By platform · Squarespace
Squarespace Has Good Bones and Awkward Corners
The templates start from a better place than most builders. The trouble is what you can reach when something needs changing, and the answer depends on which plan you are paying for.
Last reviewed August 30, 2026
For the designer or owner running a Squarespace site who's hit the limits of what the interface exposes.
Squarespace templates generally produce reasonable HTML. Real headings, real navigation, sensible structure, and Squarespace lists a skip link, a keyboard focus outline and semantic page structures among its own built-in features. That puts you ahead of most drag-and-drop builders on day one, and every one of those claims is something you can check on your own site in five minutes.
The friction arrives later. When something needs fixing, Squarespace gives you far less access than WordPress or Webflow, and how much you can reach depends on which kind of custom code the fix needs. CSS is the good news, because the CSS editor comes with every plan, and CSS is what repairs the two failures at the top of this page. Scripts and injected HTML are the gated part, sitting on the Core, Plus and Advanced plans and some older billing ones. So the entry plan is not the dead end it usually gets described as.
What breaks on Squarespace
The failures we find most often on this platform, and the rule each one breaks.
Template color palettes
Squarespace's palettes favor light grays and quiet pairings that look elegant in a portfolio and fail 4.5:1 on body copy. The palette is one setting, so the failure is site-wide from the first page you publish.
1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)
Gallery and slideshow blocks
Several gallery types autoplay with no pause control, and their arrow controls are often unreachable by keyboard. Squarespace lists playback controls for videos and animations among its built-in features, so its claim and our finding are in tension and we have not tested every gallery type. Yours is the fastest thing on this page to check, so check it.
2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide
Heading levels tied to visual styles
Heading 1, 2 and 3 in the editor are presented as style choices, so people pick by appearance and produce an outline that skips levels. The styles look like a menu of sizes and behave like a document structure.
1.3.1 Info and Relationships
Form block error handling
Validation errors appear visually and are not reliably announced, and focus does not move to the field that failed. Squarespace claims pre-labeled fields in checkout specifically and says nothing about Form Blocks, which is where this bites.
3.3.1 Error Identification
Announcement bars and popups
They appear over the content, frequently without a close button a keyboard can reach, so the visitor's only route past them is to leave.
2.1.1 Keyboard
Alt text falling back to the file name
Image blocks and auto layout sections have a proper alt text field. Everywhere else, if you do not type one, the file name becomes the alt text, which is how a screen reader ends up reading out a string of numbers and hyphens. Squarespace's own SEO report will list the images with nothing on them, which is the fastest way to find them.
1.1.1 Non-text Content
The plugin question, answered
Squarespace has no plugin system at all, and the third-party market is really a market of code snippets. What you have instead is the CSS editor, which every plan includes, and Code Injection for HTML and scripts, which comes with Core, Plus, Advanced and some older plans.
That constraint changes the shape of the decision. On Squarespace, picking the right template matters more than on any other platform on this site, because changing the markup afterwards means scripts rather than styling, and that is both a paid-plan feature and something Squarespace says sits outside what its support team will help you with.
Squarespace's own built-in features
The list Squarespace publishes of what its templates give you. A skip to content link, a keyboard focus outline, semantic page structures, alt text fields, media captions and transcripts, playback controls, and pre-labeled fields in checkout.
- What it does
- It is a set of claims you can verify yourself, one at a time, in about five minutes. Tab once and you will know whether the skip link and the focus outline survived your template customizations.
- What it cannot
- A published feature list is a claim rather than a guarantee, and one item on it sits awkwardly beside what we find on galleries. Squarespace also states, in the same document, that making your site comply with the legal requirements that apply to your business is your responsibility rather than theirs.
The CSS editor, for focus styles
A CSS rule added in the site-wide CSS editor.
- What it does
- This is the most valuable change available to you, and it is there whatever you are paying, because the CSS editor comes with every plan. A visible :focus-visible outline at 3:1 against what is next to it, applied everywhere, in one block.
- What it cannot
- It changes how Squarespace's markup looks rather than what that markup is, so anything needing a different element or a control that is not there stays out of reach. Squarespace also says plainly that custom code falls outside the scope of its support.
Custom CSS for contrast
Overrides for text colors the palette editor will not let you change.
- What it does
- You can raise body text and link contrast past whatever the built-in palettes allow, which is the fix for the failure at the top of this page.
- What it cannot
- Overrides hang off class names Squarespace controls, so a template update can quietly break them. Put a note in your calendar to recheck them rather than assuming they held.
Overlay widgets (accessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye and the rest)
A script you paste into your template that draws a toolbar for visitors and claims to repair your pages automatically as they load.
- What it does
- The toolbar half is real. Bigger text, higher contrast, adjusted spacing and a reading guide are preferences some visitors use, and the field's own reference document on overlays says a non-trivial array of accessibility problems can genuinely be repaired this way.
- What it cannot
- It does not change the markup your server sends, and the categories it handles worst are the ones that decide whether a site works at all. Text alternatives, form labels and error handling, and keyboard access. More than 5,000 US digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2025, and the firm that compiles that dataset reads the filings the same way every year, which is that widgets do not materially reduce legal risk. Our overlays page has the documented record.
What to actually do
- Check your palette in the contrast checker before you build out pages. Body text and link colors first.
- Open the CSS editor, which comes with every plan, because the next two fixes both live there.
- Add a focus style in the CSS editor. On most Squarespace sites that is the single highest-value change available to you.
- Set heading levels by document structure rather than by which style looks right, and verify the result in the heading checker.
- Run Squarespace's own SEO report to list images with no alt text, then fill them in through the image block settings rather than leaving file names to stand in.
- Replace autoplaying galleries with static grids, or add a pause control if your gallery type allows one, and run the free 10-page scan to see what the template produces across your pages.
On themes and templates
Choose your template with more care than you would on another platform. Because you cannot restructure the markup afterwards, a template with a poor heading structure or unreachable gallery controls is something you will be working around for the life of the site. Squarespace publishes an accessibility conformance report for its own platform, which puts it in a small group and is worth reading, with one caveat. A conformance report is a self-assessment against a standard template, nobody certifies one, and the terms inside it are narrower than they sound. Test the template demo with a keyboard before you commit to it.
One honest limit
Some things cannot be fixed from your side at all, and form blocks and certain gallery types are where we run into that most. Where that happens, write it down in your accessibility statement and report it to Squarespace. An honest note about a limit you cannot reach beats a claim you cannot support, and Squarespace's own guidance is clear that the legal responsibility for your site sits with you.
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