Accessibility Archives - Page 2 of 27/Tag

How to Test Mobile Accessibility using TalkBack

It is easy to rely on your eyes when reviewing a mobile site. A quick glance, a few taps, and the page seems fine. But that view is incomplete. Many users experience mobile content through audio, and their path through a page can sound very different from what you expect.

Android’s screen reader, TalkBack, helps bridge that gap by letting you hear how your site behaves without visual cues. If you want to test mobile accessibility with TalkBack in a way that fits real development work, this article shares a practical approach to weaving screen reader testing into your ongoing process so issues surface earlier and mobile interactions stay dependable. It is written for teams who already know the basics of accessibility and WCAG and want more structured, repeatable mobile web accessibility testing.

What TalkBack Is and Why It Matters for Mobile Accessibility Testing

TalkBack is the screen reader that ships with Android devices. When it is enabled, it announces elements on the screen, their roles, and their states. It also replaces direct visual targeting with swipes, taps, and other gestures so people can move through pages without relying on sight.

Testing with this tool shows how your site appears to the Android accessibility layer. You hear whether headings follow a sensible order, whether regions are exposed as landmarks, and whether labels give enough context when they are spoken on their own. You also get a clear sense of how focus moves as people swipe through the page, open menus, and submit forms.

Small problems stand out more when they are spoken. A vague link, a control with no name, or a jumpy focus path can feel minor when you are looking at the page. Through audio, those same issues can turn into confusion and fatigue.

Screen readers on other platforms use different gestures and sometimes expose content in slightly different ways. VoiceOver on iOS and desktop tools such as NVDA or JAWS have their own rules and patterns. That is why this approach treats Android’s screen reader as one important view into accessibility, not a substitute for cross-screen-reader testing.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) requirements still apply in the same way across devices. On mobile, the impact of focus order, input behavior, and gesture alternatives becomes more obvious because users are often holding the device with one hand, on smaller screens, and in busy environments.

Preparing Your Device for Effective Screen Reader Testing

A stable device setup makes your testing more dependable over time. You do not need anything complex. An Android phone or tablet, the browser your users rely on, and a space where you can hear the speech clearly are enough. Headphones can help if your office or home is noisy.

Before you run your first pass, spend a few minutes in the screen reader’s settings. Adjust the speech rate until you can follow long sessions without strain. Set pitch and voice in a way that feels natural to you, and confirm that language and voice match the primary language of your site. These details matter during longer test sessions.

Different Android versions and manufacturers sometimes change labels or menu layouts. A Samsung phone may not match a Pixel device exactly. You do not need to chase the perfect configuration. What helps most is using one setup consistently so that your results are comparable from sprint to sprint. That consistency also makes your Android screen reader testing easier to repeat.

Enabling and Disabling TalkBack Without Breaking Your Flow

You can turn the screen reader on through the Accessibility section in system settings. For regular work, it is worth taking the extra step to set up a shortcut. Many teams use the volume-key shortcut or the on-screen accessibility button so they can toggle the feature in a couple of seconds.

That quick toggle becomes important during development. You might review a component visually, enable the screen reader, test it again, turn the reader off, adjust the code, and then repeat. If enabling and disabling feels slow or clumsy, it becomes harder to keep this step in your routine.

There is a small learning curve. With the screen reader active, most standard gestures use two fingers. You also need to know how to pause speech and how to suspend the service if it becomes stuck. Practicing these motions for a few minutes pays off. Once they are familiar, switching the screen reader on and off feels like a normal part of testing, not an interruption.

Core TalkBack Gestures You Actually Need for Testing

You do not need every gesture to run useful tests. A small set covers most of what matters for web content. Swiping right moves forward through focusable items. Swiping left moves backward. Double-tapping activates the element that currently has focus. Touching and sliding your finger on the screen lets you explore what sits under your finger.

Begin with simple linear navigation. Start at the top of the page and move through each item in order. Ask yourself whether the reading order matches the visual layout. Listen for buttons, links, and controls that do not make sense when heard out of context, such as “Button” with no name or several “Learn more” links with no extra detail. Pay attention to roles and states, like “checked,” “expanded,” or “menu,” and whether they appear where they should.

This pace will feel slower than visual scanning. That slowness helps you notice gaps in labeling, structure, and focus behavior that you might skip over with your eyes.

Using Menus to Navigate by Structure

After you are comfortable moving element by element, the screen reader’s menus help you explore structure more directly. There are two menus that matter most. One controls general reading options and system actions. The other lets you move by headings, links, landmarks, and controls.

Turn on navigation by headings and walk the hierarchy. You should hear a clear outline of the page as you move. Missing levels, unclear section names, or long stretches with no headings at all are signals that your structure may not be helping nonvisual users.

Next, move by landmarks. This reveals whether your regions, such as header, main, navigation, and footer, are present and used in a way that matches the layout. Finally, scan links and controls in sequence. Duplicate or vague link text stands out when you hear it in a list. Controls with incomplete labeling do as well.

These structural passes do more than make navigation easier for screen reader users. They also reflect how well your content model and component library support accessible use across the site.

A Repeatable First-Pass Screen Reader Workflow

You do not need to run a full audit on every page. A light but steady workflow is easier to sustain and still catches a large share of issues.

When you review a new page or a major change, enable the screen reader and let it read from the top so you can hear how the page begins. Then move through the page in order and note any confusing labels, skipped content, or unexpected jumps. Once you have that baseline, use heading navigation to check hierarchy, and landmark navigation to check regions. Finally, move through links and controls to spot unclear text and missing names.

Along the way, keep track of patterns. Maybe icon buttons from one component set are often missing labels, or error messages on forms rarely announce. These patterns make it easier to fix groups of issues at the design system level instead of one page at a time. This kind of manual accessibility testing becomes more efficient once you know which components tend to fail.

High-Impact Scenarios to Test More Deeply

Some parts of a mobile site deserve more focused time because they carry more weight for users and for the business.

Forms and inputs should always have clear labels, including fields that are required or have special formats. Error messages need to be announced at the right time, and focus should move to a helpful place when validation fails.

Navigation elements such as menus and drawers should announce when they open or close. Focus should shift into them when they appear and return to a sensible point when they are dismissed. Modals and other dynamic content should trap focus while active and hand it back cleanly when they close. Status updates like loading indicators and confirmation messages should be announced without forcing users to hunt for them.

Mobile-specific patterns also matter. Features that rely on swiping, such as carousels or card stacks, should include alternative controls that work with focus and activation gestures. Optional Bluetooth keyboard testing on tablets and phones can provide extra confidence for users who pair a keyboard with their device.

Capturing Findings and Making TalkBack Testing Sustainable

Bringing TalkBack into your workflow is one of those small shifts that pays off quickly. It helps you catch problems earlier, tighten the way your components behave, and build mobile experiences that hold up under real use. A few minutes of listening during each release can surface issues no visual check or automated scan will ever flag.

