Accessibility

Our approach

We want WhollyKaw to work for everyone who wants to shave well. We are working toward WCAG 2.1 Level AA as our target. We are not claiming we have reached it.

Accessibility is not a box a shop ticks once. Every product we upload and every change we make to the site can introduce a new problem, so we treat it as ongoing maintenance rather than a finished job.

What we do

  • We run an automated accessibility scan across eleven representative pages on the first of every month, and we keep every report.
  • We work through what those scans surface, most severe first.
  • We test the parts we build ourselves using only a keyboard before they ship.
  • Our monthly check also confirms that the display preferences panel described below is actually present on every page it is supposed to be on.

Automated scanning finds roughly a third of accessibility problems. It catches things like missing image descriptions, low contrast text, and buttons with no label. It cannot tell us whether a page actually works well with a screen reader. That is why the contact route below matters more than any scan result.

Fixed since our August audit

Checked again on 23 August 2026 and confirmed working:

  • The scroll-to-top button now announces itself as "Back to top" instead of just "button".
  • The sort dropdown on collection pages has a label.
  • The search box on the search results page has a label, and the button that clears it has a name.
  • Social share links on blog posts now say where they go.
  • Filter menu controls on collection pages have names.
  • Our email signup popup can no longer be reached by keyboard while it is hidden.

Where we know we still fall short

Measured on 23 August 2026 across eleven pages. We are working through these.

  • Low contrast text in the reviews, wishlist and rewards widgets on product pages, and in the rewards popup. These are supplied by a third party and the colours are set in their dashboard, not in our own code. We have the change on our list with them.
  • The date and author line on blog posts is a grey that does not stand out enough against the dark background behind it.
  • Some collection cards carry a link label that assistive software should not be given, so the card can be announced less clearly than it should be.
  • Our guide articles do not have the display preferences panel yet. Those pages are built by a different system to the rest of the shop, and the panel has not been added to it. Everything else on this page applies to them.

Some of these are quick fixes and some need theme work. We would rather list them than imply they are not there.

Something not working?

If any part of this site gets in your way, tell us and we will fix it.

Email: accessibility@whollykaw.com

Please tell us the page, what you were trying to do, and what happened. If you use assistive software, saying which one helps us reproduce the problem. We aim to reply within two business days and to tell you either that it is fixed or what we are doing about it.

What we removed, and why

Until August 2026 this site ran a third-party accessibility overlay: a widget that loaded on every page and offered a menu of display settings.

We took it out. It was interfering with the site's own controls, clicking things on the page that nobody had clicked. Beyond that, overlays of this kind do not deliver accessibility to people who use screen readers or other assistive software, and they can get in the way of the tools those visitors already rely on.

In its place we built our own display preferences panel. You will find it in the bottom left corner of every shop page: products, collections, blog posts, the cart and our policy pages. It changes text size, text spacing, contrast, motion, link underlines, and adds a reading guide. It saves your choices on your own device, and it does not touch your assistive software or send anything anywhere.

The panel is a convenience, not the accessibility work. Removing the overlay did not make the site more accessible on its own, and neither does adding the panel. The work is the two lists above.

Last reviewed: 23 August 2026