Your Essential Web Accessibility Checklist

10 web accessibility checklist priorities

PWD represent a significant portion of your user base. This includes individuals with permanent disabilities affecting vision, hearing, motor skills or cognitive function. And don’t forget that temporary disabilities, such as a broken wrist, can also necessitate the use of assistive technologies.

When you grasp the need for a comprehensive web accessibility approach, only then can you begin to validate the experiences of these users.

Here are the essential web accessibility checklist items to cover:

• Understand the needs of your user base
• Adopt a holistic approach
• Define clear requirements and conformance goals
• Implement a shift-left design program
• Leverage experienced accessibility experts
• Involve people with disabilities in the process
• Use all available tools and resources
• Honor the user experience
• Achieve conformance with accessibility standards
• Continuously educate your teams

Let’s get into each web accessibility checklist item — and we’ll provide some additional subtasks to check off for each. Note that the first two web accessibility checklist items are programmatic and ongoing efforts that should be carried on throughout the product lifecycle and into future ones.

1. Understand the needs of your user base

Web accessibility matters, not just for compliance or conformance, but for business reputation and revenue. When you cater to PWD, you’re catering to as many as a billion customers all over the world, to speak nothing of the ethics of providing an accessible experience. By broadening market penetration, businesses can strengthen their reputation, minimize legal risks, enhance customer satisfaction and improve brand loyalty. All this benefit, just by doing the right thing.

Here are some web accessibility checklist tasks to consider at this stage:

• Review current audience demographics.
• Quantify the potential business effect of embracing users with disabilities.
• Document how accessibility contributes to brand reputation, legal compliance and customer satisfaction priorities.
• Gather internal testimonials or case studies highlighting accessibility’s business value.
• Include web accessibility as a core value in your digital mission statement or product principles.

2. Adopt a holistic approach

Web accessibility is an ongoing, multidimensional effort. Achieving digital accessibility requires a comprehensive strategy that goes beyond adherence to established standards. Design products for all users from the outset. Strive for an inclusive design-centric approach that satisfies all user needs. A holistic view also takes into account a wider range of aspects regarding how people interact with a product, not just technical guidelines. From there, you can assemble and empower multidisciplinary teams to address those needs and deliver better products.

Consider these specific actions for this phase:

• Evaluate your current design and development workflows for accessibility gaps.
• Align your efforts with inclusive design principles beyond regulatory compliance standards.
• Assess digital quality standards and how they affect accessibility outcomes.
• Identify where accessibility intersects with user experience pain points.
• Create an accessibility strategy document outlining cross-functional responsibilities.

3. Define clear requirements and conformance goals

It’s time to define clear goals. Articulate your organization’s specific accessibility needs and the level of conformance you aim to achieve, such as WCAG Level A, AA or EN 301 549. Understand the precise requirements and criteria that the software must meet. As we cannot provide legal advice within this blog, please work with your internal legal and compliance teams to ensure your understanding of the precise requirements the software must meet. Once you establish those, we can test for the inclusion of those features. Clearly defined requirements allow for a fully managed approach where expectations are set, and progress can be tracked. You have to know your success criteria before you can effectively mobilize teams to achieve it — and maintain it.

• Select a conformance level, such as WCAG A or AA or the EN 301 549 for the EU, appropriate for your organization’s goals.
• Outline accessibility requirements for each digital product line or platform.
• Integrate accessibility criteria into product requirements and design specs.
• Set success metrics and KPIs related to accessibility (e.g., defect rate, issue severity, and how long bugs are active).
• Establish a roadmap with milestones for reaching accessibility conformance.

4. Implement a shift-left design program

It’s time to take action! By embedding web accessibility early in the design and development process, teams can align on priorities throughout the SDLC. A shift-left accessibility approach also helps prevent significant and costly issues later on. Also, it plays a big role in reducing technical debt that can overwhelm teams down the road and degrade the user experience. Review designs, spread awareness of best development practices and document accessibility requirements to keep these priorities front and center.

This web accessibility checklist stage involves these actionable points as you work with your internal compliance experts:

• Add accessibility checkpoints to design reviews and approval processes.
• Include accessibility annotations or notes in wireframes and prototypes.
• Train product designers to use accessible color contrast and logical layouts.
• Ensure awareness of text alternatives and readability standards.
• Document accessibility requirements in user stories or acceptance criteria.

5. Leverage experienced accessibility experts

Bring in experienced help when setting up your web accessibility program or auditing for gaps. Accessibility experts, like the ones we provide at Applause, can guide strategic planning, tool selection and test execution, especially for teams new to accessibility. Remember that it’s an accessibility program, not a one-and-done engagement. Accessibility experts offer not only deep expertise and understanding of various platforms, but can share actionable knowledge based on where others have succeeded and failed in their accessibility journeys.

These are some recommended actions for this stage:

• Identify accessibility experts with relevant domain expertise.
• Involve experts in building and reviewing design systems and component libraries.
• Schedule accessibility audits at key project phases, such as design, dev and pre-release.
• Use expert feedback to prioritize remediation efforts.
• Create and refine a knowledge base of expert-driven best practices for future teams.

