A score never fixed
anything. A diff does.

<button class="cart-btn">
  <svg class="icon-cart">…</svg>
</button>

<button class="cart-btn"
        aria-label="Open cart, 2 items">
  <svg class="icon-cart"
       aria-hidden="true">…</svg>
</button>

Who this breaks. A screen reader announces this as “button.” Nothing else. Someone shopping without sight has no way to know it is the cart — and this is the single most common failure we find on e-commerce checkouts.

<span class="lbl">Email</span>
<input type="email"
       placeholder="Email">

<label for="email">Email</label>
<input type="email" id="email"
       autocomplete="email">

Who this breaks. Placeholder text disappears the moment someone types, and it is not read as a label. Users with memory or attention disabilities lose the field meaning mid-entry; voice-control users cannot say “click Email” at all.

.footer-note {
  color: #9AA0A6;   /* 2.6:1 */
  background: #FFFFFF;
}

.footer-note {
  color: #5F6670;   /* 5.8:1 ✓ */
  background: #FFFFFF;
}

Who this breaks. Low-vision users, anyone over about 50, and every person reading your site outdoors on a phone. This is the most-cited failure in ADA demand letters because it is trivially provable in a screenshot.

<h2>Plans</h2>
  <h4>Starter</h4>
  <h4>Growth</h4>

<h2>Plans</h2>
  <h3>Starter</h3>
  <h3>Growth</h3>

Who this breaks. Screen reader users navigate by pulling up a headings list — it is their table of contents. A skipped level reads as a missing section. Search crawlers parse the same structure, which is why this fix tends to pay you back twice.