Kuchnia Lidla: WCAG accessibility audit

Context and business problem

Kuchnia Lidla was then the standalone kuchnia-lidla.pl and is now being moved to Lidl’s shared system and domain. Lidl asked to adapt it to the then-current WCAG 2.2.

Users and their goals

• People looking for recipes on Kuchnia Lidla, including users of screen readers, keyboard navigation and screen magnification.
• The internal team using the admin panel and dashboards.

Constraints

• The fixes were implemented by an external company that runs the site for Lidl, so my findings had to be clear enough to act on without me in the code.

My role and responsibilities

• A thorough, very extensive accessibility audit of the whole service, including the admin panel and dashboards, beyond the public pages
• Fix guidelines for every issue
• Mediating the communication with Lidl’s development partner

Process and key decisions

1. Audit against WCAG 2.2

The audit itself took 2–3 weeks. Methods: manual keyboard and screen-reader testing, automated scanners and contrast checks.

2. Findings the team could plan with

I grouped the findings by WCAG criterion and severity, with a recommended fix for each.

Decision: findings grouped by WCAG criterion and severity, each with a recommended fix.

Why: so the team could plan the work.

Where AI fits

I used AI to speed up grouping findings and drafting fix recommendations; every issue was confirmed by hand against WCAG 2.2.

Outcome and impact

• About 350 issues found across the whole service, including the panel and dashboards.
• All of them were fixed, by Lidl’s development partner based on my guidelines.
• Usability improved and the site became fully WCAG-compliant.

What I learned and what’s next

• Auditing the admin panel, not just the public site, matters: accessibility is also about the people who run the service.