Website Accessibility Review: Practical Checks for Better Customer Journeys

Accessibility affects whether people can find information, complete a form, choose a product, or contact a business using different devices and assistive technologies. A review is most useful when it follows real user journeys rather than checking a few pages in isolation.

This guide introduces practical checks for a website or online store. It is not a certification or legal opinion. Standards and legal obligations depend on the organization and location; consult qualified specialists for formal compliance decisions. W3C’s WCAG overview explains the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and links to the published standards.

Choose important user journeys

Pick tasks that matter: finding a service, filtering products, reading a product detail page, signing in, requesting a quote, submitting a contact form, or checking out. Include desktop and mobile, keyboard-only navigation, and a screen reader or other assistive technology where available.

Ask people who use assistive technologies to participate when appropriate. Automated tools can identify some common issues, but they cannot fully represent a person’s experience or decide whether instructions are understandable.

Check structure and navigation

Use clear page titles and a meaningful heading hierarchy. Headings should describe the section that follows instead of being chosen only for visual size. Confirm that links say where they go, buttons describe their action, and repeated navigation can be bypassed or understood.

Test keyboard focus order, visibility, and operation. Users should be able to reach interactive controls, activate them, and understand where they are on the page. A visual hover effect alone should not carry essential information. Menus and dialogs should open, close, and return focus in a predictable way.

Review forms and checkout

Associate each field with a visible label and provide clear instructions for required information. When validation fails, identify the field and explain how to fix it in text. Do not rely on color alone to mark an error. Preserve entered data when a form needs correction where the system allows it.

Test product options, quantity changes, cart controls, coupon fields, shipping selection, and payment steps with keyboard input. Make the current state clear: selected option, cart update, error, loading state, or order confirmation. Avoid time limits that users cannot extend when the task requires careful entry.

Check contrast, text and media

Review text and control contrast against their backgrounds and test the design at browser zoom. Use text that can resize without losing content or functionality. Avoid long blocks of all caps or jargon without explanation.

Provide alternative text for informative images and leave decorative images without redundant spoken descriptions. Captions or transcripts may be appropriate for audio and video. Product images should be understandable in context; essential details should not exist only in an image.

Use automated and manual checks together

Run an automated scan on representative templates and record repeated patterns, such as unlabeled controls or missing names. Then test manually. Check navigation, focus, announcements, forms, and state changes with assistive technology. Automated tools may miss confusing instructions, keyboard traps, or a broken purchase flow.

Prioritize issues by who is blocked, what task fails, and how many templates share the defect. Fix reusable components first when they affect many pages. Retest the same user journey after changes and record the result.

Make accessibility part of delivery

Add accessibility checks to design review, content entry, development, and release testing. Provide content editors with guidance for headings, link text, image alternatives, and captions. Give developers a component pattern for dialogs, menus, form errors, and focus management.

Track issues with an owner and acceptance criteria. A broad promise that a site is “fully accessible” is not a substitute for a documented scope and evidence. Recheck after a theme change, navigation redesign, checkout update, or major content migration.

Frequently asked questions

Can an automated scanner prove WCAG conformance?

No. Automated tools can identify some failures, but a complete evaluation needs human review and testing of relevant content and interactions.

Should we use an accessibility overlay?

Evaluate any tool against the actual barriers users encounter. An overlay does not automatically fix inaccessible source content or application behavior. Test with users and assistive technologies.

Where should we start on an older site?

Start with high-value journeys and shared components: navigation, forms, account access, product options, and checkout. Prioritize barriers that prevent tasks and assign owners to address them.

Make the website easier to use for more customers

Informatix Systems can review key user journeys, identify accessibility issues, prioritize fixes, and validate shared templates and interactions. We agree scope and test methods before the review and do not claim certification unless a separate formal process supports it. Explore web and eCommerce engineering or contact Informatix Systems to request an accessibility review.

Reference: W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines overview.