Three myths about WCAG compliance

This is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to retrofit. A few things about WCAG compliance that get repeated more often than they get checked.

Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

“It only matters for big sites”

AA is the level most organisations are held to. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding.

“Our platform handles it”

Some sectors have a legal obligation, not a preference. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

How to tell if yours is fine

Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. 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

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.