Most store owners assume checking accessibility requires a specialist and a stack of tools. For a real audit it does, but for a quick gut check you can do a surprising amount with just your keyboard, your eyes, and ten minutes.
This will not make you compliant, and it will not catch everything. What it will do is tell you fast whether your store has the obvious, high-risk problems that plaintiffs and their scanners look for first. Grab a coffee and work through it on your live store.
1. Put the mouse away (2 minutes)
Click into your page, then navigate using only the Tab key, Shift and Tab to go back, and Enter to activate. Start at the top and try to reach the search bar, a product, the add to cart button, and checkout.
Ask yourself:
- Can you actually reach everything, or do some things get skipped?
- Can you always see where you are, or does the highlight disappear?
- Do you ever get stuck somewhere you cannot tab out of?
If the focus outline vanishes or you get trapped in a menu or cart drawer, you have found two of the most common failures already.
2. Open your cart drawer with the keyboard (1 minute)
Cart drawers and quick-view popups are where keyboard problems hide. Open yours with the keyboard, then try to close it and get back to the page. If focus is stuck inside, or the page behind it is still clickable, note it down.
3. Zoom to 200 percent (1 minute)
Press Command and plus, or Control and plus, until the browser is at 200 percent. Does the page still work? Does anything overlap, get cut off, or force you to scroll sideways? Content should reflow cleanly, not break.
4. Squint at your text (2 minutes)
Look at your lightest text: helper text under form fields, placeholder text, sale prices, footer links. If it looks faint to you, it almost certainly fails the 4.5:1 contrast requirement. Pay special attention to text sitting on top of images or colored buttons.
5. Check your images (1 minute)
Right click a key product image and inspect it, or use your browser’s accessibility tools. Does it have alt text that actually describes it? Now check your icon buttons, the cart, search, and menu icons. Do they have accessible names, or are they empty?
6. Try your forms (2 minutes)
Look at your newsletter signup, search, and checkout fields. Does each one have a visible label that stays put, or does it only have placeholder text that disappears when you type? Then submit a form with a deliberate error and see if the error is explained in words, not just a red border.
7. Turn on a screen reader (1 minute)
This one is optional but eye opening. Turn on VoiceOver on Mac (Command and F5) or Narrator on Windows, and listen to your add to cart button and one product page. If it announces “button” with no name, or reads nothing for an image link, you have found real problems.
What your results mean
If you sailed through all seven, that is a good sign, though not a guarantee. If you hit two or three problems, that is completely normal, and it is exactly the kind of thing a proper audit is built to find and document.
For the full version of this, use our accessibility checklist, which walks through every criterion in plain language and saves your progress as you go.
And when you want a specialist to verify your store properly, with the exact element and fix for every issue, that is what a manual audit gives you.