Hi Reader π Exciting week - The State of Ecommerce Accessibility 2026 is out. What is the State of Ecommerce Accessibility report? Over the summer I scanned 59,400 Shopify and WooCommerce product pages, one per store, all from stores ranked among the world's top million websites. The headline stat is this: 64% of product pages had at least one critical accessibility issue. Overall, 96% failed at least one automated accessibility check. And if you've been reading my newsletters for a while,...
7 days agoΒ β’Β 1 min read
Hi again π If a customer clicks "Add to basket" on your best-selling product without choosing a size and nothing is added, what happens next? Perhaps the size selector turns red, or an error message appears on the page. The problem is that neither of these guarantees that your customer knows what went wrong. Questions to ask yourself: Is colour the only clue that something went wrong? A customer with colour blindness may miss that change and not realise anything needs their attention. My...
13 days agoΒ β’Β 1 min read
Hi again π A question for you this week: what does your accessibility scanner tell you? If you have one running, whether it came with your platform or a developer set it up, it is doing useful work. It will catch missing alt text, low contrast, or an unlabelled field. Those are real problems worth fixing, and it will find them faster than any person could. Here is the part I find interesting though. A scanner can only measure what a machine is able to see. So it cannot tell you whether...
21 days agoΒ β’Β 1 min read
Hi again π Have you ever watched someone actually use one of these accessibility overlays? I recorded a walkthrough a while back on Passenger Clothing - one of my favourite clothing brands - showing where they run out of road, and what works better instead. It's one of the first videos I recorded, so it's a bit rough around the edges - but let me know what you think: Link: https://davedavies.dev/reviews/passenger/ Have a good weekend, Dave P.S. If anything in it doesn't match what you're...
2 months agoΒ β’Β 1 min read
Hi again π This week... Let's talk about Accessibility Overlays. There's a good chance someone's pitched your business an accessibility overlay. You might already have one running. If not - then you've probably seen them in the wild. The little button in the corner of the page with an accessibility icon, offering you a range of accessibility options - bigger text, more contrast, wider spacing, and usually something labelled "screen reader mode". These are all valid options - but the good news...
2 months agoΒ β’Β 1 min read
Hi again π If you're new here - hello, and welcome! If you've not yet checked out davedavies.dev - head there to find loads of free videos and articles on how to make your product pages available for everyone. And then let me know what you want to hear more about! This week... I was looking at FAQ sections. These do a lot of heavy lifting on your product pages, and if you get them right they're a real winner. Shipping. Returns. Sizing. What's actually in the product. The FAQ section is often...
3 months agoΒ β’Β 2 min read
Hi again π If you're new here - hello, and welcome! A quick orientation if you're a new subscriber: this newsletter looks at accessibility on ecommerce sites through a commercial lens. Not compliance just for its own sake, but the barriers on product pages and checkout that are costing real businesses real sales. I'm trying a new format, but the premise is the same: One idea for you a week, plain English, nothing to buy. Let me know what you think! This week... I built a11y.quest. As an aging...
3 months agoΒ β’Β 2 min read
If you get your subscription page right, you can win the same customer month after month Hi again π If you sell anything on subscription, this one is for you. First: the scale of the industry of the site I was looking at this week. The UK fresh flower and plant market is worth a massive Β£2.2 billion a year, and about a fifth of that is now spent online. It's a category that has a huge surge in a few short weeks: Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and then not much slack in between. Get it wrong...
4 months agoΒ β’Β 2 min read
The importance of effective Alt Text for product images Hi again π If you were asked to describe this image to somebody in the next room, what would you say? (watch this online) Photo by Dario Valenzuela on Unsplash On a travel blog, you might describe the scene: βWoman leaning against a wall in an industrial alleyway, looking off into the distance.β The focus is the place. The mood. Whatβs happening. But on a product page, the job is different. Now the image exists to help someone decide...
7 months agoΒ β’Β 1 min read
