Accessibility at Cherry Grove Craft — Designing Our Website for Everyone

Accessibility is something we think about more than you might expect from a small workshop in North Wales that makes wooden name badges and signs. But the more we've looked into it, the more we've come to believe that building a website that works for everyone — including people who use screen readers, people who navigate by keyboard, people with low vision, and people with cognitive differences — isn't a compliance exercise. It's just the right way to run a business.

This post explains what accessibility means in the context of a website, where Cherry Grove Craft currently stands, and what we're doing about the gaps.

What is web accessibility?

Web accessibility means making your website usable by as many people as possible, regardless of how they interact with it. Around 1 in 5 people in the UK have a long-term disability — and that doesn't include people with temporary conditions, situational impairments (a broken arm, bright sunlight on a screen), or age-related changes to vision and dexterity.

People access websites in many different ways. Some use screen readers that read page content aloud. Some use keyboard navigation instead of a mouse. Some use high-contrast display settings or zoom in significantly. Some have cognitive differences that make dense or complex layouts harder to process.

The international standard for web accessibility is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), currently at version 2.2. Level AA is the accepted benchmark — the level at which a site is considered reasonably accessible for most people with disabilities.

Why it matters to us specifically

We make products for schools, hotels, care homes, charities and businesses across the UK. A significant number of our customers are ordering on behalf of organisations that support people with disabilities — whether that's a care home ordering staff name badges, a school ordering leavers gifts for a class that includes pupils with visual impairments, or a charity buying promotional keyrings.

It would be a peculiar irony to sell accessibility signs while running a website that people with disabilities can't use properly. We sell hearing loop signs, accessible toilet signs and disability parking signs. The least we can do is ensure the people who might want to buy them can actually get through our checkout.

Beyond that: we're a small business. We can't afford to exclude customers. About 1 in 5 people have a long-term disability. That's a fifth of potential customers who might bounce off a site that doesn't work with their assistive technology. Accessible websites are better for everyone — they're cleaner, faster, more logically structured, and easier to navigate on any device.

What the law says

The Equality Act 2010 requires businesses to make reasonable adjustments to ensure disabled people can access their services — and that includes websites. There's no specific WCAG compliance requirement for UK private sector businesses written into law, but WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the standard courts and dispute resolution services use as the benchmark when accessibility complaints are assessed.

The European Accessibility Act came into force in June 2025 and applies to businesses selling products or services to customers in EU countries. Because we ship internationally, this is relevant to us.

We're not going to pretend compliance is the only reason to care about this. It isn't. But it's worth knowing that there are legal obligations here, not just ethical ones.

Where we are now

We recently carried out a structural audit of our website against WCAG 2.2 Level AA. Here's an honest account of where we stand.

What's working well

We've done significant work on image alt text across the site. Every product image should have a descriptive alt tag explaining what's actually shown in the photo — not just the product title, but a description of the image itself. This matters for screen reader users and also helps our products appear in image search results. It's been a large undertaking across hundreds of products and we're largely there.

Our blog posts and product descriptions use a proper heading hierarchy — H1, H2, H3 in logical order. This helps screen reader users navigate long pages without reading every word. Our product descriptions are structured as plain prose with lists rather than walls of text, which helps users with cognitive differences as much as it helps everyone else.

The website has a “Skip to content” link, which allows keyboard users to jump past the navigation to the main content on each page. Our page titles are unique and descriptive on every page, which helps users who have multiple tabs open and need to identify which is which.

What we're working on

Our main navigation is rendered twice in the page code — once for desktop and once for mobile. Screen readers may encounter both sets of links. We're working on marking the duplicate set so assistive technology ignores it.

The announcement bar at the top of the site contains emoji. Screen readers read emoji by their technical names — so what you see as a star and a green leaf, a screen reader announces as "Star" and "Leaf fluttering in wind." We're fixing this.

We haven't yet completed a full colour contrast audit. Some text may not meet the 4.5:1 contrast ratio required by WCAG 2.2. This is on our list.

We use third-party apps for logo uploads and personalisation fields. We can't fully control the accessibility of these components — they're built by other developers. We're reviewing our options and will raise accessibility requirements with our app providers.

What we're planning

Over the next year we plan to:

• Complete a full colour contrast audit and fix failures
• Fix the duplicate navigation issue in our theme
• Fix the emoji announcement bar
• Test our checkout flow with a screen reader
• Test keyboard navigation through the full purchase journey
• Review our third-party apps for accessibility compliance
• Move toward a formal WCAG 2.2 Level AA conformance claim backed by a professional audit

How to contact us about accessibility

If you're having difficulty using any part of our website, or if you'd like information in a different format, please contact us. We aim to respond within 2 working days.

If you find a problem we haven't listed above, we genuinely want to know about it. We can't fix what we don't know is broken.

Our full accessibility statement is available at cherrygrovecraft.co.uk/pages/accessibility. It lists known issues, our technical setup, and details of how to escalate if you're not happy with our response.

The bigger picture

We're a two-person workshop. We don't have a dedicated developer or an accessibility team. But we do have time, attention and the willingness to do the work properly rather than tick a box.

Accessibility is not a project with an end date. It's an ongoing commitment to ensuring that people who want to buy from us can actually do so, regardless of how they use the web. We think that's worth being explicit about.

Pete
Cherry Grove Craft, North Wales