WooCommerce accessibility: what to check in your store

Product pages

• Product images and galleries need alt text that describes the product, not the file name.
• Variation selectors (size, color) need visible labels, and color swatches must not rely on color alone.
• "Sale" and "Out of stock" badges need enough contrast and must be available as text.
• Product descriptions need real headings and lists, not bold lines and typed dashes.

Cart and checkout

• Every checkout field needs a visible label — placeholders are not labels — and autocomplete for name, email and address.
• Errors must be written out and tied to the field ("Enter a valid postcode"), not shown only as a red border.
• Messages such as "Added to cart" or updated totals must be announced to screen reader users.
• Quantity buttons, remove links and coupon forms must work with a keyboard and have clear names.
• Payment fields embedded from gateways, and any CAPTCHA, need to work with a keyboard and screen reader too.

Across the store

• A "Skip to content" link, visible keyboard focus and menus that open with the keyboard.
• Mini-cart pop-ups, cookie banners and chat widgets that can be closed with Escape and do not hide the focused element.
• Filters and sorting that announce the updated result count.

How Lumtera helps WooCommerce stores

Lumtera's free plugin checks product descriptions and short descriptions by default, along with every post and page, and flags images without alt text, vague links, skipped headings and more — with fixes explained for the WordPress editor.

Review mode's free Whole page tab checks any product page as your browser renders it: real color contrast from your theme, the size of small buttons and links, focus hidden behind a sticky header or cookie bar, and more.

Lumtera Pro checks the pages your theme and WooCommerce generate together: the shop, cart, checkout and My Account pages, with a sample product added so the cart and checkout have something to show. It keeps the results and re-checks key pages on a schedule as a logged-out visitor, alerting you when new errors appear.

Pro's form tests submit the classic checkout with its required fields empty and check that errors are announced, focus moves to them and each message says what to fix — with safeguards so no order is created. Signed-in checks look at the pages a logged-in customer sees, such as My Account, as a test user that can only view pages.

Automated checks find many common barriers, not all of them. Complete a real purchase using only the keyboard, then again with a screen reader, before you call the store done.

Questions

Sources

• UsableNet: 2025 ADA web lawsuit report
• Accessibility at WooCommerce (woocommerce.com)
• WebAIM Million 2026