How should a Shopify store handle accessibility for user-generated content?
You cannot control what customers write in reviews, but you are responsible for the frame around it. The review widget, the photo gallery, the Q&A accordion, and the rating stars are your code or your app's code, and their accessibility is on you. Watch the widgets, set defaults that protect you, and treat customer uploads as content you did not write but still publish.
The widget is yours, the words are theirs
User-generated content arrives through components the store chose: a review app, a photo gallery, a Q&A section. The component's accessibility is squarely the store's responsibility. Can a keyboard user reach the review form, open the photo lightbox, and expand a Q&A item? Do the star ratings expose their value as text, or are they silent icons? Is the "write a review" dialog trapped so focus cannot escape it?
These are the same checks you run on your own theme, applied to the app's markup. When you install or update a reviews app, test its widgets with a keyboard before you publish the change. Apps update silently and often, and a widget that was fine in January can ship a broken dialog in June.
Customer photos need a default, not a hope
Customers upload photos without alt text, and no review app can make them write it. What the store can do is set a sensible default: every customer photo gets a generic alternative like "Customer photo for [product name]" unless the uploader provides one. A generic description is not ideal, but it is far better than a filename or silence, and it keeps the gallery navigable.
Some review platforms support prompting the uploader for a description. Turn that on where it exists. A small nudge at upload time produces real descriptions from a meaningful share of customers, and it costs nothing.
Watch the widgets in your monitoring
Most accessibility scans test the page as it loads, but review widgets often load late or behind interactions: the gallery opens on click, the Q&A expands on tap, the review form appears in a modal. If your monitoring only scans the initial page state, it never sees these components.
Make sure the watch covers the interactive states. That means scanning with the widgets expanded, or using checks that interact with the page the way a customer does. A monitoring setup that skips the review modal is blind to one of the most interactive parts of the product page.
Moderation is an accessibility tool too
Review moderation usually focuses on spam and abuse, but it has an accessibility dimension. Reviews pasted from elsewhere can carry broken markup, giant images without dimensions that shift the layout, or text in all caps that screen readers spell out letter by letter. A moderation pass that normalizes formatting protects every reader, not just assistive technology users.
Set sensible limits as well: cap image dimensions, strip pasted formatting, and keep the review text as plain text. The cleaner the input pipeline, the fewer surprises the output has.
What to document
Keep a short record for each user-generated content widget: which app provides it, when it was last tested, what the test covered, and what the defaults are for uploaded media. When the app updates, the record tells you what to re-test. When a demand letter mentions the review section, the record shows the store treated it as its own responsibility, which is exactly the posture that keeps a complaint from becoming a case.