If you want support building a screen reader testing process that fits the way your team ships work, we can help. At 216digital, we work with teams to fold WCAG 2.1 and practical mobile testing into a development roadmap that respects time, resources, and existing workflows. To explore how our experts can help you maintain a more accessible and dependable mobile experience, schedule a complementary ADA Strategy Briefing today.

Greg McNeil

January 9, 2026

How-to Guides, Testing & Remediation

Accessibility, Accessibility testing, screen readers, TalkBack, user testing, Website Accessibility

What a WCAG Audit Should Really Tell You

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide a shared language for evaluating digital accessibility. WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the most widely accepted benchmark for audits today, and it gives teams a clear way to identify barriers that affect people with disabilities.

But the presence of a standard alone does not guarantee a useful outcome.

Many teams audit against WCAG and still walk away unsure what to do next. The report may confirm that issues exist, but it does not always make it clear which ones matter most, how they affect real use, or how to move from findings to fixes without derailing existing work.

Using WCAG well means treating it as a framework, not a checklist. A meaningful audit uses WCAG to identify barriers, then interprets those barriers through real interaction. It looks at how people move through the site, where they get blocked, and which issues create the most friction or risk.

A WCAG Audit should not leave your team with a document to archive. It should give you direction that your team can act on.

This article looks at what a WCAG audit should actually tell you, so you can tell the difference between a report that gets filed away and one that helps your team make progress.

Defining the Scope: What a Meaningful WCAG Audit Should Cover

Accessibility issues rarely live on a single page. They show up in the places where users try to get something done. That is why scope matters so much.

A strong WCAG Audit goes beyond the homepage and a small page sample. It focuses on the paths people rely on most.

That typically includes login and account access, checkout or registration flows, high-impact forms, and areas with complex components like filters, modals, or carousels. These are the places where barriers are most likely to stop progress.

Scope should also account for responsive behavior. A flow that works on desktop but breaks on mobile is still a broken experience.

The audit should clearly state which WCAG version and level are being used, what content types are included, and what is explicitly out of scope. This is not a formality. It prevents confusion later and helps teams plan ahead.

How Testing Is Approached in a WCAG Audit

Most teams have seen scan results before. What they need from an audit is testing that reflects how the site behaves during use, especially in the flows that matter.

A strong audit looks beyond surface-level scans and focuses on how people actually use the site. That means testing key user journeys, not just isolated pages. Login flows, checkout, forms, account access, and other critical interactions should be part of the scope from the start.

Automated and Manual Testing Work Together

Automation plays a role, but it is only the starting point. Automated tools are useful for catching patterns like missing labels or contrast failures at scale. They cannot fully evaluate keyboard behavior, focus order, screen reader output, or how dynamic components behave during real interaction.

That is why manual testing matters. Human review confirms whether users can move through key flows using a keyboard, whether focus is visible and predictable, and whether assistive technologies announce content in a way that makes sense. This is often where the most disruptive barriers appear.

Real Environments Should Be Part of the Picture

You should also expect clarity around what environments were tested. Not every detail needs to be exhaustive, but the audit should make it clear that testing included real browsers, real devices, and real interaction patterns.

That level of detail builds confidence in the results. It also makes future validation easier, especially after fixes ship.

Understanding WCAG References Without Getting Lost

Most audit reports include success criteria numbers. Those references can feel dense at first, but they are useful once you know what they are doing.

WCAG is organized around four core principles.

Perceivable
Operable
Understandable
Robust

Those principles are reflected in the numbering you see in audit findings. WCAG findings often reference specific success criteria using numbered labels, and that structure helps with traceability and research.

For example, a reference to 2.1.1 points to the Operable principle and the requirement that all functionality be available from a keyboard. When many issues begin with the same first number, it often signals a broader category of barriers.

If a large portion of findings start with 2, teams are often dealing with Operable issues like keyboard access, focus management, or navigation flow. If they start with 1, the barriers may relate more to visual presentation or non-text content.

This context helps teams spot patterns early and understand where to focus. It also helps frame accessibility work around user experience instead of isolated fixes.

How a WCAG Audit Turns Issues Into Action

This is where audits either earn their value or lose it. Identifying accessibility problems is only useful if teams can understand them quickly and decide what to do next without getting overwhelmed.

Issues Should Be Clear Enough to Fix Without Follow-Up

Describe each barrier in a way that lets developers fix it without a long clarification thread, and in a way that helps non-engineers understand why it matters.

When issues lack location detail or rely on generic guidance, teams end up doing detective work. That slows progress and increases the chance that fixes address symptoms instead of the underlying barrier.

Here is what a usable issue write-up should include.

Issue element	What it answers	Why it matters
Description	What is wrong in the interface	Prevents misinterpretation
Location	Where it happens	Speeds up debugging
WCAG mapping	Which criterion applies	Supports traceability
Evidence	Screenshot or code note	Confirms accuracy
Steps to reproduce	How to verify and re-test	Enables validation
Impact	Who is affected and how	Guides prioritization
Recommendation	How to fix it	Turns issues into tickets

Severity and Frequency Should Guide What Gets Fixed First

Not every issue carries the same weight, and a good audit makes that clear. Severity should reflect user impact, not just whether a technical standard was violated.

Severity	What it usually means	Common example
Critical	Blocks a key task	Keyboard trap during checkout
High	Major usability failure	Required form fields not labeled
Medium	Friction that adds up	Repeated unclear link text
Low	Minor issues	Redundant label on a low-traffic page

Two patterns tend to show up in almost every audit.

The most harm usually comes from a small number of blocking issues. A report may list hundreds of medium findings, but just a few critical ones can stop people from completing the actions the site is meant to support. A single keyboard trap in checkout or a form error that fails to announce itself can halt users before they finish the site’s primary task.

Second, large issue counts often point to shared components or templates. When the same problem appears across many pages, fixing the underlying pattern once can improve accessibility across the site far more efficiently than addressing each instance in isolation.

When severity and frequency are considered together, teams can focus on what reduces risk and improves usability. The audit stops feeling like a list of problems and starts functioning as a practical plan teams can follow.

Accessibility Beyond the Checklist

Meeting WCAG criteria is important, but technical alignment alone does not guarantee a usable experience.

Teams run into this often. A site can pass certain checks and still feel confusing or difficult to navigate. Focus order may follow the DOM, but it feels chaotic. Labels may exist, but fail to provide useful context when read aloud.

A strong WCAG Audit explains not just what fails, but how those failures affect people using assistive technology. That perspective helps teams design fixes that improve usability, not just conformance.

This approach also supports risk reduction. Many accessibility-related legal actions stem from barriers that prevent people from completing core tasks. Audits that connect findings to user experience help organizations focus on what matters most.

Reporting, Tracking, and Measuring Progress

A report is only helpful if people can use it.

Leadership needs a high-level summary of themes, priorities, and risks. Development teams need detailed findings grouped by component or template. Designers and content teams need examples and guidance they can apply in their work without guesswork.

