Glossary of web accessibility remediation terms

Short definitions of the terms used on this site, in Validiscan’s customer portal and in the Remediation Evidence Package, from WCAG 2.2 AA and the European Accessibility Act to fix tiers and finding statuses.

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Last updated: 20 October 2026

Each term is defined the way its own source defines it: a standard or a law by its published text, and Validiscan’s own terms by the way its application uses them. The entries on laws are information, not legal advice.

How a finding moves, from open to verified

A finding moves from open through fix proposed, fix delivered and fixed to verified, or leaves that track as resolved externally, won’t fix or false positive.

Open
Fix proposed
Fix delivered
Fixed
Verified

Leaves the track:

Resolved externally
Won’t fix
False positive

Standards and law, 8 terms

WCAG 2.2 AA: Version 2.2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at conformance level AA, which covers every success criterion at levels A and AA. The W3C published WCAG 2.2 as a Recommendation on 5 October 2023, and it is the target of every finding and every fix at Validiscan.
Success criterion: A testable requirement of WCAG, such as 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum). Each one has a level, A, AA or AAA, and level AA takes in the criteria of levels A and AA.
Conformance: In WCAG, conformance at level AA requires, among other things, that a full web page meets every success criterion at levels A and AA, and that every page of a process such as a checkout does too. Validiscan reports a result for each criterion of WCAG 2.1 AA and of WCAG 2.2 AA (supports, partially supports, does not support, not applicable or not evaluated) for the pages and dates it lists.
EN 301 549: The European standard for the accessibility requirements of ICT products and services, published by ETSI; its clause 9 sets the requirements for web content. Version 3.2.1 (March 2021) uses WCAG 2.1 level AA for them, and version 4.1.1 (September 2026) uses WCAG 2.2.
European Accessibility Act (EAA): Directive (EU) 2019/882 of 17 April 2019 on the accessibility requirements for products and services. It applies to services provided to consumers after 28 June 2025, e-commerce services among them, and exempts microenterprises that provide services: enterprises that employ fewer than 10 persons and have an annual turnover or an annual balance sheet total of no more than EUR 2 million.
BFSG: The Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz, the German law of 16 July 2021 that transposes the European Accessibility Act. It has been in force since 28 June 2025 and applies to services provided to consumers after that date, e-commerce services among them.
Abmahnung: A formal warning under § 13 of the German Act against Unfair Competition (UWG): before going to court, the party entitled to an injunction asks the business to stop and to sign an undertaking to cease and desist, backed by a contractual penalty.
Accessibility statement: A public text on how accessible a website is. The EU model accessibility statement, set up for public sector websites, names the content that is not accessible and how visitors can report a barrier; for an online shop, the European Accessibility Act asks for information on how the service meets the accessibility requirements. The Remediation Evidence Package includes a draft for the shop that follows the structure of the EU model, marked as a draft that the merchant’s legal counsel must review before it is published.

The service, 4 terms

Remediation: Fixing the accessibility failures of a website. At Validiscan, remediation means changes to the shop’s own code that the merchant reviews, followed by a verification scan that checks the result.
Source fix: A change to the files a shop’s pages are built from: its templates, stylesheets or scripts. Every fix Validiscan delivers is a source fix that the merchant can review before it goes live.
Accessibility overlay: A script added to a website that changes each page in the visitor’s browser after it has loaded, while the code the pages are built from stays as it was. Validiscan never ships one.
Regression protection: Validiscan’s scans of a shop after a project, weekly or monthly, each compared with the shop’s latest verification scan, or with its latest full scan where there is none. A finding that was fixed, verified or resolved externally and comes back is reopened as a regression and reported in the run’s digest email.

