Should your Shopify store publish an accessibility statement?
Yes. An accessibility statement does not make your store compliant by itself, and no page of text fixes broken code. But a good statement sets expectations for shoppers, gives people a way to reach you when something does not work, and shows a court or a demand-letter firm that accessibility is on your radar. A bad statement, copied from a template with claims you cannot back up, can do more harm than none at all.
What the statement is actually for
An accessibility statement is a public page that says three things: what standard you aim for, where you stand against it, and how a shopper can get help or report a problem. That is the whole job. It is not a legal shield, not a certification, and not a substitute for fixing the issues an audit finds. Think of it as the accessibility equivalent of a shipping policy: it tells people what to expect and where to go when reality differs.
The audience is broader than lawyers. Shoppers who use assistive technology check these pages to decide whether a store will work for them. Support teams use them when an accessibility complaint comes in. And when a demand letter arrives, the first thing the sender's researcher does is read your statement and compare its claims against the actual site. Every claim on the page should survive that comparison.
What to include
Start with a commitment in plain language: that you aim to make the store usable for as many people as possible, and the standard you measure against, typically WCAG 2.2 at the AA level. Name the standard explicitly. Vague claims like "we are committed to accessibility" without a named standard read as filler.
Describe your current status honestly. If you have audited and fixed the major issues, say so and date it. If you are mid-remediation, say that too, with a rough timeline. Honesty about known limitations is a feature, not a weakness: a statement that admits the checkout's third-party payment widget is still being worked on is far more credible than one claiming full compliance while the widget traps keyboard users.
Provide a contact path that actually works. An email address monitored by someone who can act, a phone number, and a stated response time. The contact path is the most important part of the page for a shopper who is stuck right now. Test it the way a shopper would: send a message and confirm someone knowledgeable replies within the promised time.
Close with a review date. Accessibility statements go stale fast on stores that ship theme updates and install apps monthly. A line saying the statement was last reviewed in a specific month, and a calendar reminder to revisit it quarterly, keeps the page honest.
The mistakes that make it worse than nothing
The most common mistake is copying a template that claims full WCAG 2.1 AA compliance when nobody has audited the site. That claim is now evidence. Plaintiff firms routinely quote accessibility statements back at stores in demand letters, pairing the store's own words with screenshots of the failures. An overstated statement converts a fixable complaint into a documented misrepresentation.
The second mistake is the dead contact path: an email that bounces, a form that no one monitors, a phone number that rings out. A statement promising help that does not exist is worse than silence, because it proves you knew the obligation and ignored it.
The third is the widget claim. Statements that credit an accessibility overlay or widget for the store's compliance are red flags to anyone who audits for a living. Overlays do not repair inaccessible theme code, and naming one as your compliance method signals that the statement was written by marketing rather than informed by an audit.
Where to put it and how to keep it current
Link the statement from the footer of every page, next to the privacy policy and terms. That is where shoppers, auditors, and demand-letter researchers all look first. Do not bury it three clicks deep or gate it behind a contact form.
Review it whenever the site changes in ways that affect accessibility: theme updates, new apps, redesigned checkout steps, new product templates. A quarterly calendar reminder plus a review trigger tied to launches is enough for most stores. Update the review date each time so the page keeps proving it is maintained.
Statement first or audit first
Audit first. Writing the statement after an audit means every claim on the page is grounded in findings and fixes, and the contact path gets tested against real issues. Writing it before, from a template, produces the overclaim problem described above. The right sequence is: audit, fix the worst issues, publish the statement describing where you stand, then keep monitoring so the statement stays true.