Kokomo Botanical Resort
Performance & Accessibility Audit

Executive Summary

The site loads heavy and reads inaccessible. Across four critical URLs (Home, Casitas, Cottages, Wellness), the page weight averages 130KB of HTML before assets, scripts and stylesheets account for 70+ external resources, only 2 of every 8 to 19 images on each page use a modern format (WebP), and a structural accessibility problem touches almost every guest-facing page: between zero and one of the images on each page has a meaningful alt attribute. The forms guests use to inquire and reserve have one label for every two inputs.

This is not a "needs more optimisation" finding. It is a baseline-WCAG failure across multiple criteria. For a property at $400 to $800 ADR serving North American luxury travellers, this is also a legal exposure (US ADA Title III applies to hospitality websites since the 2019 Domino's ruling).

Methodology and Limits

• Fetched the raw HTML for four critical URLs on 12 May 2026: the homepage, /the-casitas-at-kokomo/, /cottages/, and /wellness/.
• Source-level scan: counted scripts, stylesheets, images, modern image formats (WebP, AVIF), lazy-loading attributes, dimension attributes, heading hierarchy, semantic landmarks, form inputs vs. labels, iframes vs. titles, schema.org blocks.
• Public Lighthouse / PageSpeed Insights API quota was exhausted at the time of fetch. Lab-condition Performance / Accessibility scores from PageSpeed are NOT included; recommended to re-run from the property's own browser the next day.
• Visual color-contrast checks and keyboard-navigation flow require live render testing, which is flagged in the open items.

All findings below are derived from observed source HTML and validated against published WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria. Where a finding cannot be verified from source alone, it is listed in the open items.

Performance Signals (4 URLs)

What the numbers say

• Scripts: 43 to 59 per page. Luxury hospitality competitors (Aman, COMO, Six Senses, Beach Enclave Grace Bay) operate with 10 to 25 scripts per page after the page builder is configured properly. Kokomo is carrying roughly 2 to 4× the recommended JS bundle, almost all of which is loaded before First Contentful Paint.
• Stylesheets: 29 to 35 per page. Same pattern. Each separate `<link rel="stylesheet">` is a render-blocking request. A modern site combines and minifies these into 3 to 8 sheets total.
• WebP adoption: 2 images per page, consistently. Identical count across 4 pages strongly suggests the WebP images are the same shared hero / footer assets. The page-specific images (cottage interiors, garden shots, founder photos) are not converted to WebP at all.
• AVIF adoption: 0 across all pages. AVIF saves another 20 to 30% on top of WebP at the same visual quality. For a brand selling visual product, leaving AVIF on the table is leaving load time and visual fidelity on the table.
• Cottages page has zero lazy-loaded images. That page is selling rooms with photography. All 8 images load eagerly. On mobile, this is the worst LCP cost on the audited set.
• Casitas page has the highest lazy-loading rate at 75%. Suggests the Casita page was built more recently with modern conventions and the others have not been brought up to spec.

Accessibility Findings (WCAG 2.1 AA)

Headline metrics across the 4 audited URLs

The pattern that repeats on every page

• Images have no alt text. The single largest WCAG failure on the site. A screen-reader user lands on the cottage page and hears "image, image, image, image" instead of "Classic Two-Queen cottage interior with garden view." This is also an SEO loss: image-search ranking and AI assistants reading the page both depend on alt text.
• No <main> landmark. Screen reader users navigate by landmarks. Without <main>, they can't jump past the navigation to the page content. The skip-link is present but lands on a div, not a semantic landmark.
• Forms have half the required labels. The reservation form on the homepage has 25 inputs and 9 labels. The 16 unlabeled inputs are likely date pickers, hidden fields, and CTAs, but several are guest-facing and would announce as "edit text, edit text" to a screen reader.
• iframes lack title attributes. 2 iframes per page, 0 with titles. Every embedded video, map, or widget is anonymous to assistive tech.

Specific WCAG Failures, by Criterion

Mobile Readiness

What's working

• Viewport meta tag present on every page (required for mobile rendering).
• All audited images carry width and height attributes (prevents Cumulative Layout Shift from late-loading assets).
• Lazy-loading is used on most pages (53% to 75% adoption, except Cottages page at 0%).

