How to fix landmark unique on Shopify

Steps for Shopify

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes → click the '…' menu next to your active theme → Edit code.
2. Open the layout file (layout/theme.liquid) to locate your <header>, <nav>, and <footer> landmark elements.
3. Also check theme section files in the 'sections/' folder (e.g. sections/header.liquid, sections/footer.liquid, sections/breadcrumbs.liquid) where individual nav elements live.
4. Add aria-label="Primary navigation" (or an appropriate unique label) to each <nav> or <aside> that appears more than once. Example: <nav aria-label="Footer navigation">.
5. If your theme renders navigation via snippets, check the 'snippets/' folder for files like navigation.liquid.
6. Save changes, preview the theme, and re-run your accessibility scanner to confirm the violation is resolved. Consider using a Shopify accessibility app (e.g. accessiBe or AudioEye) for ongoing monitoring.

<nav aria-label="Primary navigation">
  <!-- main site menu links -->
</nav>

<nav aria-label="Breadcrumbs">
  <!-- breadcrumb trail -->
</nav>

<!-- OR, using a visible heading already inside the landmark -->
<aside aria-labelledby="related-products-heading">
  <h2 id="related-products-heading">Related Products</h2>
  <!-- product cards -->
</aside>

What is landmark unique?

Landmarks are special HTML elements — like `<nav>`, `<header>`, `<footer>`, `<main>`, `<aside>`, and `<section>` — that act as signposts letting screen-reader users jump quickly around a page. When the same type of landmark appears more than once on a page (for example, two `<nav>` elements: one for the main menu and one for breadcrumbs), each one must have a distinct label so users know which is which. Without that label, a screen reader just announces "navigation" twice, leaving users unable to tell them apart. The fix is to add an `aria-label` attribute (e.g. `aria-label="Main menu"` and `aria-label="Breadcrumbs"`) or an `aria-labelledby` pointing to a visible heading inside the landmark.

For the roughly 7.5 million Americans who use screen readers, duplicate unlabelled landmarks make navigation genuinely confusing or impossible — they cannot tell which "navigation" or "complementary" region is which. This is a WCAG 2.1 failure (Success Criterion 1.3.6 / best practice under 2.4.1), which creates legal accessibility risk under the ADA, the UK Equality Act, and equivalent laws worldwide. Beyond legal exposure, an inaccessible store loses sales from disabled shoppers — an estimated $490 billion in disposable income in the US alone. Google also uses landmark structure as a crawl signal for understanding page architecture, so clean, labelled landmarks can marginally improve how Googlebot interprets your content hierarchy.

See the complete Landmark unique guide for every platform and the full background.