Accessibility Watch › Data Study
Tea Retailers Online Accessibility: We Tested 9 Sites Against WCAG 2.1 AA
Web accessibility is a legal requirement — under the ADA in the U.S. and the European Accessibility Act in the EU. We ran an automated WCAG 2.1 Level AA scan on 9 tea retailers online to see how the group measures up.
How many tea retailers online pass accessibility checks?
67% failed the automated checks (grade C, D, or F). Of 9 sites scanned: 3 scored an A, 3 graded C, 3 graded D, and 0 graded F.
Grades reflect the high-frequency barriers automated scanners most often flag — so an A means a site is clean on those, not that it has zero issues of any kind. Across the full set of WCAG 2.1 AA checks, sites averaged 6.7 types of barrier.
The most common accessibility failures
| Barrier | Share of sites |
|---|---|
| Some content on the page isn’t inside a recognized region (header, nav, main, footer, aside). | 89% |
| A button’s visible text doesn’t match the description it announces to screen readers. | 67% |
| Some text on this page is too light to read against its background. | 44% |
| Ensure landmarks are unique | 44% |
| Some images have alt text that duplicates nearby visible text. | 44% |
| An iframe (embedded content) has no title. | 33% |
| Some links have no readable text — usually icon-only links. | 33% |
| An interactive element (link, button) is inside another interactive element. | 33% |
| Ensure aria-hidden elements are not focusable nor contain focusable elements | 33% |
| Ensure the contentinfo landmark is at top level | 22% |
The most accessible tea retailers online
These scored an A — clean on the high-frequency barriers we grade:
- theteaspot.com
- republicoftea.com
- bigelowtea.com
Methodology
We scanned each site with axe-core 4.11.4 against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, in its default state, and reported automatically-detectable failures. Automated testing catches a portion of accessibility barriers; full conformance also requires manual and assistive-technology testing. See our methodology for details.
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