How to fix listitem on BigCommerce

Steps for BigCommerce

1. In your BigCommerce admin go to Storefront → My Themes → click Customize on your active theme → Edit Theme Files (or download the theme and edit locally).
2. Locate the Handlebars (.html) template file responsible for the broken list — common files are `templates/layout/base.html`, `templates/components/header.html`, `templates/components/footer.html`, or a product/category partial.
3. Find the `<li>` element. If its parent is a `<div>` or other non-list element, wrap all sibling `<li>` tags in `<ul>...</ul>` (or `<ol>` if ordered).
4. If navigation is generated by the Stencil framework's `{{navigation}}` helper, override the navigation component in your theme's components directory and correct the HTML structure there.
5. Upload/save the theme, then use the BigCommerce preview URL to verify. Run axe DevTools in the browser to confirm the fix.

What is listitem?

HTML lists are built from two parts: a container (`<ul>` for unordered, `<ol>` for ordered) and its items (`<li>`). When a `<li>` element's parent is something other than `<ul>`, `<ol>`, or an element with `role="list"`, the list structure is broken. This means a screen reader — the software blind and low-vision shoppers use to navigate — cannot tell the user they are inside a list, how many items it contains, or let them jump between items efficiently. The WCAG success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships) requires that structure conveyed visually (like a list of product features or navigation links) also be conveyed in the underlying code.

Screen reader users rely on correct list markup to understand and navigate your page — if list items are orphaned from their parent container, assistive technology may read each item as isolated, unrelated text, destroying the meaning of product feature lists, navigation menus, breadcrumbs, and shopping cart line items. This is a WCAG 2.x Level A failure (the most severe category), which creates legal accessibility risk under laws like the ADA in the US, the EAA in Europe, and equivalent legislation worldwide — online retailers have faced lawsuits and regulatory action over exactly these kinds of structural failures. Beyond legal risk, poor accessibility can reduce conversions from the roughly 1-in-4 adults who have a disability, and Google's crawlers also use semantic structure to understand page content, so clean markup supports SEO as a secondary benefit.

See the complete Listitem guide for every platform and the full background.