A good audit also creates a baseline. It documents what was tested, what was found, and what needs to be addressed. That record supports follow-up validation and demonstrates ongoing effort.

Accessibility is not a one-time event. Teams benefit most when audits are treated as part of a cycle that includes improvements, validation, and monitoring.

Turning a WCAG Audit into Real Risk Mitigation

A WCAG Audit should give you insight and direction, not just a compliance score. The most valuable audits help you understand what barriers matter most, which issues pose the biggest risk for your users and your organization, and how to reduce that risk in a measurable way.

At 216digital, we specialize in ADA risk mitigation and ongoing support. Rather than treating audits as stand-alone checklists, we help teams interpret findings, connect those findings to user impact, and turn them into prioritized fixes that reduce exposure to accessibility-related legal risk and improve the experience for people with disabilities. That means working with you to sequence fixes, support implementation where needed, and make accessibility progress part of your product workflow.

If your team has an audit report and you’re unsure how to move from findings to meaningful action, we invite you to schedule a complimentary ADA Strategy Briefing. In this session, we’ll help you understand your current risk profile, clarify priorities rooted in the audit, and develop a strategy to integrate WCAG 2.1 compliance into your development roadmap on your terms.

Accessibility isn’t a one-off project. It is ongoing work that pays dividends in usability, audience reach, brand trust, and reduced legal exposure. When you’re ready to make your audit actionable and strategic, we’re here to help.

Greg McNeil

January 8, 2026

Testing & Remediation, Web Accessibility Remediation

Accessibility, Accessibility Audit, WCAG, WCAG Audit, WCAG Compliance, Website Accessibility

WCAG Level A Is the Floor, Not the Finish Line
A question comes up on almost every digital team at some point: “Is our site accessible?”

The answer is often a hesitant, “We think so.” That pause tells you a lot.

Accessibility often breaks down behind the scenes. When it’s missing, the gaps aren’t always obvious. A site can look great but still block people with disabilities from basic tasks, like filling out a form or using a menu. These issues may go unnoticed by sighted mouse users, creating false confidence.

WCAG Level A marks the point at which those hidden gaps become visible. It sets the minimum conditions a website must meet to be functionally usable by people with disabilities, well before higher standards come into play. When those conditions are missing, even well-intended experiences can fall apart.

We will take a closer look at what WCAG Level A covers, the barriers teams often miss, and how teams can start building accessibility best practices into lasting changes.

A Quick Refresher on WCAG and the Three Levels

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of technical standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They are based on established accessibility principles and how people with disabilities use digital products.

WCAG defines three levels of conformance.
- Level A is the baseline. It addresses the most critical barriers that prevent people with disabilities from using a site at all.
- Level AA builds on that foundation and is the most common target for web accessibility compliance. It introduces requirements that improve clarity, consistency, and overall usability across experiences.
- Level AAA is used selectively, with teams applying it to specific content or features rather than to an entire website.
Some organizations write off Level A as “bare minimum,” yet it sets the groundwork that enables meaningful access from the start. Without it, screen reader users miss essential information, keyboard users cannot complete core tasks, and people with cognitive or seizure-related disabilities face real risk. Every credible WCAG compliance effort relies on teams putting this foundation in place.

The Four Principles of WCAG

WCAG organizes its guidance around four principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. At this level, each principle speaks to its core purpose—determining whether people can access the content in the first place.

Perceivable

Perceivable requirements ensure that essential information is available in at least one usable form. Content cannot rely solely on vision or hearing.

For example, an image used as a submit button must have text that identifies its purpose. Without an accessible name, a screen reader user may encounter the control but have no way to know what it does.

Operable

Operable requirements focus on whether users can interact with the interface using basic input methods, including a keyboard.

A common failure is a navigation menu that works with a mouse but cannot be accessed or exited using a keyboard. When this happens, users may be unable to reach large portions of the site.

Understandable

Understandable requirements address whether controls and interactions behave in predictable ways.

For instance, a form submit button that unexpectedly opens a new window can disorient users, particularly those relying on assistive technology, by disrupting their sense of location and task flow.

Robust

Robust requirements cover whether the underlying code communicates structure and purpose in a way that assistive technology can interpret reliably.

A typical issue is a custom button built from a generic element that lacks an exposed role or name. Visually, it may function as intended, but assistive technology cannot recognize or announce it as an interactive control.

Together, these requirements form the backbone of WCAG. They are about doing the fundamentals well and doing them consistently.

Why WCAG Level A Is Not Optional

Level A failures are not subtle. They prevent use entirely. A job application cannot be submitted because form fields lack labels. A navigation menu only responds to hover. A modal traps focus with no clear way out. In each case, the experience does not degrade—it stops.

The impact is immediate. Users are blocked, tasks are abandoned, and opportunities are lost. These are not edge cases or rare scenarios. They are common patterns that surface whenever foundational accessibility is missing.

Accessibility complaints often arise from these same breakdowns. Regulators may reference Level AA, but users typically report Level A failures because they cannot complete essential actions. When users lose access at this level, the compliance risk escalates quickly.

The same failures appear in analytics and support queues. Abandoned carts, failed logins, repeated help requests—signals of friction that affect far more than assistive technology users. Addressing these barriers improves usability broadly, not incidentally.

Technically, the cost of ignoring WCAG Level A grows over time. When foundational components are inaccessible, every feature built on top inherits the same limitations. Fixing the system once is more durable than correcting the same issue across dozens of pages later.

Level A is not a stepping stone to be revisited. It is the structural layer that everything else depends on.

Common WCAG Level A Failures Teams Miss

Level A failures are not edge cases. They show up in everyday templates and long-standing components—the ones teams trust because they have shipped for years. That familiarity is exactly why they keep flying under the radar.

Alt Text That Breaks Meaning

Alt text problems are still among the most frequent Level A misses. Sometimes it is missing entirely. Other times, it is present but unhelpful—either adding noise or failing to convey what the image is doing on the page. The result is the same: essential context is lost.

Forms Users Cannot Complete

Forms reveal WCAG Level A gaps immediately. Unclear or unconnected labels, visual-only instructions, and error messages that assistive technology cannot reliably interpret all come from choices teams make during implementation. When those choices break the form, the user loses more than convenience—they lose the task.

Keyboard Interaction That Is Assumed

Keyboard access is often treated as implied rather than verified. Interactive components work on click, but do not behave correctly with Tab, Enter, arrow keys, or focus. When focus is missing or trapped, the experience stops being difficult and starts being unusable.

Behavior That Changes Without Warning

Unexpected context changes—new tabs, automatic actions, sudden focus shifts—create confusion and increase failure rates, especially for users relying on assistive technology or predictable navigation patterns.

Because these failures stem from foundational components, solving them is not a detail or afterthought—it is the main act of accessibility. Closing these gaps is where accessibility starts, and credibility is built.

How to See Where You Stand Today

Start with core user flows rather than isolated pages. Login, checkout, account creation, and contact forms are where accessibility shifts from principle to outcome. If these paths fail, the experience fails, regardless of how polished individual pages may appear.

