Accessibility work that starts with your customers
About one in four US adults has a disability. Some of them are trying to buy from you, book with you, or donate to you right now. We build and fix websites so they can, and the legal exposure takes care of itself along the way.
What WCAG is, without the acronym soup
WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It is the international standard for making websites usable by people with disabilities, and it is organized into three levels: A, AA, and AAA. AA is the level almost everyone means when they say a site is accessible.
Here is the version most articles skip. US law and federal procurement currently point at WCAG 2.1 AA. The current published version of the standard is 2.2, which added criteria around focus visibility, dragging, target size, and not making people remember things to finish a task.
We work toward the latest WCAG 2.x AA guidelines. Building to 2.2 satisfies 2.1, so you meet the requirement and you are already positioned for the next time the reference updates.
The guidelines are a measuring stick, not the goal. The goal is that someone using a screen reader, a keyboard, voice control, or 300% zoom can finish what they came to do.
Why this keeps landing on business owners' desks
Two pressures push in the same direction. One is the number of people who cannot use an inaccessible site. The other is the number of lawsuits filed about it.
Your customers already include them
Vision, hearing, motor, and cognitive disabilities are common, and they get more common as your audience ages. An inaccessible checkout does not produce a complaint. It produces a customer who quietly leaves.
The filings keep climbing
Website accessibility claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act have increased every year for most of the last decade. Small businesses are not exempt, and demand letters usually arrive before any lawsuit does.
The bar is a specific one
AA is the level referenced by regulation and by nearly every procurement requirement. We work to the current 2.2 criteria, which covers the 2.1 version the law points at today.
What you receive at the end of an audit
An audit that hands you a scanner export is not worth paying for. Automated tools catch roughly a third of real issues, and they miss almost everything about whether a task can actually be completed. Ours is a manual review with tooling underneath it, and you get three things you can use.
A prioritized list of violations
Each one names the criterion it fails, where it appears, who it affects and how, and what the fix is. Written so your developer can act on it and your director can understand why it matters.
A VPAT
A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template is the standard document that records how your site measures against each criterion. Enterprise buyers, government agencies, and school districts ask for one, and not having it can end a deal before anyone looks at your product.
An accessibility statement
A public page saying what standard you work to, what is known to still be a problem, and how someone can reach a human if they hit a barrier. Honest and specific beats a paragraph of reassurance.
A remediation plan you can schedule
Grouped by effort and impact, so you can fix the things blocking people outright this month and work through the rest over a quarter. We can do the remediation or hand the plan to your team.
Two honest things about accessibility
The first is about overlay widgets. The accessibility button that promises to fix your site with one line of JavaScript does not fix your site. It sits on top of the markup underneath, it frequently makes screen reader output worse, and plenty of the businesses sued over accessibility had one installed. Fixing the underlying pages is the only approach that holds up.
The second is that accessibility is a state your site passes through, not a certificate it earns. A new landing page, a new plugin, or a well-meaning content edit can reintroduce a barrier next month. That is why we build it into how pages get made and hand your team the habits, rather than doing a one-time sweep and leaving.
Questions we get about this
- Will my site be WCAG AA compliant after working with you?
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For most engagements, yes. For some engagements, usually when legacy code or third-party platforms make full remediation cost-prohibitive in one pass, the realistic outcome is a documented plan that moves you toward AA over time. We let you know what's most likely for your situation before the work starts.
- What is the difference between WCAG 2.1 and 2.2, and which do I need?
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WCAG 2.2 is the current version. It keeps everything in 2.1 and adds criteria covering focus visibility, dragging alternatives, minimum target size, consistent help, and not requiring people to remember information to complete a task.
US legal and procurement references currently point at 2.1 AA. We work toward the latest 2.x AA guidelines, which means building to 2.2. That satisfies the 2.1 requirement today and leaves you ready when the reference moves.
- Is accessibility legally required for my business?
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It depends on your business and where you operate. The ADA applies broadly to places of public accommodation, and courts have increasingly interpreted that to include websites, but the specifics matter. We can give you a general read in a free consultation. For certainty specific to your situation, talk to a lawyer.
- What is a VPAT, and do I need one?
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A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template is a standard document that records how your website or product measures against each accessibility criterion, including where it falls short.
You need one if you sell to government agencies, universities, school districts, or large enterprises, because their procurement teams ask for it and a missing VPAT can end a deal early. We produce one as part of an accessibility audit.
- Do accessibility overlay widgets work?
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No, and we will not install one for you. Overlay widgets add a script on top of your existing markup and try to correct problems in the browser. They regularly make screen reader output worse, they cannot fix the underlying structure, and a large share of businesses facing accessibility claims had one running at the time.
Fixing the pages themselves is slower and it is the approach that actually helps your customers.
- What if my site is built on a platform we can't fully control?
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We work with what is controllable and document what is not. Even on locked-down platforms, meaningful improvement is usually available in the content layer, template overrides, and configuration. The audit report will tell you clearly what is fixable and what is a platform constraint.
Want to know what your site is like to use with a keyboard?
Book a free consultation and we will walk one real journey on your site together, the way a customer using assistive technology would. That is usually enough to tell you whether you need a full audit, targeted remediation, or a few fixes.
You will get a straight answer either way, including if the answer is that you are in decent shape.