Accessibility Who this site works for.
A wall you cannot reach is not decoration, it is an obstacle. The same goes for a shop. This statement says what we build towards, what already works, and, in specific terms, what does not yet.
- Target
- WCAG 2.2 AA
- Current status
- Partially conformant
- External audit
- Not yet
- Reply time
- 5 business days
Accessibility The standard we aim at
Last updated · 2026-07-24
We claim partial conformance, not conformance. Nobody outside the studio has audited this site yet, so a clean claim would be a guess dressed up as a fact.
WCAG 2.2 level AA is the benchmark. The European Accessibility Act has applied to online shops since June 2025, which is why it is a target and not an aspiration. We would rather meet the standard than argue about which exemptions a company our size might qualify for.
What already works
Verified against the code, not assumed. Each of these is a deliberate choice rather than a happy accident.
Motion is optional.
If your system asks for reduced motion, the site listens: the drifting hero, the looping gradients and every scroll animation stop, site-wide, and the content simply appears. Nothing important is delivered by an animation alone.
Nothing plays by itself.
No autoplaying video, no sound, no carousel that moves without you, nothing that flashes. A page that has finished loading stays still until you act.
Standard controls.
Links are links and buttons are buttons, so your keyboard, screen reader and browser gestures all behave the way you already expect. Headings run in order, so jumping by heading actually gets you somewhere.
Type that scales.
Text is set in relative units and the layout reflows rather than clipping, so zooming to 200 per cent or raising your default font size gives you bigger text instead of a broken page.
Colour is never the message.
Where we use colour to mark a state, an error, a confirmation, stock, there is always a word or an icon carrying the same information.
Plain language, on purpose.
Including here. Short sentences and concrete words are an accessibility feature as much as a house style, and they are the one part of this we are already confident about.
What does not work yet
The honest list. We would rather publish it than have you discover it, and each line is something we are fixing rather than something we have decided to live with.
What does not work yet No skip link.
There is no "skip to content" control, so reaching the main content with a keyboard means tabbing through the navigation on every page. This is the first thing on the list to fix.
What does not work yet Focus is too quiet.
Several inputs and controls suppress the browser focus ring in favour of a border or colour change, and some of those changes are too subtle to be the only sign of where you are. The newsletter field in the footer is the clearest example. A consistent, visible focus ring is being put back everywhere.
What does not work yet The page language does not switch.
Switching to Spanish or Catalan changes every word on screen, but the page still declares itself as English to assistive technology, so a screen reader may read Spanish copy with English pronunciation. The fix is small and is queued.
What does not work yet Small text at low contrast.
Some captions, labels and metadata are set in small type at reduced opacity. Several of those pairings fall below the 4.5 to 1 contrast minimum against the bone background. We are working through them rather than reprinting the whole site at once.
What does not work yet Image descriptions are uneven.
Product and journal imagery carries alternative text, but the quality varies: some of it describes the file rather than the picture. We are rewriting it image by image.
What does not work yet No independent audit.
Everything above comes from our own testing. Until someone outside the studio has run a proper WCAG 2.2 AA audit, treat this statement as a good-faith account rather than a certificate.
Found a barrier? Tell us.
Reports from people actually using the site are worth more than any checklist. There is no form to fill in and no ticket number: you write, a person reads it, and we answer.
Send it to hello@dirtbagstudio.com with the subject line "Accessibility". We reply within five business days, tell you honestly whether it is a quick fix or a long one, and come back to you when it ships.
- 1 The page you were on, or the link you followed.
- 2 Your browser, and any assistive technology you were using.
- 3 What you were trying to do, and what happened instead.
- 4 A screenshot or a recording if you have one. Not required.
While we fix it.
If something on this site stops you completing an order, we will take the order another way: write or call and a person will place it with you, at the same price, with the same returns and the same warranty. You should never lose out because our interface let you down.
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