Accessibility isn't a plugin. It's a standard you either meet or you don't.
Most organizations discover their accessibility gap the expensive way — a demand letter, a failed procurement review, a resident who can't pay a bill online. We audit against WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 Level AA, fix what's failing, and build the habits that keep it fixed after we leave.
What WCAG compliance actually requires.
WCAG — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — is the technical standard nearly every accessibility regulation points at. It's organized around four principles, and conformance is claimed at a level: A, AA, or AAA. Level AA is the benchmark regulators, courts, and procurement teams use.
Perceivable
Content has to be available to senses people actually have. Text alternatives for images, captions for media, sufficient color contrast, and layouts that survive zoom and reflow.
Operable
Everything has to work without a mouse. Full keyboard operation, visible focus, no keyboard traps, enough time to complete tasks, and no content that triggers seizures.
Understandable
Interfaces have to behave predictably. Clear language, consistent navigation, labeled form fields, and errors that are identified and explained rather than flagged by color alone.
Robust
Code has to work with assistive technology. Valid markup, correct names and roles for interactive components, and status changes that actually get announced.
WCAG 2.1 AA is the floor. WCAG 2.2 AA is where to build.
WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the standard cited by the ADA Title II rule, referenced in most settlements, and assumed in procurement. WCAG 2.2 became the W3C recommendation in 2023 and adds nine criteria — focus appearance, target size, dragging alternatives, and reducing the cognitive load of authentication and repeated entry.
Our recommendation for most clients: audit and report against 2.1 AA because that's what your obligations reference, and design new work to 2.2 AA because that's what the next revision of those obligations will reference. The delta is small when you build it in and expensive when you retrofit it.
Levels, plainly
- Level A — the minimum. Failing here usually means someone is fully blocked.
- Level AA — the legal and procurement benchmark. This is what "WCAG compliant" means in practice.
- Level AAA — aspirational and not expected sitewide; W3C itself doesn't recommend it as a general policy target.
Which rules reach you depends on what you are.
Different obligations, one underlying technical standard. A short read on each is on the accessibility regulations page.
ADA Title II
State and local government. The DOJ rule sets WCAG 2.1 AA as the standard: entities serving 50,000+ had to comply by April 24, 2026; smaller entities and special districts by April 26, 2027.
ADA Title III
Places of public accommodation — most private businesses serving the public. No codified web standard, but courts and DOJ settlements routinely apply WCAG 2.1 AA.
Section 508
Federal agencies and the vendors selling to them. Incorporates WCAG Level AA by reference, and drives the VPAT requests that stall software deals.
Section 504 & 1557
Recipients of federal funding, including schools and health programs, with HHS rules reaching patient-facing digital services.
European Accessibility Act
In application since June 28, 2025 for products and services sold into the EU — e-commerce, banking, e-books, transport, and more, via EN 301 549.
Provincial & state law
Ontario's AODA, other provincial regimes, and a growing set of U.S. state procurement and agency requirements layered on top of federal rules.
This is a plain-language summary of a technical standard, not legal advice. We work alongside your counsel — we don't replace them.
Five ways we work on accessibility.
How to Comply
The nine steps in the order that works, an honest split of what your own team can do, and how to judge an accessibility firm.
Start hereADA Title II Deadline
A live countdown to April 26, 2027, what the rule requires, and a working-backwards plan for the time that is left.
See the countdownWCAG Audit
Automated scanning plus manual and assistive-technology testing against WCAG 2.1 / 2.2 AA, reported so your developers can act on it.
Learn moreRemediation
Fixing what the audit found — in the design system and templates, so conformance is inherited instead of repeated page by page.
Learn moreRegulatory Readiness
Mapping which obligations actually apply to you, what they require, and what evidence you'd need to produce on request.
Learn moreVPAT & Section 508
Honest Accessibility Conformance Reports for software vendors, and accessibility requirements for the buyers evaluating them.
Learn moreTraining & Governance
Policy, role-specific training, and monitoring — the part that determines whether you're still conformant in a year.
Learn moreUse Cases
18 common situations — from an ADA Title II deadline to a demand letter to a stalled procurement review — and how each engagement runs.
Browse allEngagement Shapes
The four shapes this work takes — baseline, deadline-driven program, embedded remediation, and ongoing monitoring — and what each produces.
See engagementsPublic Sector
ADA Title II work scoped to how agencies actually buy: contracting paths, vendor information, and scope language you can route internally.
For government buyersFree Checker
Scan your own pages against the automated share of WCAG, in your browser. No email, no account, nothing uploaded.
Run a checkGlossary
31 accessibility and compliance terms defined plainly — WCAG, VPAT, ARIA, tagged PDFs — each with its own anchor.
