Seven layers.
Nothing missed.

The industry-standard automated accessibility rules engine. Every page is run through axe-core to detect violations against WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria including color contrast, missing ARIA labels, keyboard traps, and form field associations.

axe-core is the most widely adopted accessibility testing library. BadgerTrace runs it in a controlled browser environment, capturing violations with full DOM context and element selectors for precise remediation guidance.

Secondary validation using IBM Equal Access Checker provides cross-validation and catches issues that axe-core may not surface. Running two independent engines eliminates false negatives and increases overall detection coverage.

IBM Equal Access applies its own rule set against WCAG 2.1 standards, with particular strength in detecting ARIA implementation errors and complex widget patterns that single-engine scans can miss.

Modern Shopify stores rely heavily on JavaScript-driven interactions. Layer 3 triggers common interactions, opens modals, expands accordions, and fires AJAX-loaded content to ensure dynamic elements are scanned in their active states.

Static HTML scans miss issues that only appear after user interaction. BadgerTrace simulates real user flows including cart additions, popup triggers, filter interactions, and navigation dropdowns to expose hidden violations.

GPT-4o visual inspection of rendered page screenshots detects issues that code analysis cannot surface. This includes decorative images missing proper alt text treatment, visual-only information, and complex UI patterns with accessibility implications.

Visual analysis catches things like charts presenting data without text alternatives, CAPTCHA implementations, PDF documents embedded in pages, and layout issues that create reading order problems for screen reader users.

Intelligent deduplication and clustering removes noise from the violation set. AI validation groups related issues, surfaces the root cause rather than symptoms, and removes false positives from automated engine outputs.

Raw accessibility scan output often contains hundreds of individually-reported violations that stem from a single root issue. Layer 5 consolidates these into actionable issue groups, reducing developer triage time significantly.

Accessibility requirements apply equally at mobile breakpoints. Layer 6 renders every page at 375px (iPhone SE) and 768px (tablet) viewports, detecting viewport-specific issues including touch target sizing, reflow violations, and mobile-only interactions.

WCAG 2.1 introduced mobile-specific criteria including 1.4.10 Reflow and 2.5.5 Target Size. Many stores have violations only visible at mobile widths that desktop-only scans completely miss.

Video, audio, and PDF content requires specific accessibility treatments. Layer 7 detects embedded media across all scanned pages and flags content that may lack captions, transcripts, or accessible alternatives required by WCAG 2.1.

Product demo videos, audio descriptions, downloadable PDFs, and embedded third-party media are common in Shopify stores and frequently lack required captions and alternatives. Layer 7 inventories all multimedia for review.