As the European Accessibility Act (EAA) enforcement date came into full effect on June 28, 2025, WooCommerce reaffirmed its commitment to building an inclusive eCommerce platform. At Equalize Digital, we’re proud to have played a key role in helping WooCommerce achieve WCAG 2.2 AA conformance—not only in core, but now also through an ongoing accessibility review of official extensions.
Collaborating to Raise the Bar
Over the past year, our team partnered closely with WooCommerce core developers, alongside other agencies like Fueled and 10up, to deliver more than 140 accessibility improvements to the WooCommerce Core plugin. These updates represent a significant step forward for merchants, developers, and shoppers alike.
Our auditing covered all WCAG 2.2 AA and AAA success criteria, and resolved accessibility issues, including:
- Screen Reader Support: Implementing accurate ARIA attributes and semantic HTML to support meaningful announcements and labels.
- Keyboard Navigation & Focus Management: Fixing keyboard traps and improving tab order and focus behavior across modals, carts, and forms.
- Color Contrast & Visual Design: Ensuring readable text and functional components by aligning UI elements with WCAG 2.2 AA contrast thresholds.
- Form Accessibility: Enhancing labeling, associating error messages programmatically, and improving usability for people using assistive technologies or viewing the website zoomed in or with screen magnifiers.
- Page Structure & Landmarks: Standardizing heading levels and landmark regions to aid screen reader navigation.
- Live Status Messaging: Introducing ARIA live regions for important updates, such as product filtering, cart changes, and checkout feedback.
Together, these enhancements provide a stronger, more inclusive foundation for eCommerce—helping more users shop independently online and giving store owners the confidence that they can build an accessible shop easily with WooCommerce out of the box.
Why This Matters: EAA Compliance and Widespread Impact
The European Accessibility Act sets clear requirements for digital services—including eCommerce websites—sold or offered in the EU. Businesses must ensure that users with disabilities can:
- Navigate websites and apps using screen readers, keyboards, and other assistive technology.
- Understand and interact with all content, including forms, product pages, and checkout flows.
- Receive clear, accessible feedback during purchasing and account management processes.
Noncompliance can result in regulatory action and financial penalties, but more importantly, it excludes millions of people from accessing goods and services online.
WooCommerce powers more than 7 million websites worldwide, including numerous businesses operating in the EU. By aligning WooCommerce Core and its extensions with WCAG 2.2 AA standards, we’re not only helping store owners avoid legal risk—we’re also ensuring that every shopper, regardless of ability, has equal access to digital commerce.
This work also benefits the entire WordPress community. Plugin developers and theme builders can use WooCommerce as an example of how to integrate accessibility best practices at every stage of product development. It sets a precedent that accessibility isn’t optional—it’s essential.
How We Test: Our WordPress Plugin Accessibility Audit Process
At Equalize Digital, we take a thorough, multi-layered approach to plugin accessibility testing. Our process includes:
Dedicated Test Environments
Every plugin we audit is evaluated in a controlled test environment built with the latest stable version of WordPress and a core theme. Our standard setup includes the Twenty Twenty-Five theme, which provides a modern block-based foundation aligned with current WordPress development practices. We also test with a classic theme to ensure compatibility for websites that haven’t yet adopted full site editing. This dual-environment approach helps us uncover issues that may only arise in specific theme contexts.
Comprehensive Coverage of Plugin Features
To ensure nothing is missed, we conduct a comprehensive review of all user-facing and editor-facing elements of the plugin. This includes testing all available blocks, shortcodes, widgets, settings panels, and front-end templates. We test with various configuration options and feature toggles enabled or disabled, simulating how the plugin might be used on different types of websites. Additionally, we walk through common user flows—such as submitting a form, completing a checkout, or updating profile settings—to evaluate accessibility in context.
Automated and Manual Accessibility Testing
We begin each audit with automated scans using industry-standard tools to identify common accessibility errors. Our Accessibility Checker plugin can be easily used to identify issues in blocks, shortcodes, and templates created by plugins.
