Accessibility Statement.
Valerive — operated by S Commerce, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands — designs dresses for real women and real bodies, and we want browsing and buying them at valerive.com to feel just as effortless, however you access the web. This statement sets out, honestly and in detail, what we have built, what we are still improving, and how to reach us if something on our site gets in your way.
Dresses are for every body. Our website should be too.
Valerive's whole idea — "Worn your way" — is that clothing should adapt to the person wearing it, not the other way round. We think the same should be true of the website you use to shop for it. Whether you browse the Zirella Summer Dress with a screen reader, navigate our size guide by keyboard alone, zoom the Fairy Maxi Dress gallery to see the lace detail up close, or rely on high-contrast settings to read a fabric description, we want that experience to work properly, first time.
This commitment is led directly by S Commerce's own team rather than outsourced as an afterthought. We review new product pages, seasonal collections and site-wide design changes against an accessibility checklist before they are published, and we treat accessibility reports from customers with the same urgency as a payment or delivery problem.
The standard we build to
We use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA, published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), as our target conformance standard. Level AA is the benchmark most commonly relied upon by UK and EU regulators, including the standard referenced by the harmonised technical specification EN 301 549 used to assess compliance with the EU Accessibility Act.
In good conscience, we describe our current status as substantially conformant, not fully conformant. Our theme, checkout and the third-party apps we rely on are continually assessed, and the table below and Section 6 (Known Issues) set out exactly where we still fall short.
| Standard | Applies to | Target level | Current status |
|---|---|---|---|
| WCAG 2.2 | Site-wide: navigation, product pages, cart, checkout | AA | Substantially conformant |
| EN 301 549 | E-commerce service functionality (EU Accessibility Act) | Aligned with WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA | In progress |
| UK Equality Act 2010, s.29 | Reasonable adjustments for a UK-facing online service | No fixed technical level; WCAG 2.2 AA used as benchmark | Ongoing |
| Section 508 (US) | Not applicable — Valerive currently ships to UK customers only | — | Not applicable |
Why two legal systems apply to this page
S Commerce, trading as Valerive, is established in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands, and currently sells exclusively to customers in the United Kingdom. Because of that, both Dutch/EU accessibility law and UK accessibility law are relevant to how we run valerive.com, and we have written this statement to satisfy both.
Directive (EU) 2019/882, the European Accessibility Act, was transposed into Dutch law through the Implementatiewet toegankelijkheidsvoorschriften producten en diensten, which took effect on 28 June 2025. It requires providers of e-commerce services in scope to make their websites conform to accessibility requirements based on EN 301 549, to publish an accessibility statement such as this one, and to have a route for reporting non-compliance. The Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (Autoriteit Consument & Markt, ACM) is the competent supervisory authority for e-commerce services. The Act includes an exemption for the smallest "microenterprises"; regardless of whether that exemption applies to S Commerce, we have chosen to publish this statement and work towards WCAG 2.2 AA voluntarily.
The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful for a service provider offering goods and services to the public — including an online shop like Valerive — to discriminate against a disabled person, and places a duty to make reasonable adjustments where a feature of the service puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage (sections 20 and 29). The Act does not name a single technical standard, but the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and UK courts routinely treat WCAG conformance as strong evidence of whether reasonable adjustments have been made, which is why we hold ourselves to WCAG 2.2 AA here too.
Accessibility features already on valerive.com
These are the concrete measures built into our theme and product content today. None of these are aspirational — you can test every one of them on the site right now.
Every product photo — for example a Fransesca Maxi Dress or Fiona Velvet Dress image — carries descriptive alt text noting the garment, colourway and fabric detail, so screen reader users know what they're looking at, not just "product image 1". Purely decorative graphics are marked so they are correctly skipped.
Every menu, product filter, size selector, "Add to bag" button and checkout field can be reached and operated using Tab, Shift+Tab and Enter alone, with a visible focus indicator so you always know where you are on the page.
Body text, prices, buttons and form labels across the theme are checked against the WCAG 2.2 AA minimum contrast ratios (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text and interactive components), including on our wine-and-gold colour palette.
Text is set in relative units, so it can be resized up to 200% using your browser's zoom, or using our own on-page text controls in Section 5, without content being clipped, overlapping or requiring horizontal scrolling.
Landmarks, headings, form labels and ARIA attributes are structured so that VoiceOver, NVDA, JAWS and TalkBack can announce our navigation, product details, size guide and checkout in a sensible reading order.
