Why accessibility is suddenly urgent
Accessibility has been “the right thing to do” for years. In 2025–2026 it also became a business risk:
- United States. Federal ADA lawsuits over website accessibility rose to roughly 3,100 in 2025, around a 27% increase on the year before. E-commerce sites are the most frequent targets. Many more businesses receive demand letters that never become lawsuits.
- European Union. The European Accessibility Act has applied since June 2025 to many consumer-facing digital products and services, including online shops. Enforcement is handled nationally and is mostly driven by complaints, and courts have already started issuing orders.
Beyond legal pressure, the commercial case is simple. Around one in six people lives with some form of disability. If they can’t use your menu, filters or checkout with a keyboard or screen reader, they buy elsewhere.
Why scanners and overlays aren’t enough
Automated scanners are useful. I use axe-core and Lighthouse in every audit. But they only catch around a third of real-world accessibility problems. They can tell that an image has no alt text. They can’t tell that your checkout traps keyboard focus, that your size selector is silent to screen readers, or that an error message never gets announced.
Overlay widgets promise one-line compliance but leave the underlying code unchanged. Real accessibility comes from fixing the templates and components themselves. That’s why this service is delivered by a developer, not just an auditor.
What the audit covers
Testing focuses on the journeys that matter most to your revenue and your risk:
- Navigation and menus. Keyboard access, focus order, skip links, visible focus.
- Product and listing pages. Image alternatives, option selectors, carousels, price and stock announcements.
- Forms. Labels, error messages, required fields, autocomplete.
- Cart and checkout. Every step completed with keyboard only and with a screen reader.
- Visual design. Colour contrast, text resizing, reflow on small screens, motion.
- Media and documents. Captions and accessible PDFs where relevant.
Every finding includes:
- the WCAG 2.2 success criterion it relates to
- the severity
- where it occurs
- the concrete fix
Remediation at the component level
Most issues are repeated across hundreds of pages but come from a handful of templates and components. Fixing the product-card component, the main navigation and the form fields usually removes most of the issue count in one pass. I work directly in your codebase, whether that’s Shopify, WordPress, Next.js, React or plain HTML, in small, reviewable changes.
Pair this with Shopify checkout & tracking work if you’re already reworking your store’s front end.