon | 67/100 (D) | 4 | 14 |
| Trade | 83/100 (B) | 2 | 14 |
| Dawn | 85/100 (B) | 1 | 9 |
| Origin | 91/100 (A) | 2 | 5 |
| Colorblock | 93/100 (A) | 2 | 2 |
| Studio | 93/100 (A) | 2 | 5 |
| Sense | 98/100 (A) | 1 | 3 |
| Spotlight | 98/100 (A) | 1 | 1 |
| Taste | 98/100 (A) | 1 | 3 |
| Publisher | 100/100 (A) | 0 | 0 |
| Refresh | 100/100 (A) | 0 | 0 |
| Ride | 100/100 (A) | 0 | 0 |
Automated tests find some, not all, accessibility issues. A high score does not mean your site meets ADA, WCAG or EAA requirements. Not legal advice. What a score means
What the demo store does not tell you
A demo store has the theme's sample images and Shopify's own alt text. Your store has your product photos, your colour scheme, the sections you rearranged and the apps you installed. Those add failures the theme never had: on one merchant store our Shopify app scans, 8 of its 12 landmark failures came from the markup of two installed accessibility overlay apps. This list scores the homepage only; product, collection and cart pages are not in these numbers.
Not on Shopify admin right now? Check your own storefront free — it names your theme and reads the store-only controls: product images, variant pickers, quantity and the cart drawer.