A practical checklist for WCAG compliance
There is no clever trick in this one, just a handful of decisions worth making deliberately. Run through this the next time WCAG compliance comes up.
Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
The checklist
- AA is the level most organisations are held to
- Compliance is a floor, not a finish line
- Some sectors have a legal obligation, not a preference
- Someone is named as the owner
- There is a date to review it again
The reason this keeps coming up
AA is the level most organisations are held to. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
The short version
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
- AA is the level most organisations are held to — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.