Design
Accessibility
Also called
- a11y
- WCAG
- ADA compliance
Accessibility covers a wide range of needs: visual (contrast, text sizing, screen readers), motor (keyboard operation, target size), auditory (captions), and cognitive (clear language, predictable structure). WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the standard most US obligations reference.
In the United States it is not optional for most commercial sites. ADA Title III litigation over inaccessible websites runs to thousands of federal filings a year, and the demand letters that never reach court are a larger number still.
The commercial argument stands on its own regardless. Keyboard operability, sufficient contrast and clear focus states improve the experience for people using a laptop on a train and a phone in sunlight, which is most of your traffic.
It is simultaneously a legal exposure, a market of tens of millions of US adults, and a proxy for general build quality.
Commonly misunderstood
What people get wrong
The claim
“We installed an accessibility overlay widget.”
What is actually true
Overlays have been the subject of hundreds of US lawsuits against sites that had them installed. They do not remediate the underlying markup, and their presence has been treated as evidence that the problem was known.
Related terms
Next step
Working through a accessibility decision?
Tell us the situation. We will give you the tradeoffs as we see them, including when the answer is that you do not need what you are being sold.
No pitch deck. A 30-minute conversation about what you are trying to achieve.