From there, automated tools can help surface clear, repeatable issues such as missing alternative text or improper form labeling. These tools are useful for identifying patterns, but they capture only a portion of the accessibility barriers.

Manual evaluation covers the remaining gaps. Spend a few minutes moving through the page using only a keyboard. Then run a screen reader yourself and listen closely to how it announces headings, links, buttons, and form fields.

When you spot a problem, write it up in a way that helps teams act on it—location, element, and what the user would encounter. Group similar items together and flag barriers that carry the most weight. It keeps the backlog readable and the decisions straightforward.

A Practical Path to WCAG Level A, and Staying There

Start by fixing barriers that completely block access. Address forms that won’t submit, buttons that won’t activate, and keyboard traps first.

Momentum builds when teams stop treating issues as isolated defects and start addressing the underlying patterns that cause them.

Address Issues at the Pattern Level

Design systems and component libraries should make accessible buttons, forms, and navigation the default, not the exception.

Give Teams Clear Guidance

Content creators need direction on headings and alternative text. Designers need to plan interactions that work without a mouse. Developers should rely on semantic HTML and apply ARIA only when necessary.

Build Accessibility Into Daily Workflows

Keyboard-only checks during QA and brief screen reader testing during reviews help prevent regressions as sites evolve.

Revisit Regularly

Accessibility is ongoing, especially as content and features change. Use continuous scanning and reporting to help maintain compliance and stay ahead of risks.

Building a Confident Accessibility Foundation

WCAG Level A is where accessibility moves from assumption to certainty. It addresses the barriers that stop people cold and replaces them with a foundation that teams can actually build on. The work is focused, the outcomes are clear, and progress is far more attainable than it is often made out to be.

This level rewards steady attention rather than sweeping overhauls. When teams start with the flows that matter most and fix what prevents completion, accessibility begins to hold. Those early corrections shape better components, stronger patterns, and fewer regressions as sites evolve.

At 216digital, we can help develop a strategy to integrate WCAG 2.1 compliance into your development roadmap on your terms. To learn more about how our experts can help you confidently create and maintain an accessible website that supports both your business goals and the people who rely on it, schedule a complementary ADA Strategy Briefing.
Greg McNeil

December 29, 2025

WCAG Compliance

Accessibility, Level A, WCAG, WCAG 2.1, WCAG Compliance, WCAG conformance, Web Accessibility, Website Accessibility
Making Web Accessibility a “Must Do,” Not a “Should Do”
Most teams do not ignore web accessibility. In fact, many agree it matters. It comes up in planning meetings. Someone flags it during backlog management. There is real intent behind the conversation.

But as the sprint fills up and deadlines stay firm, accessibility often gets pushed to a later date.

This isn’t about a lack of concern or values. It’s a result of how teams deliver work. When digital accessibility isn’t part of daily planning, building, and review, it gets treated as optional, even if everyone agrees it matters. Anything seen as “extra” has to compete with deadlines, staffing, and budgets, so it often gets sidelined.

Accessibility becomes non-negotiable only when it is handled the same way as quality. Not as a special initiative. Not as a periodic clean-up. But as a built-in part of how a website is designed, developed, tested, and maintained—every release, every sprint, every time.

Why Web Accessibility Still Gets Pushed Back

Digital teams are used to jumping on problems that cause obvious issues. If a site goes down, revenue drops. A security problem puts the business at risk. A broken checkout shows up almost immediately in the data. Those situations force action because the consequences are hard to miss.

Accessibility doesn’t work like that. There are rarely moments that demand attention, so it’s easy for them to slip into the “we’ll get to it” category. And because it is often framed as serving a smaller group, it can get pushed aside in favor of work tied to short-term KPIs. That framing is also inaccurate. CDC data shows more than 1 in 4 adults in the United States, about 28.7%, report having a disability. The World Health Organization estimates 1.3 billion people worldwide experience significant disability.

Many Barriers End in Abandonment

A keyboard user tries to open a menu but can’t without a mouse. A screen reader user finds a button with no name. A customer turns on captions for a product video, but they’re missing, so the details are lost.

Most of these users don’t report the problem. They just leave.

That’s why accessibility is hard to prioritize. The impact doesn’t show up as a big failure. Instead, it looks like a session that ends early, a form that’s never submitted, or a customer who doesn’t return.

From the team’s point of view, nothing seems broken. There’s no error alert or support ticket. Without seeing where someone got stuck, these moments blend into the background and are often mistaken for minor issues instead of real barriers.

“Make It Accessible” Is Not a Plan

Accessibility often stalls not because teams think it’s unimportant, but because there’s no clear agreement on what “done” means or who is responsible.

When teams get a vague instruction like “make it accessible,” it’s open to interpretation. Some think it means a full redesign, while others believe a quick automated scan is enough. Without a clear, shared definition, the work either grows too big for the sprint or gets put off.

At the same time, accessibility rarely belongs to a single role. Designers shape visual clarity and interaction patterns. Engineers handle structure, semantics, and keyboard use. Content teams shape meaning and flow. QA checks what gets validated. Legal and procurement may focus on ADA website compliance and risk exposure. When responsibility is spread without coordination, urgency fades.

Progress begins when teams agree on a clear definition of what needs to work and make sure responsibility is visible so it doesn’t get lost.

What Waiting Costs

Putting off accessibility might seem easier because it saves work now, but the cost grows over time. If accessibility isn’t built in, new features can repeat the same mistakes.

This is also where teams get caught off guard by scope. Small issues don’t stay small when they repeat. A missing focus style isn’t just one bug—it shows up across buttons, menus, and modals. If teams use different form label approaches, users get inconsistent experiences and more drop-offs. When a design system has low contrast or unclear states, every new feature inherits those problems.

Support Load and Operational Friction Add Up

Inaccessible experiences cause repeated problems. People can’t submit forms, open modals, or finish purchases. Each time, someone has to help, or the customer leaves.

Either way, the cost keeps coming back until the main problem is fixed. Usually, it’s a small set of recurring issues. WebAIM’s 2024 report shows these patterns are common on home pages: missing form input labels (48.6%), empty links (44.6%), and empty buttons (28.2%). These are not abstract WCAG compliance concerns. They interrupt basic tasks and create friction that never fully goes away until the underlying pattern is fixed.

Brand Trust Erodes in Subtle Ways

When a site excludes people, the message is clear: you weren’t considered. That’s hard to accept with today’s expectations for inclusion, service, and care.

Research like the UK ‘Click-Away Pound findings suggests many shoppers with access needs will leave when a site is difficult to use.

Even for organizations that are not values-led on the surface, trust still matters. It affects retention, referrals, and how people talk about you when you are not in the room.

Teams Burn Out on “Not Yet”

Many organizations have people who champion accessibility. They write tickets, share resources, and speak up in reviews. But when their efforts keep getting delayed, motivation drops.

