WCAG 2.1 AA Accessibility Audit for a Mid-Market E-Commerce Retailer

  • Services:
  • Industries: E-commerce retail
  • Engagement: Audit
  • Timeline: Q1-Q2 2024

About the project

A US-based mid-market e-commerce retailer was facing mounting legal pressure over ADA non-compliance. Its storefront had grown through years of iterative feature work with no structured accessibility audit example to draw from. We conducted a full WCAG 2.1 AA audit across the checkout flow, product pages, and navigation, produced a prioritised remediation backlog, and supported the engineering team through fixes. Lighthouse accessibility rose from 61 to 97 and critical violation count dropped by about 90%.

Background

The retailer had received a demand letter citing Title III ADA violations. Internal engineers had patched a handful of obvious issues but had no framework for systematic coverage. The catalogue had grown to thousands of product pages, each with dynamically rendered price and inventory components. The engineering constraint was time: the legal team needed a defensible remediation record within one quarter, without a full site rebuild.

Need an accessibility audit for your storefront?
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We scope and run WCAG audits for e-commerce teams facing ADA risk or compliance deadlines.

What we built

A full accessibility audit example for a high-volume e-commerce storefront, from automated scan to remediation backlog to production fixes.

Automated scan baseline Icon

Automated scan baseline

Axe-core ran across every major page template and captured 340 unique violations. Results were de-duplicated by component origin so the engineering team could fix a single source rather than patching each instance separately.

Manual screen-reader audit Icon

Manual screen-reader audit

We tested the full purchase flow with NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on iOS, covering product search, cart interactions, and checkout form completion. This surface a class of dynamic ARIA state errors that automated scanners miss.

Prioritised remediation backlog Icon

Prioritised remediation backlog

Every finding was tagged with WCAG criterion, severity tier, and an estimated fix effort. The output let the engineering team sequence work by legal risk first and cosmetic issues later, without needing to interpret raw WCAG spec language.

Reusable component patterns Icon

Reusable component patterns

Where multiple pages shared the same underlying React components, we delivered accessible versions of those components with updated ARIA attributes, focus trapping for modals, and keyboard event handlers. Future features built on these components inherit the fix.

Takeaway

This accessibility audit example shows that a structured audit does more than satisfy a legal requirement. Combining automated scanning with manual screen-reader testing surfaces the violations that carry the highest litigation risk and the highest friction for real users. Repairing shared components rather than individual pages compounds the value. If your e-commerce team is facing ADA pressure or simply wants a credible compliance baseline, a scoped audit is the fastest way to understand your actual exposure and close it.

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