What to ask your agency about WCAG compliance

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on WCAG compliance, these questions are worth asking early.

Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Questions worth asking

• Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
• How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
• What happens if it needs changing in a year?
• What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?

What a good answer sounds like

AA is the level most organisations are held to. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

Some sectors have a legal obligation, not a preference. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

In practice

The cost of retrofitting accessibility is several times the cost of building it in. Three things worth confirming about WCAG compliance before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Some sectors have a legal obligation, not a preference — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.