Over time, this effort becomes exhausting. You might lose the people who care most, or keep them but risk burning them out. When that happens, it’s harder to restart web accessibility work because you lose momentum and context.

Pressure Creates Rushed Work

Legal risk is always present, and teams are aware of it. In 2024, UsableNet reported over 4,000 ADA lawsuits related to digital properties. Even when a complaint comes in, organizations still feel pressure to fix accessibility after the fact. Reactive remediation leads to rushed fixes and recurring problems because there’s no system to prevent the same issues from recurring.

Reframing Web Accessibility as a Shipping Standard

Making accessibility a shipping standard changes the conversation. It replaces vague intentions with clear steps: what needs to work, how teams check it, and how progress is kept up as the product grows.

This doesn’t mean you have to do everything at once. It means starting with practical steps, prioritizing based on real user impact, and building a workflow that fits your usual process. That way, web accessibility becomes part of the roadmap instead of competing with it.

A Practical Path That Makes Progress Visible (Without Blowing Up Scope)

Start With Critical Journeys, Not “The Whole Site”

One reason accessibility efforts stall is confusion about scope. “Make the site accessible” can sound like a total rebuild, so teams either over-plan or don’t start at all.

Instead, start with a few key user journeys that carry the most risk—those that drive revenue, support, or important tasks. For most organizations, these include:
- Site navigation and global layout
- Search and filtering
- Account creation and login
- Checkout or lead forms
- Support and onboarding workflows
The goal isn’t to audit everything at once. It’s to make sure those journeys work with a keyboard and assistive technology, then remove any barriers that stop users from finishing tasks.

Turn Findings Into a Short Priority List Teams Can Act On

Automated tools help catch common issues and prevent regressions, but a raw report isn’t a plan. A scan just signals where to look.

A plan is a short list of issues tied to user impact in the journeys you chose. For example:
- A filter toggle with no accessible name slows or blocks product discovery.
- A modal that traps focus breaks flow and can strand users mid-checkout.
- A form error that is not announced turns submission into guesswork.
When findings are framed as “what breaks the task,” teams can prioritize them the same way they would any product defect: what blocks completion gets fixed first.

Create a Leadership Snapshot So the Work Stays Funded

Web accessibility is easier to support when it’s concrete. A one-page summary that shows:
- The top blockers in each critical journey
- Impact (who it blocks and where)
- Effort (quick fix vs. component refactor)
- The handful of component-level changes that remove repeated failures
…gives leaders something they can schedule and staff. It changes the conversation from “we should” to “we can.”

Fix Patterns, Not Pages

Momentum builds when you fix shared components and templates, since one improvement appears everywhere. High-impact targets usually include:
- Modals, drawers, menus, and focus behavior
- Form inputs, labels, errors, and validation patterns
- Buttons, links, and interactive controls with missing/unclear names
- Contrast failures on primary actions and key UI states
This is how accessibility debt shrinks quickly: fix a form component once, and you reduce friction across checkout, registration, support, and lead generation.

Define a Release Floor That Fits Normal Delivery

A release floor keeps web accessibility from slipping back into the backlog after a big push. It also gives teams a shared definition of “done” for new UI, without making it an endless checklist.

A practical release floor is short and repeatable:
- Core flows are keyboard navigable and have visible focus.
- Forms have labels and usable error recovery (not just red text).
- Interactive components have accessible names, roles, and predictable behavior.
- New videos include captions.
- Key actions meet contrast requirements.
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s to stop avoidable barriers from reaching production.

A 90-Day Path That Builds Momentum Without Burnout

Days 1–30: Baseline the Journeys That Matter

Test the key journeys using keyboard navigation and a screen reader for important areas such as forms, navigation, and checkout. Use automation to find repeated issues, but focus on what affects tasks most. List the shared components that are involved.

Also, assign someone to own the release floor and component fixes. Without a clear owner, issues tend to drift.

Days 31–60: Remediate the Highest-Impact Components

Focus on shared components that cause repeated problems, like dialogs, menus, form patterns, error messages, focus management, and key contrast areas. This is the quickest way to make real progress without increasing scope.

Days 61–90: Add Guardrails So Progress Sticks

Make it harder for regressions to slip through by adding simple QA checks on key flows, setting accessibility expectations in code reviews, and monitoring for new issues early. This is how accessibility becomes a regular practice.

From “Someday” to “Starting Now”

If web accessibility has been in your backlog for years, you don’t need a huge overhaul to start. Pick one important journey, find the main blockers, fix those components and templates, and set a release floor so the same issues don’t come back next sprint.

That’s how accessibility stops being a push and becomes part of the way teams deliver.

If your team needs support defining scope, prioritizing risk, and building a process that holds up over time, 216digital helps organizations run targeted evaluations, remediate at the component level, and maintain progress through ongoing monitoring and guidance.

To learn more about how the ADA experts at 216digital can help build an ADA WCAG 2.1 compliance strategy to achieve ongoing, real-world accessibility on your terms, schedule an ADA Strategy Briefing.
Greg McNeil

December 24, 2025

Web Accessibility Remediation

Accessibility, ADA Website Compliance, Benefits of Web Accessibility, business case for web accessibility, Small Business, Web Accessibility, Website Accessibility
Do You Really Need a VPAT? Here’s the Truth
It often starts the same way. A deal is moving. The product demo went well. Everyone feels good. Then procurement steps in and asks for one document, and the tone shifts.

“Can you send your VPAT?”

Now the sales thread pauses. Someone forwards the request to engineering. Someone else pulls up a template they have never seen before. A smart team that knows accessibility basics still feels stuck, because nobody seems able to answer the question behind the question.

Here is the tension most teams run into. Legally, that document is not always required. Practically, the market can act like it is. And that pressure can lead to rushed paperwork that helps no one.

So let’s answer the thing people avoid saying clearly. You do not need this document just because someone asked for it. You need it when it serves a real purpose in how your product is bought, reviewed, and trusted. We will walk through how to tell the difference, and how to handle accessibility documentation with confidence.

VPAT and ACR, Untangled

First, some quick clarity, because the terms get mixed up constantly.

The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template is the blank form. The Accessibility Conformance Report is the completed report that comes out of it. Procurement teams often ask for “the template” when they mean the finished report. Vendors often say “report” when they mean the template. Everyone nods anyway, and confusion grows.

The word voluntary matters, too. This is not a certification. There is no official stamp. No agency signs off. It is your organization describing how your product supports accessibility standards such as WCAG, Section 508, or EN 301 549.

A strong report does three things well.
- Reviewers address each criterion line by line, so they have exactly what they need without guesswork.
- Teams apply support levels accurately, using “Supports,” “Partially Supports,” and “Does Not Support” as intended.
- Evaluators describe user impact clearly in the remarks, where the real credibility of the evaluation comes through.
What it should not do is pretend to be a legal shield. It is also not a glossy sales brochure. And it is not something you can publish once and forget, because products change. Accessibility changes with them.