Scans and findings, 7 terms

axe-core: An open-source engine of automated accessibility rules, developed by Deque Systems. Validiscan’s scanner runs it in a real browser on every page it scans, next to Validiscan’s own checks: once with its rules for WCAG levels A and AA, and once with its best-practice rules.
Baseline scan: The first full scan of a shop in a project; its findings are what the work starts from. It loads a sample of each kind of page, including the cart and the first checkout step, at desktop and phone size, and runs only with the shop owner’s recorded permission.
Verification scan: A scan after the fixes are live. It covers the kinds of pages the fixes touched and revisits every page where a delivered finding was last seen; findings it no longer finds become fixed or resolved externally, and fixed findings that come back are open again.
Manual check: A check by a person for a WCAG criterion that automated rules cannot fully prove, for example the way from the home page through a product page to the cart with a keyboard alone, or the checkout fields with a screen reader. Validiscan records pass, fail or not applicable with notes and evidence, and the result decides how the criterion is reported in the Remediation Evidence Package.
Finding: An accessibility failure that a rule or a manual check reports. The same failure of the same rule on the same element pattern is one finding, however many pages it appears on, with a count of its pages and instances.
Impact: How much a finding gets in the way of a shop’s customers, in four levels: critical can stop some customers from shopping at all, serious makes shopping hard for some customers, moderate gets in some customers’ way, and minor is a small annoyance for some customers.
Best-practice finding: A finding of a rule that checks good practice, recommended but not required by WCAG. It is reported, but it counts neither in the conformance tables nor in remediation progress.

Fixes and delivery, 8 terms

Fix tier: How findings of a rule are fixed, set for each rule and platform in Validiscan’s rule catalogue: AUTO, ASSISTED or MANUAL.
AUTO: A deterministic recipe changes the theme source. Like every fix, the change is reviewed and approved before it is delivered.
ASSISTED: An AI-drafted change that the operator reviews before delivery. AI drafting is off by default and is switched on for a site only once the merchant has agreed.
MANUAL: Guidance only: a content or design decision someone has to make, such as captions. The finding is fixed together with the merchant, or marked as won’t fix with a note.
Recipe: A deterministic change in Validiscan’s fix engine for one kind of failure on one platform: the same code always gets the same change. A recipe changes a theme only where the code shows what the right change is; otherwise it makes no change rather than guess.
Pull request: A proposed change to a code repository that a developer reviews and then merges. When a shop’s theme is in a GitHub repository, Validiscan delivers fixes as one pull request on a new branch, with one commit per fix, a summary table and a review checklist.
Unpublished theme copy: On Shopify, a new, unpublished theme in the shop’s admin, named Validiscan A11y with the date, made from the live theme with the fixes applied. The merchant previews it and publishes it; Validiscan never uploads to the live theme.
Patch bundle: A zip archive of the fixes for the merchant’s developer to apply, used when Validiscan has no access to a repository or a Shopify store. It holds a PATCH.md that explains each change and how to apply it, the changes as diffs, the complete changed files when a theme export was uploaded, and a README.

Finding statuses, 8 terms

Open: The finding is on the shop and no fix for it is in progress. A finding that comes back after it was fixed, verified or resolved externally is open again.
Fix proposed: A change for the finding has been prepared by a recipe or as an AI draft, and is reviewed, and edited by hand where needed, before it is delivered. The customer portal shows this status as Fix in review.
Fix delivered: The change has been delivered as a pull request, a theme copy or a patch bundle, and fixes the finding once it is live on the shop. If the pull request is closed without being merged, the finding goes back to fix proposed.
Fixed: A full, verification or regression protection scan no longer found the finding on the pages where it was last seen, after a fix for it was delivered.
Verified: A fixed finding that the verification scan of a Remediation Evidence Package no longer found on any page where the package’s full scan found it, each of those pages loaded without an error. When the package is finished, these findings become verified.
Resolved externally: A scan no longer found the finding on the pages where it was last seen, although no fix from Validiscan had been delivered for it: it was fixed outside Validiscan’s changes.
Won’t fix: A real barrier that the merchant decided not to fix for now, recorded with a note. It is left out of remediation progress but still counts as a failure in conformance, and the customer portal shows it as Accepted risk.
False positive: A finding the scanner reported for an element that meets the criterion, marked as such after a check by hand and with a justification. It counts neither in conformance nor in remediation progress, and the Remediation Evidence Package lists it with its justification.

Evidence and progress, 2 terms

Remediation Evidence Package: A dated record of what was tested in a shop, what was found, what was changed and what a verification scan confirmed, as PDF, DOCX and JSON in a zip with SHA-256 checksums. It is evidence of an evaluation and of remediation work, not a certificate, and it does not state legal compliance.
Remediation progress: The only single number Validiscan reports: the share of findings that are fixed, verified or resolved externally, with each finding weighted by its impact. False positives, won’t fix findings and best-practice findings are left out, and the formula is always shown next to the number.