Before you invest in WCAG compliance

The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. Before you spend anything on WCAG compliance, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• AA is the level most organisations are held to
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

The mistakes we see most

Compliance is a floor, not a finish line. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Some sectors have a legal obligation, not a preference. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

How to tell if yours is fine

Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. Three things worth confirming about WCAG compliance before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Compliance is a floor, not a finish line — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.