When a VPAT Is Expected

There are a few places where accessibility documentation shifts from “nice to have” to “we cannot move forward without it.”

Selling to U.S. federal agencies is the clearest example. Section 508 procurement relies on accessibility conformance reporting as part of how agencies evaluate information and communication technology. Some state and local government contracts mirror that approach, even when the rules are not written the same way.

Higher education adds its own pressure. Many universities enforce procurement policies that require digital accessibility. Their teams actively request documentation from vendors, and internal reviewers know exactly what to check and how to evaluate it.

Large enterprises can be just as strict. Accessibility is frequently bundled into vendor due diligence alongside security, privacy, and compliance. In that environment, the question is less “Do we believe you care about accessibility?” and more “Can we document what we are buying and what the risk looks like?”

This is also where the market has matured. A decade ago, some buyers accepted any report that looked official. Today, many teams have seen too many vague statements and too many copy-pasted claims. Stakeholders expect details, supported testing, and remarks grounded in real behavior.

This is why a VPAT request can feel so urgent. It is not always about the law. It is often about procurement habits and risk management.

The Risk of Treating Documentation Like a Formality

When teams feel rushed, the instinct is to make the report look clean. That is when trouble starts.

A report that marks “Supports” across the board looks impressive at a glance, but it often raises questions for anyone experienced. Most real products have some partial support, even if the overall experience is strong. A perfect-looking report can read as unrealistic.

Overclaiming is where risk grows. If your report says keyboard navigation is supported, but users cannot reach core controls without a mouse, you are not just shipping a bug—you are undermining credibility. When buyers spot the mismatch, they start questioning every accessibility claim you make. When users hit it firsthand, they feel misled, not merely inconvenienced.

There is also an internal cost. Teams that feel pressure to look perfect tend to hide gaps. That keeps issues out of the backlog and out of planning. It also blocks the thing procurement teams truly need, which is a clear view of limitations.

An honest report can be imperfect and still be strong. “Partially Supports” paired with clear remarks is often safer, more useful, and more believable than a wall of “Supports.”

VPAT Myths That Waste Time and Energy

A few misconceptions show up so often that they are worth calling out directly.

One myth is that if you do not have the document, you must not be compliant. Documentation and accessibility progress are connected, but they are not the same thing. You can have a report and still have serious barriers. You can be doing thoughtful accessibility work without having a formal report yet.

Another myth is that anything less than full support is a failure. Partial support is normal, especially for complex interfaces, legacy code, or products with many integrations. Standards are detailed, and not every criterion applies in the same way to every feature.

A third myth is that once the report is done, you are set for years. Products evolve. Design systems change. Third-party tools update. Browsers and assistive technologies shift. A report that is never revisited becomes stale fast.

There is also the perfection trap. Some teams believe they must fix every issue before sharing anything. That can delay deals and delay transparency. In many cases, buyers would rather see an honest picture today with a clear improvement plan than wait for a “perfect” report that arrives too late.

And finally, there is the belief that a developer can fill the template out in an afternoon. Reliable reporting comes from structured evaluation, including assistive technology testing, review of key user flows, and input from multiple roles.

How to Decide If a VPAT Makes Sense for Your Organization

If you are trying to decide what to do next, start with your business reality.

Look at who you sell to today and who you plan to sell to in the next 6 to 12 months. If government, higher education, or enterprise procurement is a real part of your pipeline, documentation may be worth prioritizing.

Next, look at your current accessibility posture. Have you done a recent audit or structured assessment? Do you already know about critical barriers that would make your report read like wishful thinking? If so, you may need to remediate first, or scope the report carefully so it reflects what is true now.

Then separate legal pressure from sales pressure. Legal risk depends on your users and product context. Sales pressure is easier to see. Are deals stalling because your buyer needs documentation for their process?

After that, decide on timing and scope. If an RFP is imminent, you may need the report sooner, even if it is not perfect. If you are not facing procurement demands yet, you may get more value from strengthening accessibility foundations and preparing your internal process first.

The simplest summary is this. If you are consistently being asked for a VPAT in active deals, it is probably time to treat it as a business asset, not a last-minute chore.

How to Make the Document Useful, Even When It Is Not Perfect

The remarks section is where most reports either earn trust or lose it. Generic statements like “Supported” without context do not help reviewers. Clear, specific remarks do.

Anchor your evaluation to real user journeys. Focus on the flows buyers care about, like account setup, checkout, form completion, and core product tasks. Report what works well and where friction still exists.

Be direct about limitations and workarounds when they exist. State the gap when a feature has known limitations. Document any available alternative paths. Outline planned remediation with clear, measured intent.Avoid promises you cannot guarantee.

Tie the report to an accessibility roadmap when possible. Procurement teams respond well to maturity. They want to know you understand your gaps and have a plan to address them.

Also, prepare the people who will share it. Sales, support, and account managers should understand what the report actually says. Nothing undermines trust faster than a confident verbal promise that contradicts the written document.

So, Do You Really Need a VPAT, and Where 216digital Fits

“Others strengthen their accessibility practices first and build documentation once their sales channels make it necessary.

The healthiest mindset is simple. Honest reporting beats perfect-looking reporting. A clear, user-centered document supports better procurement decisions and helps teams focus on meaningful improvements.

At 216digital, we help teams evaluate accessibility in ways that map to real user journeys and WCAG criteria, translate findings into accurate conformance reporting that buyers can trust, and build workflows so documentation stays current as your product evolves.

If you are unsure whether this is a “now” need or a “later” need, we can help you sort that out without pressure. Sometimes the right next step is a VPAT. Sometimes it is an assessment and a plan. Either way, the goal is the same: to communicate accessibility with clarity and to keep improving the experience for the people who rely on it.
Greg McNeil

December 23, 2025

Web Accessibility Remediation

Accessibility, Accessibility Remediation, Accessibility testing, VPAT, Web Accessibility, Website Accessibility
How to Pick the Best Dyslexia-Friendly Fonts

Most people expect reading online to be quick and easy. For many users, it is not. A line gets reread. Letters feel too close together. A full page of text feels like work rather than information.

That experience is common for people with dyslexia, and it shows up across everyday web tasks. Dyslexia affects how written language is processed, not how capable someone is. And since the web still relies heavily on text, from forms and dashboards to product pages and help centers, typography carries more influence than teams often realize. However, while typography cannot remove dyslexia, design choices around text can significantly reduce effort and improve how easily users navigate written content.

This article covers what dyslexia can look like in digital reading, what we do and do not know about dyslexia-friendly fonts, and how to make typography choices that improve readability without breaking brand consistency.

Dyslexia and Digital Reading: What’s Actually Going On?

Dyslexia is a language-based neurological difference. It affects how the brain decodes written language, including sequencing and the connection between sounds and symbols. It is not tied to intelligence, effort, or motivation. Many people with dyslexia are strong problem-solvers and strategic thinkers; they simply expend more mental energy to get through text that others process automatically.

