E-exporters selling to Europe
Stores selling direct to consumers. Here accessibility has moved from being a quality preference to being one of the conditions of staying in the market.
CUSTOM SOFTWARE · DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY
Digital Accessibility Audit and Compliance: An Interface Everyone Can Use
We audit your website, e-commerce store and customer portal against accessibility criteria, rank the findings by priority and apply the fixes. The goal is not a badge; it is an interface that is genuinely usable.
In most teams, whether a web interface is usable is judged from the perspective of someone who uses a mouse and can see the screen. Yet some users navigate the page by keyboard alone, some use a screen reader, some cannot read low-contrast text, and some are experiencing any of these temporarily. Accessibility is not a gesture towards a separate user group; it is a measure of the interface's basic quality.
In practice, the problems cluster in a few places and repeat each other: no visible indication of where focus is when navigating by keyboard, dropdown menus and modal windows that cannot be closed with the keyboard, labels made clickable in place of buttons, images without alternative text, forms that signal errors by colour alone and give no readable indication of which field is wrong. None of these are exotic cases; they come from non-standard use of standard components.
The second issue is commercial. For an e-exporter selling to consumers in the European Union, accessibility has moved from being a preference to being a matter of market access, and public tenders increasingly require interfaces to meet defined criteria. Beyond that, an accessible interface usually has a cleaner structure: a meaningful heading hierarchy, correctly labelled forms and consistent focus management are also better understood by search engines and automated tools.
Our work has two parts: audit and remediation. The audit does not stop at what automated tools can catch; the real findings come from manual review with a keyboard and a screen reader. Automated scanning sees only a portion of the real problems, and that needs saying plainly: a fully automated compliance promise is not realistic. Remediation means ranking the findings and applying the fixes — either we do it, or your own team takes the report and applies it.
Who is it for?
Who is Digital Accessibility Audit and Compliance a good fit for?
Operators of customer portals and dealer systems
Systems where orders, quotes and tracking are handled by external users. As the user base widens, fitness for different ways of using the interface feeds directly into the support workload.
Companies selling to public and corporate buyers
Businesses that encounter interface criteria in tender or supplier requirements. The requirement usually surfaces at contract stage, and fixing things at that point is the most expensive option.
Teams commissioning a new site or application
Projects still in design and development. Building accessibility in from the start is markedly easier than fixing it after launch, which is why the right time is the start of the project.
What we build
What we deliver within Digital Accessibility Audit and Compliance
Full keyboard operation audit
Whether every function on the page can be performed without a mouse is tested by hand: tab order, focus traps, dropdown menus, modal windows and sliders. Focus visibility is assessed separately; if you cannot see where focus is, keyboard use is effectively impossible.
Screen reader compatibility
How the page structure reads through a screen reader is examined: heading hierarchy, landmark regions, link and button naming, alternative text on images, header relationships in tables. Meaningless naming is among the problems automated scans most often miss.
Colour contrast and visual readability
Contrast ratios of text and interface elements are measured, and information conveyed by colour alone is identified. Changing your brand colours is not always necessary; in most cases the criteria can be met by adjusting tones and usage, and we aim to do that without breaking the design.
Forms and error messaging
Field labels, required-field indicators, whether an error message is clearly tied to its field, and whether the error is announced to a screen reader are all reviewed. Forms are where accessibility problems cause the greatest loss of conversions; checkout and registration steps are handled first.
Media and motion
Alternatives for video and audio, autoplay, respect for reduced-motion preferences and time-limited operations are assessed. Being able to switch animation off is a real difference for motion-sensitive users.
Findings report and applied fixes
Findings are ranked by impact and cost to fix; each item is written up with where it is and how to fix it. We can apply the fixes, or your own team can work from the report; either is an acceptable outcome for us.
Technologies
The technologies we work with
- WCAG 2.1 AA criteria
- EN 301 549 framework
- Manual testing with screen readers
- Keyboard navigation audit
- Contrast measurement
- Automated scanning tools
- Semantic HTML and ARIA
- Focus management
- Regression checklist
Process
How we move from discovery to go-live
- 01
1. Scope and critical flow selection
Rather than auditing the whole site at once, we start with the flows that are actually used: finding a product, basket and checkout, registration and sign-in, the contact form, placing an order in the portal. A problem in these flows costs far more than a gap on the home page.
