Aiming for Compliance

Vaulted Oak partnered with Allyant to audit Issey Miyake’s website and bring it into ADA compliance, in a similar way California Credit Union (CCU) was supported. Issey Miyake is maintaining a continued commitment to ensuring accessibility for all their customers.

Auditing, Strategizing, and Addressing

The process for beginning an audit with Allyant is straightforward: they assigned auditors, who actively use assistive technologies, to review Issey Miyake’s site. With this strategy, the audit identifies any limits that impede on the site’s usability into a comprehensive list. Any issues noted that involve a third-party integration are acknowledged by Allyant’s auditors as beyond the control of internal developers. This list is then broken into three categories that note their importance of addressing: P1 as “critical”; P2 as “serious”; and P3 as “warning”. 

Vaulted Oak and Issey Miyake collaborated to prioritize P1 and P2 issues into manageable batches. This streamlined approach allowed teams to resolve problems efficiently. After completion of the tickets, an additional “Walkthrough Audit” is completed in which auditors validate the fixes and note any additional issues. 

An accessible shopping experience for all

As a retail site, usability in PLP and PDP is key in providing a smooth experience for all users. Across both pages, Allyant’s auditors called out several structural needs to accommodate screen readers. Vaulted Oak addressed these issues by restructuring the code to work with assistive technologies. This included: improving focus state order to follow the flow of the page; updating HTML tags to properly label elements such as slideshows, buttons, and typography; and implementing code changes to active states for selected product variants, not just stylistic changes. By addressing these functional issues along with other accessibility barriers, Issey Miyake is able to maintain their brand design while ensuring accessibility for all customers.

Letter of Conformance and Ongoing Maintenance

Upon finalizing completion of all P1 and P2 tickets from the initial audit, Allyant issues a Letter of Conformance. This letter is a statement that backs Issey Miyake’s ADA compliance and notates any third-party limitations that are outside of the company’s control.

Although this initial round of tickets have been completed, Issey Miyake is committed to maintaining compliancy. They are conducting regular audits and working with both Vaulted Oak and Allyant to fix issues in order to continue serving all customers.