Automation only captures part of the picture, so we follow up with in-depth manual testing. This includes keyboard-only navigation to evaluate focus management and operability, screen magnification to assess scalability, and OS-level accessibility settings such as high contrast or reduced motion. We test across multiple browsers and operating systems to account for variations in how assistive technologies interpret web content.
Screen Reader and Real-User Testing
A key part of our process involves testing with screen readers to evaluate how effectively the plugin communicates with assistive technology. We test with both NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on macOS, ensuring broad coverage of commonly used tools. Additionally, we collaborate with blind users—many of whom use JAWS, one of the most widely used commercial screen readers—to conduct usability testing. This helps validate that the experience is not just technically conformant, but also intuitive and navigable for real people.
Auditing for WCAG 2.2 AA and AAA Conformance
All of our audits are conducted against the WCAG 2.2 Level AA success criteria, the industry standard for digital accessibility. Where feasible, particularly for key user flows and reusable components, we also evaluate against AAA criteria to identify opportunities for enhanced accessibility. This ensures that the plugins we assess are not only compliant but also strive toward best-in-class usability for all users and puts plugin developers proactively ahead of legal requirements.
Detailed Reports and Support
We document every issue in a detailed report that includes:
- A breakdown by failed WCAG success criterion.
- Severity level and affected user groups.
- Screenshots and videos for complex issues.
- Descriptions of expected behavior and recommended fixes.
Our team participates in ongoing development conversations, responding to GitHub issues, joining Slack threads, and attending calls with internal development teams as needed. Once fixes are implemented, we perform retesting to confirm resolution and then generate a formal Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) using the International Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) format.
We also provide guidance on documentation and support accessibility as required by EN 301 549, the harmonized European standard for accessibility.
For WooCommerce, this includes:
- An International Version ACR for WooCommerce Core.
- WCAG 2.2 AAA ACRs for official extensions as accessibility enhancements are completed.
Deep WordPress Expertise
One of the key advantages Equalize Digital brings to plugin accessibility audits is our deep knowledge of the WordPress ecosystem. Unlike generalist accessibility firms, our team has years of experience developing WordPress plugins, themes, and custom solutions. We understand how WordPress works under the hood, which allows us to efficiently and accurately identify the true source of accessibility barriers.
This means we don’t just report issues—we pinpoint whether an accessibility problem originates from the plugin under review, the active theme, a third-party plugin conflict, or even WordPress Core itself. That level of specificity ensures that development teams aren’t chasing false positives or trying to fix something outside their control. It also allows us to recommend the most WordPress-native, scalable way to remediate each issue.
With our knowledge of WordPress best practices and coding standards, we’re able to offer actionable, platform-aware guidance that integrates smoothly into development workflows. For enterprise teams, agency partners, and plugin developers alike, this results in faster resolution times and more understandable reports.
Continuing the Work: Auditing Official Extensions
Accessibility is not a one-time effort—it’s an ongoing practice. That’s why Equalize Digital is now working with the WooCommerce team to audit all official WooCommerce extensions, ensuring that accessibility improvements extend beyond core to every supported plugin.
Each extension is reviewed against the latest WCAG 2.2 AA criteria, with findings documented and remediated to support merchants building accessible stores across a variety of use cases—from subscriptions to product bundles and beyond.
Resources and More Information
WooCommerce has launched a new accessibility landing page for Woo featuring:
- An accessibility statement and reporting process if issues are found.
- Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs) for WooCommerce Core and select extensions (more will be added as they become available).
- Best practice guidance for third-party developers creating WooCommerce extensions.
- Guidance for merchants on creating an accessible WooCommerce store.
Let’s Build a More Inclusive Web
We believe that accessibility is a fundamental component of a good user experience. When online stores are accessible, everyone wins—users gain independence, merchants reach broader audiences, and developers work from a stronger codebase.
We’re honored to contribute to this important work with WooCommerce and excited to continue advancing accessibility throughout the WordPress ecosystem. The impact of making a WordPress plugin accessible is truly amazing because it improves the accessibility of every website using it. If you’re a plugin developer, agency, or merchant looking to improve the accessibility of your products or services, we’d love to partner with you.
Want to start making your plugins more accessible? Contact us to learn how we can support your accessibility goals.