This experience is far from rare. According to the International Dyslexia Association, an estimated 15–20% of the population shows some symptoms of dyslexia. These can include slow or inaccurate reading, spelling difficulties, challenges with written expression, or mixing up similar letters and words. For most websites, that represents a meaningful portion of everyday users.

For those with dyslexia, certain reading challenges often appear. Similar letters like b and d, or p and q, can be difficult to distinguish. Readers may lose their place in a paragraph when lines are tightly spaced or visually crowded. Characters such as O and 0, or l and I, can blur together. Over time, these small frictions accumulate and lead to fatigue, frustration, or disengagement.

Digital interfaces can increase these challenges. Small font sizes, tight line spacing, low contrast, and dense layouts increase cognitive load. Responsive designs can further compress text on smaller screens, making tracking even harder. Typography cannot change how dyslexia works, but it can either add to the effort required to read or strip away barriers that make reading harder than it needs to be.

What We Already Know About “Dyslexia-Friendly” Fonts

There is no single typeface that works for every person with dyslexia. Research has not identified a universally effective dyslexic font that consistently improves reading speed or accuracy. What does come through, however, is that some fonts feel less tiring and easier to stay with, especially during longer reading sessions.

That distinction is important. Dyslexia varies from person to person, and even modest improvements in comfort can affect whether someone completes a form, follows instructions, or keeps reading. For design and development teams, the goal is not to find the “right” font. It is to reduce friction wherever possible.

This is reflected in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The guidelines do not require dyslexia-specific fonts. Instead, they focus on spacing, contrast, structure, and consistency. These factors create a more stable reading environment that often supports dyslexic users while improving usability for many others. Fonts are most effective when they are considered as part of that broader system, not treated as a standalone solution.

How WCAG Supports Dyslexic Readers in Practice

WCAG does not include criteria written specifically for dyslexia, and that is intentional. Instead of prescribing solutions, it sets expectations for how text should behave across different contexts and user needs. Those expectations shape readability, reduce cognitive strain, and create more stable reading environments. For people with dyslexia and other learning differences, that stability is often the difference between staying engaged and giving up.

Several WCAG criteria influence the reading experience in ways teams directly control.

Text Spacing (1.4.12)

WCAG requires that line height, letter spacing, and paragraph spacing can be increased without breaking layouts. When spacing is flexible, text becomes easier to track and less visually demanding, especially during longer interactions.

Contrast (Minimum) (1.4.3)

Sufficient contrast between text and background keeps characters distinct. Poor contrast slows recognition and increases effort, turning simple reading tasks into work.

Resize Text (1.4.4)

Text must scale without loss of content or functionality. This allows readers to increase the size without relying on browser zoom or assistive tools, reducing strain and preserving layout integrity.

Info and Relationships (1.3.1)

Content structure must be communicated through proper headings, lists, and semantic markup. A clear hierarchy supports orientation, helping readers understand where they are and how information is organized.

Use of Color (1.4.1)

Color cannot be the only way meaning is conveyed. Removing color-only cues reduces the risk of missed information and improves clarity across different visual and cognitive needs.

Reading Level (3.1.5)

When content is complex, WCAG encourages clearer wording or alternatives. This reduces cognitive load and helps more users understand content without extra effort.

Taken together, these criteria explain why font choice alone is not a solution. WCAG focuses on the conditions that allow typography to work: spacing, contrast, scaling, and structure. While it does not require a dyslexia-friendly font, it gives teams a framework for making type and layout decisions that support dyslexic readers as part of broader cognitive accessibility—without forcing a redesign or abandoning brand standards.

Core Characteristics of Dyslexia-Friendly Typography

When teams talk about dyslexia-friendly typography, it is easy to jump straight to font names. In practice, the bigger wins usually come from agreeing on the characteristics that make text easier to read—regardless of which typeface ends up in use. That shared understanding gives teams flexibility without reopening the same conversation every time.

Clear letterforms matter more than personality.

Sans-serif fonts tend to work well because they avoid decorative details that compete with the letter shapes themselves. When letters are clean and clearly formed, common look-alikes are easier to tell apart, especially during scanning or longer reads.

Open shapes help readers move faster.

Letters like c, e, and a benefit from open apertures rather than tight, closed forms. A slightly taller x-height also helps text hold up at everyday body sizes, particularly on mobile, where space is limited and zooming is not always practical.

Steady stroke weight reduces effort.

Typefaces with extreme thin-to-thick transitions can lose clarity depending on screen quality, lighting, or contrast. More even stroke weights tend to feel calmer and easier to read across devices.

Spacing often does the heavy lifting.

Letter spacing keeps characters from blurring together. Word spacing creates separation without breaking reading rhythm. Line spacing makes it easier to keep place from one line to the next. In many cases, adjusting spacing improves readability more than introducing a specialized dyslexia font.

Examples of Dyslexia-Friendly Fonts and How to Use Them Wisely

Many commonly available fonts already work well for dyslexic readers. Fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Open Sans, Roboto, Inter, Nunito Sans, and Atkinson Hyperlegible share familiar traits: open shapes, minimal ornamentation, and consistent spacing. The most useful way to evaluate them is not in isolation, but in real layouts—body text, forms, error messages—across the devices people actually use.

Purpose-built dyslexia fonts can also play a role, especially in reading-heavy experiences. These fonts often exaggerate differences between similar letters or add visual weight to anchor characters more clearly. They tend to work best as an optional setting or reading mode, rather than a default that reshapes an entire brand.

However, brand considerations still apply. Brand typefaces are often designed to make an impression, not to carry long instructions or dense content. A common, practical approach is to reserve branded fonts for headlines and short marketing moments, and rely on a more readable body font for functional text. When teams have clear rules for when readability takes priority, accessibility stops being a debate and starts becoming part of normal design decisions—including when offering a dyslexia-friendly font option makes sense.

Layout Choices That Affect Reading Stability

Fonts do not operate in isolation. Size, spacing, and structure determine whether text feels steady to read or slowly becomes harder to stay with.

Body text needs room to breathe. If text is too small, too tight, or too wide, readers are more likely to lose their place or tire more quickly. The goal is not precision, but resilience—text that remains readable as pages get denser or screens get smaller.

Spacing needs to hold up when users change it. Many people adjust letter spacing, word spacing, or zoom to reduce strain. When layouts cannot absorb those changes, readability drops even if the font itself is well chosen.

Alignment and structure also shape how text is tracked. Left-aligned body copy provides a consistent starting edge. Distinct headings and shorter paragraphs make it easier to re-orient without rereading. These choices reduce effort, especially on longer pages.

Taken together, these layout decisions often have more impact than changing fonts. When layout and spacing are stable, typography has room to do its job—even when font choices stay the same.

Making Dyslexia-Friendly Typography Part of the System

Typography becomes more reliable when it’s built into the system instead of handled one screen at a time. When font choices, spacing ranges, and basic text behaviors live inside a design system, teams avoid one-off fixes, and the reading experience stays more stable across forms, tables, cards, and other recurring components.