Every input on our contact form, newsletter sign-up and checkout has a visible, programmatically linked label, and validation errors are described in plain language rather than colour alone — for example naming the exact field that needs correcting.
Adjust the page to suit you
Beyond what we build into the theme, every major browser and device gives you further control. Pinch-to-zoom and browser zoom (Ctrl/Cmd + "+") both work cleanly on valerive.com up to 200%. Your operating system's high-contrast or "increase contrast" mode (Windows, macOS, iOS and Android all offer one) is respected by our layout rather than overridden. Try the live demo alongside — it only changes this box, not the rest of the page.
Need a hand finding these settings on your device? Email support@valerive.com and we'll talk you through it.
Try it — text size & contrast
This mirrors the kind of control your browser already gives you.
The Fairy Maxi Dress — soft chiffon, floral print, fully lined bodice.
Known issues we're still working on
No storefront is perfectly accessible overnight, and we would rather tell you exactly where the gaps are than claim there are none. As of the date at the top of this page, we are aware of the following.
Our "Track My Order" page embeds a third-party tracking tool. We have asked the provider to confirm WCAG 2.2 AA support and are monitoring keyboard access to its search field, but we do not yet control its code directly.
A small number of dress photos uploaded before this checklist was introduced use shorter, less descriptive alt text (naming only the garment, not colour or fabric). We are working through our full catalogue, newest listings first, to bring older ones in line with the standard described in Section 4.
Some size guide charts are presented as flat images rather than accessible HTML tables. We are converting these to structured, screen-reader-friendly tables as each product listing is refreshed.
Our homepage summer sale banner includes a subtle looping animation. It currently does not offer an on-page pause control, although it honours your device's "reduce motion" setting where supported.
Content we don't build ourselves
Some parts of your visit run on infrastructure or content owned by other companies rather than by S Commerce directly: Shopify's own checkout pages, Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay payment sheets, the ParcelPanel order-tracking app, and any customer reviews or social content we embed. We choose reputable providers and ask them to meet WCAG 2.2 AA, and Shopify's own checkout is independently maintained to recognised accessibility standards, but we cannot guarantee the accessibility of code we do not own or control. If you hit a barrier in one of these areas, please tell us anyway — we will chase the provider on your behalf and note it under Known Issues if it can't be fixed immediately.
Reporting a barrier — and how quickly we act
If any part of valerive.com — a product page, the size guide, your bag, checkout, or an email from us — is difficult to use with the technology or approach you rely on, we want to know. Please tell us what page you were on, what device, browser and assistive technology you were using, and what happened.
Email support@valerive.com with "Accessibility" in the subject line, or call +31 6 26269395 during our support hours (Monday–Friday, 09:00–18:00 CET/CEST). You can also use the form on our Contact page.
Our customer service team is monitored 24/7 by email, and we aim to acknowledge every accessibility report within 5 hours, in line with our standard support commitment.
Target fix or workaround within 5 business days.
Target fix within 15 business days.
Target fix within one release cycle, typically 4–6 weeks.
Logged and scheduled into the next relevant content or theme update.
Testing methodology and cadence
We combine automated scanning with real human testing, because neither is sufficient alone:
Run against the homepage, a sample of product pages, cart and checkout each time we publish a theme or template change, catching missing alt text, contrast failures and structural issues early.
Conducted quarterly across the full purchase journey — browsing a collection, opening a product, choosing a size, checking out — using keyboard-only navigation and at least one screen reader (VoiceOver or NVDA).
Every new dress listing and seasonal landing page is checked against our internal accessibility checklist — alt text, heading order, contrast, focus order — before it is published.
Illustration of the visible focus outline that moves between controls during our keyboard testing passes.
Taking it further
We hope you never need to go beyond emailing us, but you always have the right to. If you feel we haven't resolved an accessibility problem properly:
You can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) or the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) at equalityhumanrights.com for guidance on your rights under the Equality Act 2010.
You can raise a discrimination-related complaint with the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (College voor de Rechten van de Mens) at mensenrechten.nl, or notify the Autoriteit Consument & Markt (ACM) about a suspected breach of the e-commerce accessibility requirements at acm.nl.
Reviewing and updating this statement
We review this Accessibility Statement at least every 12 months, and sooner whenever we make a significant change to our theme, checkout, or the third-party apps listed in Section 7, or when UK or Dutch/EU accessibility law is updated — including further ACM or EHRC guidance. The version in force is always the one published here, dated at the top of this page.