How Verve Culture Replaced an accessiBe Overlay with Code-Level Accessibility Fixes in About Two Weeks
Assurances that did not hold:erve Culture was told its site was fine, first by a developer and later by an accessiBe overlay, and accessibility issues kept surfacing anyway.
Code, not a band-aid:Sarah Laping chose TestParty because it goes into the code and makes the changes necessary, instead of masking issues with an overlay widget.
About two weeks of fixes:After kickoff, TestParty engineers remediated the site in roughly two weeks, and the accessiBe pop-up and overlay button came down.
Invisible to shoppers, easy for the team:The changes were not noticeable to the average user, and there was very little manual lifting on Verve Culture's end.
Maintenance on autopilot:Monthly audits and remediation now flow through reports in the TestParty portal and GitHub pull requests to Verve Culture's developer, and the July maintenance audit came back largely clean.
THE SCENARIO
Verve Culture invites shoppers to "embark on a journey of artisan creations from around the world." It is a marketplace built the way a traveler thinks: shop by culture, with collections from Morocco, Mexico, Thailand, India and Italy; shop by category, across juicers, glassware, kitchen goods, gourmet foods, home goods, lifestyle and accessories, and spa and wellness; or shop by interest, for the foodie, the bartender, the home chef, the chocolate lover. The bestsellers tell the same story: an artisan citrus juicer, a red cast iron tortilla press kit with servilleta, Moroccan tasseled blankets, an authentic Mexican hot chocolate gift set.
The mission behind the storefront is stated plainly: to create an artisan shop for home goods from around the world "that offers growth opportunities for their businesses."
"We work with artisans in different countries to bring in collections of home and kitchen goods that really tell the story of each culture."
- Sarah Laping, Owner & VP of Operations, Verve Culture
Sarah Laping is one of the company's owners and its VP of Operations. Like most small teams running a Shopify store, she and her partners are experts in their products, not in digital accessibility. That gap is common across home goods and furniture stores on Shopify, where image-heavy pages, collection grids and third-party apps create accessibility issues that are invisible to the people running the store, but not to shoppers with disabilities. For a marketplace whose whole purpose is opening doors for artisans, a storefront that quietly closes doors on shoppers works against the mission.
---
THE CHALLENGE
Verve Culture's accessibility journey started the way it does for many ecommerce brands: with reassurance that turned out to be wrong. A developer reviewed the site and said it was "fine." Later, an accessiBe overlay went live, and the picture it presented was that everything was running properly. Issues surfaced anyway. The overlay was also getting in the way of the shopping experience.
"There was a pop-up in the corner that kind of got in the way of other things and seemed to be more of a hindrance."
- Sarah Laping, Owner & VP of Operations, Verve Culture
When TestParty reached out, Sarah looked more closely at what an accessibility overlay actually does. An overlay layers adjustments on top of a website when the page loads. It does not change the underlying code, so the WCAG failures underneath it are still there, still reachable by anyone using a screen reader or a keyboard. That is the difference between tools that fix accessibility issues and tools that only report on them, and it is the same line that separates real AI accessibility work from the hype.
"I did like the approach that TestParty had of actually going in and doing the changes to make sure that the actual website was compliant. The overlay is more of a band-aid solution."
- Sarah Laping, Owner & VP of Operations, Verve Culture
---
THE SOLUTION
The decision to switch was Sarah's, made with her partners, and it came down to wanting the problem actually solved rather than managed.
"This isn't our area of expertise. We just want to make sure we're compliant. We want to make sure that people are able to use our site easily, no matter what disability they might have."
- Sarah Laping, Owner & VP of Operations, Verve Culture
Asked to name the single deciding factor that separated TestParty from staying on the overlay, she did not hesitate. What mattered was "actually making the changes necessary to make sure we were compliant," she said, rather than relying on a band-aid solution.
That is TestParty's core premise: we fix the code, not a widget. After kickoff, TestParty's engineers spent roughly two weeks on accessibility remediation directly in Verve Culture's Shopify theme, working toward WCAG conformance across the homepage, product pages and collection pages. The accessiBe pop-up and overlay button came down. It is the same code-level approach TestParty has used to fix over 28 million accessibility issues across roughly $3 billion in accessible online commerce.
Onboarding asked very little of Verve Culture's team. There was one brief hiccup connecting the site early on, and it was resolved quickly.
"Everything was pretty easy. TestParty worked through that really fast and really there wasn't a lot of manual lifting on our end, which is what we want. We've got other things to focus on."
- Sarah Laping, Owner & VP of Operations, Verve Culture
---
THE RESULTS
For a brand whose site design is central to how it tells artisans' stories, the best measure of success was what Sarah did not see.
"I think the best thing is that I didn't really notice much of a difference. We didn't have the pop-up and the overlay button anymore, which is nice to not have that distraction. The changes that were made weren't noticeable to the average user, which is what we would find ideal."
- Sarah Laping, Owner & VP of Operations, Verve Culture
The ongoing accessibility audit results back that up. In the July 2026 maintenance report, the homepage and default product page came back with no new issues. A handful of net-new issues on collection pages, including the Black Friday collection, were caught and resolved by TestParty's team. That is what a monthly accessibility audit report is for: not a document to file away, but a short list of things already being handled.
And the working relationship itself has been a result worth noting.
"Things were smooth and even when there were slight hiccups, they were resolved quickly and communication has been easy."
- Sarah Laping, Owner & VP of Operations, Verve Culture
Verve Culture's path, overlay out and code-level fixes in, mirrors what brands like Greatness Wins and Joy Organics found when they moved off overlay widgets: real WCAG conformance work happens in the code, and shoppers never have to see it happening.
---
THE ROAD AHEAD
Digital accessibility is not a one-time project; new apps, themes and campaigns introduce new issues. That is why Verve Culture's program now runs on a monthly cycle: TestParty scans the site, publishes reports in the portal, and opens a GitHub pull request tagged to Verve Culture's developer, who merges the fixes live. Anything requiring a brand decision, like a new color that fails contrast, gets flagged by email, and quarterly check-ins keep both teams aligned. It is the same ongoing model that Satya Jewelry chose over a one-time fix.
For Sarah, that is exactly where accessibility should sit in the company's strategy: handled.
"I'm hoping that this will just kind of be on autopilot. If we bring on new apps or have new features on the website, TestParty will be able to catch that in the monthly checkups and we can address it before it becomes a problem for users or a problem with the law."
- Sarah Laping, Owner & VP of Operations, Verve Culture
Verve Culture's takeaway is a short one: assurances and widgets do not make a website accessible, and fixing the code does. For a marketplace built to give artisans a wider door, that is the whole point. If your Shopify store is still relying on an overlay, it can reach WCAG conformance in as little as two weeks.
Ready to start your accessibility journey?
Book a demo today: https://testparty.ai/book-a-demo
Automate the software work for accessibility compliance, end-to-end.
Empowering businesses with seamless digital accessibility solutions—simple, inclusive, effective.
Book a Demo