Off-the-shelf accessibility tools flag everything. One client had "847 accessibility issues." 800 of them were the same decorative icon repeated on every product card. SMBs don't need 847 issues. They need 5 things to fix this week.
What I changed
Three changes dramatically improved the signal-to-noise ratio:
- axe-core counts rules violated, not instances. If the same issue repeats 200 times, it's one issue with a count, not 200 separate findings
- Severity grading: critical vs warning. A missing form label on your checkout page matters more than a decorative image without alt text
- Context exceptions: decorative images without alt text aren't always wrong. Multiple H1s can be legitimate on some page types
The principle
Precision beats recall. One actionable finding beats twenty overwhelming ones. The goal isn't to find every possible issue. It's to surface the issues that actually matter for the business, in priority order.
Precision beats recall. One actionable finding beats twenty overwhelming ones.