Accessibility

Our Commitment to Accessibility

SauvageWear is committed to ensuring that our website, www.sauvagewear.com, is accessible to everyone — including people with disabilities, older users, and anyone relying on assistive technologies such as screen readers, keyboard navigation, or voice control software. We believe that accessible design is good design, and that every person deserves a seamless shopping experience regardless of ability.

Standards We Target

We are actively working to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA, published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These guidelines are the internationally recognized standard for web accessibility and form the basis of accessibility requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Where technically feasible, we also apply Level AAA enhancements — including enhanced color contrast and additional keyboard navigation improvements.

Our accessibility work is evaluated against:

  • WCAG 2.2 Level A, AA, and AAA success criteria
  • Section 508 (2017 revised standards)
  • Google Lighthouse Accessibility Audits
  • PowerMapper SortSite multi-page accessibility scanning

What We've Done

We initiated a structured accessibility remediation program in 2025 and have released six versions of accessibility improvements to our Shopify theme. Our progress includes:

  • Google Lighthouse accessibility score improved from 81/100 to 97/100 — all 26 automated accessibility checks now pass.
  • Corrected ARIA role and state attribute errors across filter, sort, search, and navigation components.
  • Fixed color contrast failures across all four site color schemes, including enhanced (AAA) contrast for footer copyright text.
  • Eliminated duplicate HTML element IDs that were causing assistive technologies to resolve incorrect labels.
  • Improved the accessible name of the site-wide cart button to include the current item count, so screen reader users are always informed of their cart status.
  • Fixed predictive search ARIA state management to comply with WAI-ARIA 1.2 listbox role requirements.
  • Corrected footer link color declarations so that scanner tools and assistive technologies can reliably determine link colors against background colors.
  • Removed a third-party accessibility overlay (AccessiBe) after determining it was generating its own ARIA violations — replacing it with structural, code-level fixes that provide durable, genuine accessibility rather than a surface-level patch.
  • Verified semantic HTML structure: landmark regions, heading hierarchy, image alt text, form labels, and keyboard navigation across all major page templates.

Known Limitations

We are transparent about the areas we are still actively improving. As of the date of this statement, the following limitations are known and under remediation:

  • Footer menu accordions: When collapsed on mobile, the footer navigation sections are correctly hidden from screen readers via aria-hidden, but keyboard users may still be able to tab into the hidden links in some browsers. We are implementing the HTML inert attribute to fully resolve this in our next release.
  • Collection filter labels: On collection pages, certain color swatch filter inputs have labels that may not be announced correctly by all screen readers. We are investigating the specific rendering path and will publish a fix shortly.
  • Overflow navigation list (shadow DOM): A custom navigation overflow component uses browser Shadow DOM technology, which some automated validators cannot fully inspect. Visually and functionally the component is accessible; we are adding supplemental ARIA attributes in our next release to satisfy validator expectations.
  • Third-party widgets: The Judge.me reviews widget and certain other third-party integrations are outside our direct theme code control. We have reported accessibility issues to the relevant vendors and are monitoring for updates.

We publish these limitations because we believe transparency is more valuable than overclaiming compliance. We are actively working to eliminate each of the items above.

How to Get Help or Report an Issue

If you encounter any barrier on our website that prevents you from completing a task, accessing information, or making a purchase — or if you require content in an alternative format — please reach out to us directly. We take every accessibility report seriously.

Email: sales@sauvagewear.com
Subject line: Accessibility Feedback
Response time: We will respond within 2 business days and will make every reasonable effort to provide the information, feature, or functionality you need through an alternative means of access while we address the reported issue in our codebase.

Please include as much detail as you can about the barrier you encountered — the page URL, the task you were trying to complete, and the assistive technology or browser you were using. This helps us reproduce and fix the issue as quickly as possible.

Technical Approach

All accessibility improvements at SauvageWear are implemented directly in our theme's source code — Shopify Liquid templates, CSS stylesheets, and JavaScript components. We do not rely on overlay scripts or automated "one-click" compliance tools. We believe that genuine accessibility requires genuine engineering: understanding the specific WCAG criterion being violated, identifying the root cause in the code, and implementing a structural fix that will hold up across browsers, devices, and assistive technologies.

Our accessibility testing stack includes:

  • Google Lighthouse 13 — automated accessibility audits on every significant release
  • PowerMapper SortSite — multi-page WCAG 2.2 and Section 508 scanning
  • axe DevTools (Deque Systems) — browser-level ARIA validation
  • WAVE (WebAIM) — supplemental contrast and structure checks
  • Manual code review — human inspection of ARIA patterns, keyboard flows, and screen reader behavior

Date of Last Review

This accessibility statement was last reviewed and updated on May 11, 2026. We review and update this statement following every significant theme release.