6. Involve people with disabilities in the process

Inclusive collaboration is one of the best ways to help ensure your digital products serve real users. PWD engagement and feedback is invaluable for understanding how accessible a product truly is and can uncover issues that automated tools or even WCAG conformance guidance might miss. Throughout the process, identify accessibility champions and foster feedback loops to enable actionable and ongoing feedback from PWD. Abide by the principle: “nothing about us without us.”

Here are some web accessibility checklist tasks to act upon:

• Source a diverse group of testers with varying disabilities or conditions for usability studies.
• Use PWD input early in development to inform product accessibility requirements.
• Include accessibility champions or advocates in design and product reviews.
• Conduct user testing to identify, and later document, real-world accessibility pain points.
• Regularly review feedback loops to facilitate PWD voices in decision-making.

7. Use all available tools and resources

Once designs and prototypes are ready, use a blend of automated tools and manual testing to uncover common and nuanced issues. Conduct thorough web accessibility testing across all digital properties (web, iOS/Android, desktop). Automated accessibility testing tools typically only capture 20-40% of issues, so don’t neglect manual validation with assistive technologies like screen readers. To foster a truly accessible experience, partner with a crowdtesting provider like Applause, which can provide access to the people, perspectives, devices, languages, locations and expertise necessary to cover the gaps in your accessibility testing strategy.

Think about these options for this stage:

• Run automated scans using preferred tools.
• Conduct internal accessibility testing to find defects.
• Cover as many user devices and assistive technologies as possible.
• Validate specific outputs like color contrast ratios and accessible markup display as expected on real devices
• Partner with a crowdtesting provider to cover additional testing needs, including specific devices, types of disabilities and geographies.

8. Honor the user experience

It’s important to fix failures, but a great UX doesn’t stop there. What matters most to a user is their experience with a product. Prioritize critical issues that significantly hinder usability for PWD, such as screen reader compatibility or keyboard navigation failures. Web accessibility partners, in concert with real PWD feedback, can provide actionable next steps and detailed bug or usability reports with suggested remediation.

Here are some practical considerations for this step:

• Prioritize issues based on real-world impact, not just severity scores.
• Include contextual remediation guidance in reports.
• Tag accessibility issues by affected assistive technologies or personas.
• Track resolution timelines for high-impact issues affecting usability.
• Include qualitative feedback with screenshots or videos of the issues for context in reports.

9. Achieve conformance with accessibility standards

For businesses aiming to create inclusive and user-friendly digital experiences, lean on resources like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and regulations such as the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and Section 508. These offer important guidance and, in some situations, set clear requirements. Following these guidelines and laws is key to ensuring your technology is accessible to everyone.

To work toward conformance goals, consider these steps:

• Identify existing accessibility barriers and understand how they relate to specific WCAG or EN 301 549 success criteria and relevant regulation clauses.
• Check your alignment with accessibility laws in different regions and globally, such as the EAA, ADA and Section 508.
• Share your organization’s commitment to accessibility and usability by creating an accessibility page on your website.
• Consider publishing an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) or Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) for transparency and to show commitment to accessibility standards.
• Set up a regular schedule for accessibility checks to ensure ongoing conformance.
• Keep a record of any known accessibility issues or limitations, along with the reasons behind them and plans for fixing them.

10. Continuously educate your teams

While this is the final checklist item, it’s a neverending process to build a culture of accessibility. Education should extend beyond developers and designers to include all stakeholders. Empathy sessions with PWD and accessibility training boosts long-term sustainability and continuous improvement. Advise teams on best practices and incorporate them into regular operations. Raise awareness and understanding of digital accessibility within your organization on an ongoing basis, as products, standards, regulations, personnel and attitudes change over time.

Here are some specific actions to take:

• Schedule role-specific accessibility training (design, engineering, QA).
• Distribute monthly or quarterly accessibility newsletters with tips and updates.
• Host accessibility “bug bash” events and/or empathy workshops.
• Track participation and completion of accessibility training programs.
• Create a network for internal accessibility champions to support cross-team adoption.

Partner up to level up

The web accessibility checklist above highlights some broad and high-priority areas. Product leaders, stakeholders and teams must all commit to the ongoing learning process that is accessibility testing. But, as we established, most organizations can’t do it alone. The perspectives of accessibility experts and PWD who represent your user base are essential to create better experiences for everyone.

Applause offers a uniquely valuable approach to accessibility testing, going beyond compliance checks to help brands deliver truly inclusive digital experiences. Our fully managed solution integrates seamlessly with existing development and testing processes, meeting clients wherever they are on their accessibility journey. Applause leverages the world’s largest independent testing community, which includes PWD with diverse disabilities, providing real-world insights and feedback that automated tools and other crowdtesting suppliers cannot match.

Applause brings deep expertise in accessibility standards, regulations and practices, helping organizations not only conform but also understand and implement best practices. Our services include expert-led assessments, conformance reviews, prioritized bug reporting with actionable remediation steps and bug fix verification. Furthermore, Applause emphasizes a shift-left approach, enabling accessibility practices early in the SDLC to prevent costly rework later. A comprehensive and proactive strategy, combined with ongoing education and training services tailored to different teams, fosters a culture of accessibility within our clients’ organizations.

Let’s talk today to tap into our specialized expertise and a diverse testing community that is ready to help you meet your web accessibility goals.