Platform guide · Shopware 6

Shopware accessibility and the BFSG

Shopware has put real work into the default storefront, and recent versions ship markedly better markup than they used to. What that buys you is a decent starting point — not a compliant shop, because almost nobody runs the default storefront.

  • Default storefront is a good baseline
  • Themes and plugins are where it breaks
  • The checkout is what gets tested

What the platform gives you, and what it does not

Useful to separate, because the two have different owners and different fixes.

  • You get: semantic markup in the default Storefront, labelled form fields, a working skip link and landmark structure
  • You get: a template layer where a fix applies to every page that uses the block
  • You do not get: any guarantee about your theme — an agency theme routinely replaces exactly the markup that was doing the work
  • You do not get: accessible third-party plugins; the store has no accessibility requirement for listings
  • You do not get: alt text for your catalogue, which comes from your PIM or your import

Platform guide · Shopware 6

What we find on Shopware shops

  • Theme overrides that drop semantics

    A custom Twig override replaces a button with a styled div, or a heading with a bold span. The default was fine; the override is what ships.

  • Imported product images

    Alt text that is the filename, or the product name repeated on all eight gallery images — technically present, practically useless.

  • Plugin sliders and filters

    Third-party listing filters and image sliders are the most common source of keyboard failures in a Shopware storefront.

  • Payment plugin iframes

    Hosted payment fields that break focus order or trap it, in the one step that has to work.

Where to look first

Each links to a plain-language page on that criterion: what it asks for, how it fails in practice, and how far an automated check can get.

All WCAG 2.2 AA criteria

A sensible order of work

  1. Diff your theme against the default

    Most findings on a Shopware shop live in the overrides. The list of templates your theme replaces is the list of places to look.

  2. Fix alt text upstream

    The storefront renders what the product data says. Fixing it in the PIM fixes it in the shop, the feed and the marketplace at once.

  3. Audit the plugins you actually use

    Then decide: patch, replace, or accept and document. All three are legitimate; ignoring it is not.

  4. Re-test the checkout after every plugin update

    Payment and shipping plugins update often and their markup is not covered by your tests.

Shopware questions

Does upgrading Shopware make us compliant?

It improves the baseline and it is worth doing. It does not make you compliant, because compliance is about what your storefront renders — your theme, your plugins, your product data — not about what the core is capable of.

Can we just buy an accessible theme?

A well-built theme removes a category of problems. It does not touch your product data, your plugins or your custom checkout steps, which is where most of the remaining findings are. Ask any vendor for a report against a live shop rather than a claim.

Written to be useful, not to be legal advice. It reflects our reading of the BFSG and EN 301 549 as of 2026-09-13; for a binding assessment of your obligations, ask a lawyer.

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