Which standard applies to us?

Depends on your organisation type, size and jurisdiction. In Ontario, AODA references WCAG at a specific level, and requirements differ for public sector, large private and small private organisations. The audit establishes which applies before anyone quotes remediation.

Can a tool just tell us if we comply?

Automated tools catch perhaps a third of issues and generate false positives on top. They're a useful first pass and not a conformance assessment. Anyone selling you full compliance from a scan is overstating it.

Frequently the largest single problem and the most often overlooked. Documents published on a site are in scope, and remediating a large back-catalogue is sometimes a bigger job than the site itself.

We fixed this two years ago. Why is it broken again?

Because content kept being published. This is the most common story in the category, and it's why training editors and adding checks to the publishing process matters more than the remediation sprint.

AliveCommerce / Capabilities / Meet accessibility rules

Meet accessibility rules

Accessibility obligations arrive with a date attached, which makes them unusual among digital projects. The trap is treating it as a one-time fix. Compliance achieved on a Friday starts degrading the next time someone publishes a page, and most organisations discover this the second time around.

Does this sound like you?

Tick what applies. The count changes what we'd recommend, and sometimes the recommendation is to do nothing yet.

What's actually causing it.

Almost never carelessness. Usually the predictable result of a decision that made sense at the time.

It was scoped as a project

So it was achieved once, signed off, and then content kept being published by people with no training in what would break it.

The design made it structurally hard

Contrast, focus order and semantics are decisions made during design. Retrofitting them afterwards costs several times more than getting them right originally.

Nobody owns it between audits

Like performance and security, accessibility degrades quietly. Without someone watching, the next audit finds most of the same issues as the last one.

What we do about it.

In this order, because doing them out of order is how these projects fail.

Find out where you actually stand

An audit against the standard that applies to you, with issues ranked by severity and by effort. Some things are legally urgent and some are cosmetic, and conflating them wastes money.

Fix the structural issues first

Semantics, focus management, contrast and keyboard access account for most real barriers and most legal exposure. Decorative concerns come later.

Train the people who publish

Most regression comes from content, not code. Editors who understand alt text, heading structure and link text prevent more issues than any remediation sprint.

Keep it from lapsing

Checks in the publishing process and periodic re-testing, so the next audit isn't a repeat of this one.

Audit

2 to 3 weeks

Ranked by severity and effort, fixed price

Remediation

Varies

Depends entirely on what the audit finds

Most common trigger

A deadline

Or a complaint, or a procurement question

Which way in.

Same team either way. The difference is whether this has an ending.

A defined project

AliveCommerce

Audit and remediation with a fixed budget and a date to hit. Including the audit alone if that's what you need to plan with.

AODA and accessibility

Continuous ownership

DARWIN

Accessibility maintained as the site changes rather than achieved once and lost. Part of the web layer being owned continuously.

See DARWIN

What it looks like in practice.

Non-profit · 60 staff · 9 weeks

Compliance achieved twice, lapsed twice

The third time we trained the four people who publish. That fixed more than the remediation did, and it's the part that has held.

regressions since

Straight answers.

Related.

These tend to travel together.

Stop rebuilding the website“Redesigned two years ago. Already dated.”Give customers self-service“The phones ring all day for order status.”Get off paper“Filing cabinets, carbon forms, binders on the shop floor.”

Tell us what's breaking.

We'll tell you which part of this we'd put on it, roughly what it costs, and whether it's worth doing at all — including when the honest answer is that you don't need us.

Start the Conversation

Knowledge and process

Applications and data

Customer and web

Browse by symptom instead

The structure

Continuous ownership

Before you commit

Start with one problem

Priority sectors

Also

Or by situation

Not sure you fit?

Reading

Most read

Proof

Nobody owns the application layer