How Aunt Flow Extended Its Accessibility Mission From Product to Website with TestParty
Mission made digital:Aunt Flow already designed its physical products with accessibility in mind. TestParty extended that commitment to the brand’s website, turning digital accessibility into a deliberate practice instead of an ad hoc effort.
One partner, two platforms:Aunt Flow runs both a Shopify storefront and a WordPress site. TestParty supports both — full-service, code-level remediation on Shopify and a self-service scanner the brand’s web agency uses on WordPress.
Right-sized for a startup budget:As a lean, mission-driven startup, Aunt Flow needed cost-effective website ADA compliance; the comprehensive accessibility audit options it had priced before were prohibitively expensive.
Hands-off and fast:TestParty offered a hands-off engagement and quick setup, letting a small marketing-led team stay focused on its mission rather than becoming accessibility experts.
Continuous, not one-time:Automated accessibility testing now runs on a regular cadence across both sites, with monthly reports and ongoing accessibility remediation — not a one-off fix.
THE SCENARIO: A Brand Built on Access
Aunt Flow is a Columbus, Ohio company built around a question it puts plainly on its own website: “Toilet paper is offered for free. Why aren’t pads and tampons?” Today the company stocks free-vend dispensers and organic cotton tampons and pads in bathrooms for customers including Google, Princeton University and O’Hare airport, more than 34 million products in 2025 alone, and has donated 7.6 million products to menstruators in need since 2021.
Aunt Flow calls this work menstrual equity, and access is the product thesis rather than a marketing layer. The dispensers are built and marketed as ADA compliant, the team works with ADA contractors on bathroom-facility considerations, and the brand deliberately says “period products” rather than “feminine hygiene products” to stay inclusive of every menstruator.
The digital footprint is unusually large for a startup, and split across two platforms: a WordPress site carrying more than a dozen industry solution pages, an interactive pricing tool, a resource library, a blog and an advocacy hub, plus a Shopify storefront selling six dispenser models, bulk refills, disposal systems and bundles. Every one of those templates and forms is a place where Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) conformance either holds or breaks, a very different discipline from making a bathroom dispenser accessible, and one a small startup team rarely has in-house.
THE CHALLENGE: Mission Without a Formal Digital Process
Before TestParty, Aunt Flow handled web accessibility informally, free tools that offered recommendations, plus occasional tips from the ADA contractors it worked with on the physical side. There was no accessibility audit, no remediation workflow, and no way to verify WCAG conformance across two platforms.
“We didn’t have a cohesive plan, mainly because we are a startup, so it can be pretty cost-prohibitive. We want to be super accessible in every aspect, and that’s really important to our mission, but it’s always been challenging to pay such high figures to meet the right standards that we want to be meeting.”
- — Sarah Howard, VP of Marketing & Impact, Aunt Flow
That’s the trap many small ecommerce teams fall into: the traditional path to website ADA compliance - manual audits, consultants, and retainers - is priced for enterprises, while the cost of staying inaccessible keeps compounding in lost customers and legal exposure. For a mission-driven startup where, as Sarah put it, “all of our dollars are used in a very targeted way,” the gap was never intent. It was the absence of a practical, affordable way to make digital accessibility as deliberate as the brand’s product design.
THE SOLUTION: Hands-Off Help Across Two Platforms
Aunt Flow was introduced to TestParty through Harlem Capital, and what appealed most was a partner it wouldn’t have to manage in the weeds.
“We’re a small team and we’re working for our mission, which is making period products accessible. To have a partner to help offset the workload was really important, mainly because we just don’t necessarily live in the space of online accessibility. We were looking for expertise in that area - a hands-off partner that could take it off of our plate but also ensure that things are getting completed.”
- — Sarah Howard, VP of Marketing & Impact, Aunt Flow
Three factors closed the decision. “The cost-effectiveness, the fast turnaround, and mitigating risk of future issues was important for persuading the team to prioritize,” Sarah said. With web accessibility lawsuits continuing to hit ecommerce brands (including small ones) waiting carried real risk, and TestParty’s setup meant work could start right away rather than after a months-long audit cycle. The same engine that typically takes a Shopify store to WCAG conformance in about two weeks.
The engagement is also shaped around Aunt Flow’s unusual technical footprint. On the Shopify storefront, TestParty provides full-service remediation: its AI finds accessibility issues and fixes them in the source code — not with an overlay widget — with Aunt Flow’s team simply approving changes. On the WordPress site, the brand’s web agency uses TestParty’s self-service scanner to identify and ship fixes itself. “Getting fixes for both of our sites, given that we have kind of a unique setup in that way, was really helpful,” Sarah said.
It’s the same code-first approach TestParty has used to fix more than 28 million accessibility issues and make roughly $3 billion in online commerce accessible across customers like Felt Right and fellow startup Pasito — applied here across two platforms at once.
THE RESULTS: Focus Returned to the Mission
The clearest outcome is bandwidth. With accessibility handled across both platforms, Aunt Flow’s small team stays focused on its day-to-day work instead of decoding technical fixes — the model of marketing teams owning accessibility without pulling in engineers.
“I’m a marketing person — I’m not able to look at very specific technical things that need to be fixed, or decode anything. So it is really helpful to have TestParty process that for us.”
- — Sarah Howard, VP of Marketing & Impact, Aunt Flow
The engagement also deepened the brand’s understanding of how far digital accessibility can go — a natural extension of a mission it already lived on the product side. “This was a new avenue for us to do accessibility, so I do feel like it helped us understand more of the depth that we can go with accessibility,” Sarah said.
Her advice to other organizations weighing a similar move is direct:
“Startups should have partners that support it, because the workload could be a lot to just try and become an expert on this particular thing internally. That just doesn’t seem efficient or effective.”
- — Sarah Howard, VP of Marketing & Impact, Aunt Flow
THE ROAD AHEAD: Accessibility as a Living Practice
Aunt Flow’s program is built for continuity, not a certificate. Automated accessibility testing runs on a regular cadence across both sites, monthly reports land in the team’s inbox, and new issues are remediated as they appear — the ongoing posture that keeps WCAG conformance from decaying as content changes.
The team is also working through a harder, more human question: brand colors. Some of Aunt Flow’s signature palette presents color-contrast challenges, and rebranding isn’t a quick fix — “it’s been hard to change our branding completely, because it’s our identity,” Sarah said. While the brand weighs design changes with its agency, TestParty has documented the color-contrast considerations in Aunt Flow’s accessibility statement, maintaining transparency and demonstrating good-faith intent. It’s an honest reflection of how accessibility evolves alongside a brand’s identity rather than overnight.
The throughline is consistent: for a company built on access, an accessible website isn’t a box to check. It’s the mission, online.
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