- 02
2. Automated scan and manual review
A first pass is run with automated tools, followed by manual review with a keyboard and a screen reader. Most of the real findings come from the second stage; it would not be honest to claim automated scanning alone is enough.
- 03
3. Prioritising the findings
Each finding is ranked by how much it blocks the user and by the cost of fixing it. Problems that make a task outright impossible come first; cosmetic ones go last. The report is delivered in that order.
- 04
4. Applying the fixes
Fixes are applied and each one is retested. Some fixes sit at component level and, made in one place, take effect across the whole site; these are brought forward because they deliver the highest return.
- 05
5. A checklist to make it stick
A short checklist is left behind so accessibility does not degrade as new pages and components are added. Accessibility is not a one-off fix; every new piece of development can set it back.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about Digital Accessibility Audit and Compliance
Wouldn't an automated tool be enough?
No. Automated tools are good at catching contrast issues, missing alternative text and certain structural errors; but keyboard traps, meaningless link naming, faulty focus management and logic errors are largely found by manual review. Be wary of solutions promising fully automated compliance; they usually hide the problem behind a layer added to the page rather than solving it.
Will we have to change our design?
In most cases, no radical change is needed. Contrast problems are usually solved by adjusting tones, and focus visibility with an outline that fits your existing design language. If a structural change is required, we say so plainly in the findings report along with its cost; the decision is yours.
Can we document that we are compliant?
The scope of the audit, the criteria applied, the findings and the status of the fixes are delivered as a written report. This report shows the scope of the work and its outcome. If formal conformity certification is required, that is a separate regime, and we do not claim to play that role.
Our e-commerce platform is an off-the-shelf package — can we even intervene?
Partly. A great deal can be done at theme and template level; problems originating in the platform's core need to be reported to the provider. In the audit report we separate which findings are under your control and which sit with the platform; without that separation, no to-do list is realistic.
Will it affect our search results?
It would not be right to promise a direct ranking effect. But what accessibility work brings — a meaningful heading structure, correctly labelled links and forms, clean page structure and described images — helps search engines and automated tools understand the page better. The realistic view is to treat this as a side benefit.
What do we end up with?
An audit report with a defined scope; a findings list ranked by impact, with a fix recommendation for each; the applied fixes and retest results; and a checklist to use in future development. If the fixes were applied by us, everything produced, code included, belongs to you.
Contact
Let us talk about your Digital Accessibility Audit and Compliance project
In a 30-minute discovery call we listen to what you need and tell you honestly whether custom development or an off-the-shelf product is the better answer.
Related
Related pages and guides
PWA and Web Performance Web Applications E-Export Tax and Compliance Automation E-Commerce Solutions Let's Audit Your Interface After delivery: maintenance, support and capacity subscription
Data, BI & Reporting
Custom business intelligence and reporting solutions that bring the data scattered across spreadsheets and systems into a single decision screen. Clean data through ETL, real-time KPI dashboards, and reports segmented by role.
Details →Automation & Workflow
We develop custom automation solutions that remove repetitive manual work, copy-paste reporting and waiting on approvals — and connect your systems to each other.
Details →AI & LLM Solutions
We are not talking about an off-the-shelf chatbot, but an AI layer that works on your own data and produces measurable gains. We weave chatbots, customer assistants, document understanding (RAG), internal search and report generation into your organisation's processes — and the source code is 100% yours.
Details →AI Agents and Autonomous Workflows
We go beyond an assistant that answers questions and build workflows that complete work in multiple steps: classifying the incoming request, pulling data from your systems, checking the rules, opening the record and dropping to human approval where needed. Every step has defined permissions; every step leaves a recorded trail.
Details →Document Intelligence and Automated Data Extraction
We build a layer that reads incoming invoices, delivery notes, specifications and customs documents field by field and posts them into your ERP. It validates every field it reads against your own records, routes anything it is unsure of for approval, and keeps a record of which value came from which part of which document.
Details →Voice AI and Call Analytics
We develop solutions built on Turkish speech recognition and synthesis: call recordings transcribed and made searchable, topic and sentiment analysis, a voice assistant on the order line, and voice-driven data entry for field staff whose hands are full.
Details →