Shopify’s Dawn theme, run through thirteen accessibility checks.
We ran the same thirteen checks we run for clients on Dawn’s demo store. It passed eleven. Here is every line with the count behind it, what the two failures were, and which one is the theme’s job and which one is yours.
What we ran, and where
We ran the checks on Shopify’s own Dawn demo store, dawn-theme-default.myshopify.com, on September 7, 2026. Three pages: the home page, one collection page, and one product page, opened in a real browser at desktop width, with the product page opened again at phone width. The counts below are what the browser found on those pages that day.
This is the same check that runs on the free Storefront Check. Nothing here is a compliance claim or a certificate. It is thirteen things, counted.
Every line of the result
| Check | Measured | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Every photo has a description | 66 images | Pass |
| Buttons say what they do | 37 buttons | Pass |
| Form fields say what to type | 9 fields | Pass |
| The page says what language it is in | 3 pages | Pass |
| Keyboard users can skip the menu | 3 pages | Pass |
| Phones can pinch to zoom | 3 pages | Pass |
| Screen readers can jump between sections | 3 pages | Pass |
| Tab order follows the page | 3 pages | Pass |
| Each page has a real title | 3 pages | Pass |
| Links say where they go | 89 links | Pass |
| Buttons are big enough to tap | 142 controls | Pass |
| Text is readable against its background | 189 samples | Fail |
| An accessibility statement is linked | site-wide | Fail |
Eleven of thirteen passed. Nothing was left undecided. The whole run took 18 seconds.
Dawn is a well-built theme
That result is better than most themes we test, and better than almost every live store we test. Every image in the demo has a description. Every icon button has a name. The skip link works and points at something real. The tab order is left alone. Pinch to zoom is not switched off. Those are the failures letters name most often, and Dawn ships without them.
Shopify builds Dawn, and Shopify has a team working on this. The theme is not where most stores go wrong.
The one thing the theme gets wrong
One piece of text on the collection page is too faint. It is the product count under the heading, the line that reads “26 products”. The theme prints it in grey #838383 on white at 14 pixels. That is a contrast ratio of 3.79 to 1. Text that size needs 4.5 to 1.
It is faint because the theme takes its normal text colour and fades it. The fix is to stop fading that one line. We tried it: give the count the theme’s full text colour and the same measurement returns 7 to 1, and the collection page has no contrast failures left.
Our adviceSearch your theme’s CSS for collection-product-count__text and give it the full foreground colour instead of the faded one. It is one line, and it is the only thing on this list that is Dawn’s fault rather than yours.
The one thing no theme can do for you
The demo store has no accessibility statement, and no theme ships one. A statement is a page that says how the store is tested, what is known to be broken, and how someone tells you they are stuck. It is the cheapest item on this list and the one that most often turns a letter into an email.
Our adviceWrite the statement after the audit, not before. A statement that promises more than the store does is worse than no statement. Ours is at junand.co/accessibility if you want the shape of one.
What this does not tell you about your store
A demo store is a showroom. It has 66 images; a real jewelry store has hundreds. It has 89 links; the last store we counted had 1,125. It has no apps, no custom sections, no sale badges, no size charts, and no metal swatches.
Almost everything that fails on a live Dawn store was added after the theme was installed. Product photos uploaded without a description. An app that draws a pop-up with no label. A custom section with white text over a photo. A colour swatch that announces itself as “link”.
Why the theme’s score is not your score. Eleven of thirteen on the demo store says the floor is good. It says nothing about the ceiling. The only number that means anything for your store is the one counted on your store.
If you run Dawn, check these four things first
- Your product photos. Dawn does not write alt text. Every image you uploaded needs a description of what is in it.
- Your colour and metal swatches. If they were added by an app or a custom section, each one probably announces as “link”.
- Anything an app draws. Pop-ups, review widgets, size charts, and cart drawers are the most common source of unnamed buttons.
- Text you laid over a photo. Contrast is the failure a machine can count, and the one custom sections reintroduce most often.
All four take about a minute to check. Paste your address into the free check and it counts them for you.
Next
Impulse and Prestige are next, run the same way, on the same three page types. We publish the whole result each time, including the checks a theme passes.