Look something upCriteria Reference
All 55 Level A and AA success criteria in plain language, with the failure we see most often for each.
Open referenceThe long-form reference library.
Our working methodology, published. These are the pieces we would want to read if we were the ones buying — long, specific, and useful whether or not you ever hire us.
The Complete Guide to Accessible Forms
Forms are where accessibility fails most and costs most. Labels, errors, grouping, required fields and validation — the patterns that work, with the markup.
Guide · 9 min readHow to Test a Website for Accessibility
The manual testing methodology we use on client audits, published in full — keyboard, screen reader, zoom, forms and media, with what to record and what it means.
What we think about this work.
The arguments we end up making in client rooms, written down so you can evaluate how we think before you ever talk to us.
Who Actually Owns Accessibility
Saying "everyone owns it" means nobody does. The organizations that stay conformant have one accountable person and a short list of duties per role.
BusinessThe Business Case for Accessibility
Legal risk gets accessibility funded. It's rarely what makes it worth doing. The operational returns are more reliable and easier to measure.
OperationsWhat to Do With 10,000 Inaccessible PDFs
The document library is usually an organization's largest accessibility liability and the part every program skips. Remediating one at a time never catches up.
GovernmentWriting Accessibility Into an RFP
"ADA compliant" in a scope of work is unenforceable. The contract language that actually gets you an accessible deliverable.
TechnologyHow to Read a VPAT
A VPAT is the document vendors send when you ask whether their product is accessible. Most of the useful information is in the column buyers skip.
AccessibilityWhat Accessibility Scanners Can and Can't Catch
Automated testing is fast, cheap, and evaluates only a fraction of WCAG. Knowing which fraction is the whole game.
AccessibilityWhat WCAG 2.2 Changed
WCAG 2.2 added six Level A and AA criteria and removed one. Most of your obligations still cite 2.1 — here is what that means.
AccessibilityWhy Accessibility Overlays Don't Work
Overlay widgets promise WCAG compliance from one line of JavaScript. What they actually do, and why they show up in litigation.
GovernmentWhat the ADA Title II Web Rule Actually Requires
The DOJ rule gave state and local government something web accessibility never had before — a specific technical standard and a hard date. Here's what it covers.
Applied through the Growth Framework™.
Understand
Which obligations apply, what you publish, and who owns it.
Assess
Audit against WCAG AA with automated and manual testing.
Design
A prioritized remediation roadmap with owners and dates.
Execute
Fix at the component level, verify, and document the evidence.
Optimize
Train, monitor, and govern so it doesn't regress.
Questions we get in the first call.
Will an accessibility overlay solve this?
No. Overlay and widget products don't produce WCAG conformance, are rejected by much of the disability community, and have themselves been cited in accessibility litigation. They also don't touch your PDFs, your vendor portals, or your source markup.
Can't we just run a scanner?
Run one — it's a useful first signal. But automated tools can only evaluate a minority of WCAG success criteria. Things like whether alt text is meaningful, whether focus order makes sense, or whether an error message is understandable require a human and a screen reader.
How long does this take?
An audit of a typical site runs a few weeks. Remediation depends entirely on how the site was built: a well-structured design system can be largely fixed in one cycle, while a decade of accumulated templates and untagged PDFs is a phased program.
Is our vendor's platform our problem?
Legally, usually yes — you're responsible for the services you offer the public, whoever hosts them. Practically, the fix is a combination of pressure, VPAT requests, contract language at renewal, and an accommodation path while gaps remain.
What does "compliant" even mean?
There's no certificate and no permanent status. What exists is a conformance claim against a specific standard, at a point in time, backed by testing evidence — plus a program that keeps it true as content changes.
Does your own site pass?
Fair question to ask an accessibility vendor. We publish an accessibility statement naming our standard, our testing, and the limitations we know about — including the ones we haven't fixed yet. Any vendor selling you this work should be willing to do the same.
Isn't this just a legal exercise?
It's the cheapest usability work most organizations will ever do. Keyboard support, clear labels, readable contrast, and sane error handling improve conversion and reduce support volume for every user, not just the ones the standard was written for.
Four free ways to see where you stand.
Accessibility Checker
Run 31 automated WCAG checks against your own pages — a bookmarklet that tests the live rendered page, or paste a page's source. Nothing is uploaded.
Check a page nowAccessibility Score
A ten-question self-assessment that scores your accessibility posture and tells you plainly what to do next. No email required.
Take the assessmentWCAG Compliance Checklist
Thirty-one checks across the four WCAG principles, plus documents, vendors, and governance. Work it in the browser; nothing is saved or sent.
Open checklistSuccess Criteria Reference
Every Level A and AA criterion translated into what it actually requires, with the failure we find most often for each.
Open reference