Real accessibility for Shopify. Without the overlay widget.
Overlay tools paint over the problem and have been sued for it. Bloodhound finds what's actually broken and shows you how to fix it. Continuous WCAG 2.2 AA monitoring on your live storefront, four engines stacked into one report, with per-element fixes, daily scans, and an EAA-aligned PDF compliance report on Business.
One install. Four engines.
WCAG 2.2 A + AA, deduplicated.
axe-core, Pa11y, Lighthouse, and IBM equal-access run against every page on your storefront. Findings are normalised, deduplicated and ranked by impact, so you see one clean list of real issues, not four conflicting reports.
Colour contrast
Body text, buttons, hover and focus states. Light mode and dark mode. Every fail is flagged with the actual contrast ratio and the foreground/background hex values used.
Form labels & ARIA
Inputs without accessible names, missing form labels, broken aria-describedby associations on validation errors, and incorrect ARIA roles on custom controls.
Keyboard navigation
Focus traps that don't release, illogical tab order, hidden focus indicators, off-screen tabbable elements, and modal dialogs that fail to trap focus while open.
Touch target sizes
Buttons, links and form controls below WCAG 2.5.5 minimum target size on mobile. Critical for checkout pages on small screens.
Landmark structure
Missing <main>, missing <nav>, content outside any landmark, duplicate landmarks. The structural skeleton every screen reader user depends on.
Media accessibility
Video without captions, audio without transcripts, autoplaying media without pause control, and linked PDFs that aren't tagged for screen-reader access.
Images & alt text
Empty alt attributes on meaningful images, missing alt on linked product photos, decorative images that aren't marked aria-hidden. Quality assessment of alt text on the Business plan.
1,000+ rules, four engines
axe-core, Pa11y (HTML CodeSniffer WCAG2AA ruleset), Lighthouse accessibility audits, and IBM equal-access. We run them all, then deduplicate. You see one clean issue list.
Automated tools cover
about 85% of WCAG.
The rest needs people.
We are upfront about this because the honest framing is the one that earns trust. Automation is excellent at finding rule violations. It is not a substitute for a screen-reader user trying to complete a checkout, or for someone with low vision navigating your collection grid by keyboard.
Screen reader usability
Whether your storefront is actually usable end-to-end with VoiceOver, NVDA or JAWS. Tooling can confirm the structure exists, but only a real user can confirm the journey works.
Alt-text quality
An automated scanner knows when alt text is missing. It can't tell that "image123.jpg" is a useless alt value. Our Business plan uses Claude vision to assess alt-text quality and flag filler, redundant, or low-information alt strings.
Heading semantics
Whether your heading outline actually reflects the content's information architecture, beyond just "H2 follows H1". This is judgement-call territory.
Link text meaningfulness
"Click here" and "Read more" are technically valid HTML. We flag them, but the fix is editorial, not a code change. We help by listing every weak-text link with its destination.
Cognitive accessibility
Copy clarity, instruction phrasing, error message wording, information density. Critical for users with cognitive or learning disabilities and not something a rule engine can grade.
Partner audit referral
For formal WCAG 2.2 AA conformance certification we partner with a specialist accessibility audit firm and pass on a Bloodhound-customer discount. Available from the Business plan.
Inaccessible storefronts
lose customers and now
also break the law.
The European Accessibility Act came into force on 28 June 2025. Online retailers selling into the EU are required to meet WCAG 2.2 AA standards, with limited microenterprise exemptions and material fines for non-compliance.
In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 has required reasonable adjustments to digital services for over a decade, and EHRC guidance treats inaccessible online services as a likely breach.
In the US, ADA Title III lawsuits against retail e-commerce sites continue to climb year on year, with over 4,600 federal filings in 2023 alone per UsableNet's tracking.
Beyond compliance, the business case is direct. The World Health Organization estimates 16% of the global population lives with significant disability, and the share of shoppers affected by age-related vision or motor changes is materially higher. An inaccessible storefront silently turns those shoppers away.
