Practice
WCAG defines what accessible means at three conformance levels. AA is the level most organisations are held to, and reaching it reliably means building to it rather than auditing for it afterwards.
Context
Retrofitting accessibility costs several times what building to it costs, and the people excluded in the meantime are frequently the intended audience.
Choices
Every choice below has a reason attached. A stack without reasons is a logo wall.
The questions we work through before recommending anything in this area.
Recommending something everywhere is the same as having no opinion.
Where we apply it
AA, at version 2.2. It is the level referenced by most legislation and procurement. AAA includes requirements that cannot be met across a whole site, so a claim of full AAA conformance is usually a sign nobody verified it.
Partly. Automated checks reliably catch contrast, missing labels, heading order and target size. Whether alternative text is meaningful, or a flow is usable with a screen reader, needs a person.
WCAG defines what accessible means at three conformance levels. AA is the level most organisations are held to, and reaching it reliably means building to it rather than auditing for it afterwards.
Retrofitting accessibility costs several times what building to it costs, and the people excluded in the meantime are frequently the intended audience.
As a claim of certified conformance, which requires specialist audit including testing with assistive technology users; As a launch-week checklist; almost everything expensive to fix is decided during design; and As a reason to avoid interactivity, which usually makes an interface worse for everyone
Whether the organisation has a legal or procurement conformance requirement; Whether contrast and target sizes are enforced by the design system or by memory; and Whether anyone has attempted the primary journey using only a keyboard
The level referenced by most procurement and legislation. Level AAA is not achievable across a whole site and claiming it is a signal that nobody checked.
Every colour pairing computed and asserted in the design system, so a failing combination cannot be introduced by a later change without the check failing.
Connected
Bring the existing system and the constraints around it. We will tell you where this fits, where it would be the wrong tool, and what we would leave exactly as it is.