What's failing

• Mega-menu navigation is rendered three times in the DOM (per the Technical Audit). On mobile, the same nav structure that works on desktop becomes a 20-item burger menu, which is a known mobile UX anti-pattern.
• The Reservations form is the same form on mobile as desktop per the Booking Engine Audit. Date picker, additional-guest grid, and full-address fields do not gracefully shrink for thumb-zone use.
• JS payload of 43 to 59 scripts is the same on mobile as desktop. No mobile-specific bundling or deferred-load strategy detected. Mobile networks pay the full cost.
• The 0-lazy-loaded-images on the Cottages page means all 8 cottage images load eagerly on mobile. The single highest-impact LCP regression in the audited set.

Legal Exposure (US ADA Title III, EU)

For a property at this ADR serving primarily North American luxury travellers, accessibility is not optional. Two specific legal frameworks apply:

United States: ADA Title III

The 2019 Supreme Court ruling in Domino's Pizza v. Robles established that the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to commercial websites of public accommodations. Hospitality is explicitly covered. Class-action accessibility lawsuits filed against hotel websites have surged year over year since. The standard cited in every recent settlement is WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which the audited pages fail on at least 4 criteria.

A demand letter from a plaintiff law firm typically requests $5,000 to $25,000 in pre-litigation settlement plus remediation costs. A defended lawsuit reaches six figures fast. The cost of WCAG-AA remediation on the audited surface is materially lower than the cost of a single demand letter.

European Union: EAA (European Accessibility Act)

The EAA enforcement window for digital services serving EU consumers opened in 2025. Hospitality websites that take bookings from EU residents are in scope. Penalties vary by member state but include fines and platform takedown orders.

Prioritised Actions

P0: this month

• Alt-text sweep across the entire site. Single biggest WCAG failure. Every photograph gets a descriptive alt attribute. Decorative graphics get alt="". Estimated effort: a content editor working from the existing photo library, one to two days.
• Add <main> landmark to every page template. Update the theme's templates. One-time fix, propagates everywhere.
• Add title attribute to every iframe. Each iframe gets a one-line title: "Embedded reservation widget," "Embedded Google Map," "Embedded YouTube video," etc.
• Add a label to every form input on the Reservations form, the Casita inquiry form, and the Contact form. Where a label is visually undesirable, use aria-label.

P1: within 30 days

• Image-format upgrade. Batch-convert the photo library to WebP and AVIF with automatic format negotiation. Hosting-side or CDN-side image pipelines (e.g. via the CMS image module) do this automatically once configured.
• Apply lazy-loading on the Cottages page. All 8 images currently load eagerly. Single attribute fix per image: loading="lazy".
• Reduce script and stylesheet counts. Identify which of the 43 to 59 scripts and 29 to 35 stylesheets per page are actually rendering visible features. Defer or combine the rest. Most page-builder sites can drop to under 20 scripts and under 10 stylesheets with the right settings.
• Run a live keyboard-navigation test on the homepage, Casita page, cottage page and reservation flow. Document the tab order, focus visibility, and any keyboard traps.
• Run automated accessibility scanner (axe DevTools, WAVE, Lighthouse a11y) on the same four URLs. Capture color-contrast failures that this source-level audit cannot detect.

P2: within 90 days

• Mobile performance audit with real-device testing. Use throttled 4G mid-range mobile (per the Website Design Review §9 recommendation). Measure LCP, FID, CLS in field conditions.
• Heading-hierarchy audit. Confirm every page's H2 to H3 to H4 progression is logical and that headings are unique enough to skim with a screen reader.
• Color-contrast audit on the brand palette. The dark hero with light overlays and gold accents is a recurring contrast risk surface in luxury hospitality. Verify every text-on-image combination passes 4.5:1.
• Reduced motion preference. Add prefers-reduced-motion CSS so guests with vestibular sensitivities can disable hero video and slideshow animation.

Open Items Requiring Live Measurement

• Lighthouse / PageSpeed Insights Performance score and field-condition LCP / FID / CLS (PageSpeed API quota was exhausted at audit time; recommended to re-run from the property's own browser).
• Field-condition mobile performance using a throttled 4G network on a real device.
• Color-contrast measurements against the brand palette in production rendering.
• Live keyboard-navigation test results.
• Screen-reader walk-through results (VoiceOver on macOS / iOS, NVDA on Windows).
• Cumulative Layout Shift score under real network conditions.
• Whether the Reservations form, blog comments, and contact forms have hidden anti-bot inputs that account for some of the input-vs-label gap.

Bottom Line