How ITO EN Replaced accessiBe and Solved Stalled Accessibility with TestParty

About ITO EN

ITO EN was founded in August 1966 on a simple premise: to produce and sell a product at the very heart of Japanese culture — green tea. Today, ITO EN (North America) Inc. is a subsidiary of ITO EN Ltd., a beverage industry leader dedicated to creating authentic products that embody the company's five principles: Natural, Safe, Healthy, Well-Designed, and Delicious. The company's flagship brand, Oi Ocha, has reigned at the top of the Japanese green tea market for more than three decades and was recognized with a Guinness World Record in 2019 as the world's biggest selling natural healthy RTD green tea beverage. ITO EN operates its direct-to-consumer business through its Shopify storefront, serving customers across the United States who rely on the brand for premium Japanese teas including Oi Ocha, Teas' Tea Organic, and matcha LOVE.

The Challenge: Two Vendors, Zero Solutions

By the time ITO EN connected with TestParty, they had already cycled through two different accessibility approaches — and neither had worked.

The first attempt was an overlay widget. "Initially we had no accessibility statements at all," recalled Rob Smith, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at ITO EN North America. "And then when we uncovered that that was a potential issue, we contracted with accessiBe — just an out-of-the-box cloud-based solution." It quickly became apparent that an overlay wasn't sufficient for genuine Shopify ADA compliance.

So ITO EN switched to an audit-focused vendor. The reports were thorough — but that's where the engagement ended. "We contracted with another entity that was an in-depth auditing process, but didn't connect the dots to the development solutions," Rob explained. "It was a great audit tool, but didn't put the entire thing together."

Without an internal development team, ITO EN had no way to translate audit findings into actual Shopify theme accessibility fixes. The compliance gap stayed open, and the legal risk of ADA-related nuisance suits — well understood by the team — remained. 

Why TestParty: End-to-End Shopify Accessibility Remediation

ITO EN first heard about TestParty through a trusted peer referral. Rob had industry friends who had already worked with the team and gave enthusiastic firsthand feedback — the kind of unfiltered recommendation that no vendor intro can replicate.

What ultimately differentiated TestParty wasn't just the product. It was the completeness of the offering. "TestParty's ability to do the entire thing — from identifying the issues to ongoing audits to actually being hyper-specific about what needs to happen — was key for us," Rob said. "We don't have an internal development team, so we needed a partner who could get us to a place where we could feel good about our accessibility program and our website."

This is the exact gap that TestParty's ecommerce accessibility platform is built to fill: not just surfacing WCAG violations, but resolving them directly in the Shopify codebase, without placing implementation burden on the client's team.

The Process: Onboarding in Hours, Fixes in Days

From the first call, ITO EN's experience with TestParty stood in stark contrast to what they'd encountered before. Taisa Baucum, Marketing Manager at ITO EN North America, described the onboarding as immediately reassuring: "It was very easy to create a login from the beginning, and you guys were very helpful in guiding us through the Shopify backend to connect everything.  It was a very easy onboarding process."

Once connected, TestParty's team got to work fast. "The follow-through was very clear. We got the audits right away. We were flagged on things that we needed to work on," Taisa said. "I have to commend you guys — I thought you ran the audit and resolved the issues quicker than I expected."

Rob echoed the sentiment: "I thought it would take more development time, more development work. Solutions being that easy — almost push button — was a surprise."

On ITO EN's side, the total lift required was minimal. "Two to three hours max," Taisa confirmed, "just from getting the information, talking to our developers, reviewing the emails and the information given." Meanwhile, TestParty's engineers had the core remediation work wrapped up in a matter of days.

Impact: From Disconnected Vendors to a Proactive Compliance Program

The most meaningful shift for ITO EN wasn't just speed — it was finally having one partner who owned the full accessibility lifecycle.

Where accessiBe offered a surface-level overlay and the audit vendor stopped at reports, TestParty delivered actual, permanent Shopify theme accessibility fixes. The team moved from reacting to compliance gaps to operating on a predictable monthly audit and remediation cadence — a foundation that holds up as the site evolves.

"For us in the situation we were in, that end-to-end solution is pretty powerful," Rob reflected. With ongoing monitoring in place and a direct line to TestParty's team, ITO EN no longer needs to worry about whether the work is getting done. It is.

Looking Forward

ITO EN is now in maintenance mode: monthly accessibility audits, direct code-level fixes, and the confidence that their Shopify store is continuously working toward WCAG compliance — without requiring ongoing developer resources they don't have.

For other brands evaluating their accessibility strategy, Rob's advice is direct: "Partner with TestParty. I think that end-to-end solution is pretty powerful." And for those currently relying on an overlay or an audit-only provider, the ITO EN story is a clear illustration of what those solutions leave on the table.

Brands ready to move from incomplete fixes to a permanent, code-level Shopify accessibility program can book a demo with TestParty to get started.