June 2025. EAA in force
European Accessibility Act applies to e-commerce selling into the EU. WCAG 2.2 AA required.
Global disability share
Roughly 1 in 6 people live with a significant disability. WHO global estimate, 2023.
US ADA filings, 2023
Federal accessibility lawsuits filed against e-commerce and retail sites in 2023 (UsableNet).
What we found on our own marketing site
Baseline scan of getbloodhound.app on 13 May 2026. We fixed it before shipping this page. Dogfooding works.
Continuous, server-side,
on your real storefront.
The Bloodhound accessibility scanner is a hosted Playwright crawler. It does not run on shopper devices, it does not inject overlays into your storefront, and it does not require a developer to install or run anything by hand.
Daily server-side scan
A scheduled Playwright crawler discovers your sitemap, opens each page, runs all four accessibility engines, and normalises the findings.
Real-user advisory sample
A 1 percent sample of real visitor sessions runs lightweight client-side keyboard and focus-visibility probes, with strict performance budgets so storefront speed is unaffected.
Per-element findings
Every violation includes the CSS selector, an HTML snippet, the WCAG rule cited, the impact level, and a plain-English fix description.
Alerts on regression
If a theme update or a new app installs and breaks accessibility on a page that previously passed, you get a Slack, Teams or Discord alert the same day.
PDF compliance report
On the Business plan, generate an EAA-aligned PDF report with per-page WCAG 2.2 AA scoresheets, screenshots and remediation steps, suitable for sharing with legal or audit teams.
Accessibility is a Business
flagship feature.
Every plan gets accessibility visibility. The depth grows with the tier, because the merchants who need the per-element compliance reports are the ones with real legal and brand exposure.
Issue counts
Total violation count per page, broken down by impact. Enough to know where you stand.
Per-page detail
Issue lists per page with WCAG rule citations, impact breakdown and a weekly digest email summarising new and regressed issues.
Full compliance
Per-element CSS selectors and HTML snippets, LLM-assessed alt-text quality, EAA-aligned WCAG 2.2 AA PDF report, multi-store rollup, and the partner audit referral discount.
Common questions.
How is Bloodhound different from accessiBe, Squidler or axe DevTools?
axe DevTools is a one-off browser scan a developer runs locally. accessiBe is an overlay widget that injects scripts into your storefront, which has well-documented downsides for both real screen-reader users and litigation risk. Bloodhound is continuous server-side monitoring on your real, live storefront, with daily scans, alerts when regressions appear, and detailed per-element findings inside your Shopify admin.
Is automated accessibility testing enough for legal compliance?
No. Automated tooling reliably catches around 85 percent of WCAG 2.2 A and AA issues. The remaining 15 percent requires human review, particularly around alt-text quality, heading semantics, keyboard flow and cognitive accessibility. For formal conformance certification we refer customers to a partner audit firm at a Bloodhound discount.
Will the scanner slow my store down?
No. The primary scan runs server-side on a Playwright crawler we host, not on your shoppers' devices. We also collect a 1 percent advisory sample from real visitor sessions for keyboard and focus visibility checks, with strict performance budgets, so the visible storefront performance is unaffected.
Can I download a PDF compliance report?
Yes, on the Business plan. The PDF compliance report is aligned with the European Accessibility Act and includes a per-page WCAG 2.2 AA scoresheet, screenshots, and remediation guidance suitable for sharing with legal or audit teams.
What WCAG version does Bloodhound test against?
WCAG 2.2 levels A and AA, which is the level required by the EU European Accessibility Act and the UK public-sector regulations and recommended by EHRC guidance for the Equality Act 2010. We do not aim at AAA, which is out of scope for commerce.
Start free, see your store's accessibility score
Pro gives you per-page detail. Business gives you the full WCAG 2.2 AA compliance report. 14-day free trial on all plans.
Start free trial →