The contestable opposite is the industry norm: ship the site, then add accessibility “in phase 2” if the budget survives. That builds a site that excludes users from day one and never quite catches up. I won’t work that way.
What I do
- Treat WCAG 2.2 AA as the minimum bar for everything I build. Keyboard navigation, screen-reader compatibility, focus management, contrast verification, alternative text — at the start, not the end.
- Quote accessibility into the engagement. It’s not an upsell. It’s part of “build.”
- Test with the tools that catch real issues — axe, WAVE, keyboard-only walkthroughs, NVDA where it matters — not just an automated scan that produces a green thumb and misses the things humans notice.
- For Ontario clients, treat AODA conformance as the legal floor it actually is. Public-sector and large-private-sector sites have an obligation. I name it.
What I decline
- “Looks fine with a mouse” sign-offs.
- Sites where
outline: 0exists without a visible replacement. - Placeholder-only form labels.
- Colour as the only information channel.
- Auto-play media without a stop mechanism.
- PDFs delivered without tags. PDFs are part of the site for accessibility purposes.
- Bolt-on remediation projects where the client doesn’t agree to ongoing standards. Remediation without commitment is a one-time clean of a kitchen that will be filthy again next month.
Why this is the position
Roughly one in four adults has a disability that affects how they use the web. Accessible design helps every one of them and benefits everyone else too — keyboard shortcuts built for screen-reader users serve power users; captions built for the deaf help everyone in a noisy room.
For edu/gov, accessibility is law. The Accessible Canada Act federally and AODA in Ontario set the floor. So does the ADA and Section 508 in the US. Building inaccessible is building something that will need rebuilding.
For commercial work, accessibility is craft. A senior developer who treats accessibility as optional is a developer who hasn’t internalized what “professional” means.
Beneath the law and the craft is a more basic principle: technology is an equalizer. For people navigating mental, physical, or learning struggles, the web is where some of the hardest doors get unstuck — banking, healthcare forms, school portals, job applications, government services. A site I build that locks them out makes their day worse. A site I build that lets them through makes it better. That’s not a bonus deliverable; that’s the whole point of doing this for a living.
Either way, the answer is the same. WCAG 2.2 AA is the floor.
See also
- Every plugin on your site is a roommate. The other side of the buyer-protection coin — what gets installed shapes what users experience.
- WordPress is rarely the wrong tool. On platform quality — accessibility isn't a platform problem, it's a developer problem.
