Are Squarespace templates accessible?

Squarespace maintains the underlying markup and has improved it over the years, but a template is a starting point. Your images, colors, fonts, blocks, and third-party code determine whether the published site is accessible.

What fails most often on Squarespace sites?

Text placed over full-bleed background images with variable contrast, gallery and slideshow blocks, images without meaningful alt text, and light-gray body text chosen for style rather than legibility.

How do I add alt text on Squarespace?

Image alt text comes from the image's caption or filename depending on the block and version, which is why bulk-uploaded galleries so often end up announcing filenames. Set it deliberately per image rather than relying on the default.

Guide

Squarespace accessibility check: what to test on your site

Squarespace sites fail accessibility for aesthetic reasons more than technical ones. The platform's markup is decent; what breaks is the design language it encourages: text over photographs, pale type on pale backgrounds, galleries that carry meaning in images, and blocks whose defaults nobody revisits.

Where Squarespace sites tend to fail

Text on full-bleed images. Contrast that passes over the dark corner of a photo fails over the bright one, and the same banner behaves differently on mobile, where the crop changes.
Gallery and slideshow blocks. Auto-advancing carousels that cannot be paused, and galleries whose images carry the actual information (menus, price lists, event details) with no text alternative.
Alt text by default. Depending on the block, Squarespace derives alt text from a caption or the filename, which is how a portfolio ends up announcing "IMG_4821" to a screen reader. Set it per image.
Pale body text. Light gray on off-white is the house style of a decade of templates and one of the most common contrast failures we see.
Code injection and third-party embeds: booking tools, chat widgets, newsletter popups, each bringing its own keyboard and focus behavior.
Commerce flows. Product options, cart, and checkout are where a failure costs an actual sale, and they are usually tested last.

How to check it

Tab through your home page and one commerce page with the keyboard only. Focus should be visible at every step and should follow the order you read in.
Look at every image that carries information, and ask what a person who cannot see it would miss. Menus, hours, and prices published as pictures are the classic case.
Run the machine layer: the free one-page check reports the WCAG 2.1 A and AA rules a machine can decide, on one page, in about a minute.
Cover the site: the automated audit ($149, 24 hours) tests every page with evidence and per-finding fixes; the signed audit ($490, 48-72 hours) adds a certified specialist's signature for when someone else has to trust it.

Holding a demand letter already? Start with the 72-hour guide; the signed audit is the version an attorney can use.

Common questions

Squarespace says its platform supports accessibility. Is my site covered?

Platform support and site conformance are different claims. The platform gives you accessible building blocks; your content and styling decide the result. The same is true of Wix, Shopify, and WooCommerce.

Can I just add an accessibility widget from the code injection panel?

No. Overlays leave the page underneath unchanged, and sites running them still get sued. Fix the blocks and the palette instead.

Our restaurant menu is a gallery image. Is that a problem?

It is the most common single failure in the industry, and it has its own page: restaurant website accessibility.

Check a page now with the free instant check, or cover everything with the automated audit ($149).