Accessibility

This statement describes how accessible the eCrate platform and the online stores it hosts are, how that is measured, and what to do if something here does not work for you.

What we are aiming for

WCAG 2.2 at level AA. That is the standard referenced by the European Accessibility Act and by most settlements in the United States, and it is the level a shop is realistically measured against.

We are not claiming full conformance. This is a statement of where we are.

What is actually checked, and how

Every storefront and dashboard screen is scanned automatically against WCAG 2.2 AA on every change to the software, at both a desktop and a mobile width. A new failure stops the change from shipping. The list of failures that predate the check is written down rather than hidden, so it can only shrink.

Automated scanning finds roughly a third of real barriers, so it is not the only thing we do:

• The path a shopper takes to buy something — browsing, choosing a size, adding to the basket, and paying — is walked with the keyboard alone on every change, and the test fails if any step cannot be completed without a mouse.
• Anything that changes without the page reloading — an item added, a total changing, a discount applying — is announced to screen readers.
• Every form field has a real label, and an error message is attached to the field it belongs to rather than merely sitting near it.
• Colours in the page editor are checked as a merchant picks them, and a combination that would be hard to read is refused before it can be published.

Where we know we fall short

The default storefront theme's accent colour. eCrate's default theme uses a warm taupe for prices, labels and small print. It measures 3.86:1 against the page — above the 3:1 that WCAG asks of large text and non-text, below the 4.5:1 it asks of body copy. Changing it repaints every shop that has never opened the theme editor, so it is a deliberate, tracked decision rather than an oversight. A merchant who chooses their own colours is checked against the full AA threshold when they save.

Automated checks are a floor. No automated tool can tell you whether a page makes sense when it is read aloud. We have not yet commissioned an audit by people who use assistive technology daily, and until we have, this statement should be read as "measured", not "verified".

Merchant-authored content. eCrate builds the page; the merchant writes what goes on it. The editor warns a merchant when they add an image with no description, a link whose words say nothing on their own, or a heading that breaks the page's outline — but it does not stop them publishing. Their shop is theirs.

If something does not work

Tell us. A specific report — the page, what you were trying to do, and what happened — is far more useful than a general one, and it is the fastest way to get something fixed.

[ACCESSIBILITY CONTACT ADDRESS]

If you are shopping and the problem is with a particular shop's own content — its wording, its photographs, its own pages — the merchant running that shop is the one who can change it, and their contact details are in their shop's footer. Tell us anyway if you would rather; we would like to know when the tools we gave them made it easy to get wrong.

This statement

Last reviewed [DATE]. It is kept in the same repository as the software it describes, and it is expected to change when the software does.