Engineering patterns help carry that consistency forward. Shared tokens or variables keep typography decisions from drifting. When sizing and spacing scale cleanly across breakpoints, browser zoom, and user overrides, layouts hold together even as conditions change.

Content follows the same logic. Clear writing and predictable structure support the same readers who rely on steady typography. When content and typography are reviewed together, teams have a better chance of producing patterns that hold up across the full product, not just on the surface.

Letting Users Personalize the Reading Experience

No single typography setup works for everyone, and many people adjust text in ways that make reading easier for them. When interfaces allow changes to size, spacing, or contrast—and stay stable when those changes happen—the experience tends to hold up better across long sessions and dense content.

Many users already bring their own tools. Extensions like OpenDyslexic let people restyle text across the web, adjusting letterforms and spacing to reduce strain. This does not replace the need for accessible typography, but it does remind teams that personalization is already happening. The priority is ensuring the interface still works when text looks different from the default.

Real feedback helps shape those decisions. Observing how dyslexic readers move through content often reveals patterns that automated checks miss—where fatigue sets in, where tracking becomes harder, or where spacing changes make a noticeable difference. Small variations in typography or layout can shift how comfortably people reach the end of a task.

These decisions evolve over time. As design systems grow or brands change direction, typography may need to be revisited. Input from users, support teams, and real usage patterns can highlight where reading is still harder than it needs to be, even when everything appears to meet the standard on paper.

Fonts as One Powerful Piece of a Larger Accessibility Story

Typography will not remove dyslexia, but it can change how hard people have to work to stay with your content. There is no single font that solves this for everyone, and most teams do not need to rethink their brand to make progress. When font choices, spacing, and structure are handled with care, reading becomes less about getting through the page and more about staying engaged with it.

At 216digital, we treat accessibility as part of how a site is built and maintained—not a separate layer added at the end. Typography, layout, interaction patterns, and content all influence how well people can move through your site, and they work best when they’re considered together.

If you want support aligning those decisions with WCAG 2.1 and your long-term roadmap, our team is here to help. Schedule a complementary ADA Strategy Briefing to talk through your goals and learn what it takes to create and maintain an accessible experience that stands up under real use.

Greg McNeil

December 22, 2025

How-to Guides

Accessibility, cognitive disabilities, dyslexia, typography, Web Accessibility, Website Accessibility
A $5 Million Reality Check for Digital Accessibility
If you run a website, you probably know this routine. Digital accessibility is always on the to-do list, and everyone agrees it’s important. It comes up in planning, sometimes in design reviews, but then it often gets pushed aside for more urgent things like launches, campaigns, or new features.

Accessibility rarely feels like the thing that will break the business today.

That is, until a news story makes it impossible to ignore.

In Alcazar v. Fashion Nova, Inc., blind users alleged that the company’s website could not be used with screen-reading software, effectively shutting them out of browsing products and completing purchases. The proposed resolution included a $5.15 million settlement fund and a requirement to fix the site moving forward.

That number stopped people because it made the risk feel close. Not theoretical. Not “maybe someday.” It pushed a lot of teams to ask the questions they usually put off: Could this happen to us? How does a website problem become a multi-million-dollar issue?

This article explains what happened, why it was so expensive, and what you can do to keep your site accessible and protected.

What the Fashion Nova Settlement Signals for Digital Accessibility

Most accessibility cases end quickly. The company gets a letter, settles, and then fixes the issues. This case stood out because it was bigger, lasted longer, and involved more than one group of users.

Fashion Nova’s proposed settlement set up a $5,150,000 fund and included a commitment to make changes to the website so it would be accessible to legally blind individuals using screen readers. Fashion Nova also denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement terms, which is common in these agreements.

The way the case was set up is important because it explains why the financial risk increased.
- A nationwide class focused on forward-looking changes to the website.
- A California subclass focused on monetary relief tied to state law that allows statutory damages.
Most people focus on the $5.15 million, but the real lesson is what it stands for. Courts and plaintiffs now see online access as a serious matter, not just a small usability problem. When a retail site does not work for screen reader users, it can completely block them from shopping online.

Even if your organization is already working on digital accessibility, this case still matters. It shows how quickly putting things off can turn into a legal problem if barriers remain.

How the Case Turned Into a Digital Accessibility Class Action

The main issue in this case was simple. Blind users said the website was not compatible with screen-reading software, which kept them from using key parts of the experience.

If you have never seen someone use a screen reader to shop, problems can show up quickly.
- Product images may be announced as “image” with no helpful details.
- Buttons may be read as “button” without a label explaining what they do.
- Links may repeat or be empty, so the user hears a long list of unclear options.
- Popups and overlays can trap focus, preventing the user from moving forward.
- Checkout steps can fail because error messages are not connected to the fields.
When you use a mouse, none of these problems seem obvious. That is why they often go unnoticed for a long time.

What made this case more serious was how long it lasted and how many people it covered. Public summaries say it included a nationwide group for website changes and a California group that could get payments. This setup raised the risk and made the case more expensive to fight, even before any settlement was paid.

California adds another layer. The settlement notice describes payments to eligible California class members on a pro rata basis, up to $4,000 for a valid claim, depending on how many claims are approved. When statutory damages are part of the equation, the financial ceiling rises fast.

This is why teams should look at how a case develops, not just the final amount. When a case gets bigger and drags on, it stops being a quick legal problem. It becomes an operational problem that consumes time, focus, and money.

Why the ADA Applies to Websites in Practice

Many leaders still see the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as something that only applies to physical spaces, like ramps, doors, parking spots, and signs.

But for many businesses, the website is the front door.

Courts have increasingly treated websites and online services as part of how the public accesses goods and services, especially when the business sells to the public. In this case, the claims included the ADA and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which is one reason the settlement structure included a California subclass.

In practice, the legal question comes down to something simple: Can someone with a disability do the same basic things on your site as everyone else?

If a blind customer cannot search, browse, choose a product, and check out, their experience is not equal. That is exactly what the ADA is meant to fix, even online.

Why WCAG Became the Working Standard for Digital Accessibility

Teams often wonder: If the ADA does not give technical website rules, how do you know what counts as “accessible”?

In practice, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), became the common reference point because it is measurable. It gives teams clear criteria for things like text alternatives, keyboard access, labels, focus order, and error handling. It also gives auditors a shared way to evaluate what is working and what is failing.

That matters because vague goals do not hold up under pressure. Saying “we tried” is hard to prove. Following WCAG is easier to test, track, and defend.

This is also where many organizations get tripped up. They treat WCAG like a one-time checklist, run a scan, fix a batch of issues, and then move on.

But the sites that get into trouble usually have something else going on. Constant updates. Many hands touching content. Third-party tools are getting added without review. A brand-new design system that did not start with accessibility requirements.

As the site evolves, barriers reappear—both new ones and old ones you thought were resolved.

The Hidden Costs That Show Up Before a Lawsuit

Most teams do not mean to ignore accessibility. They just get caught up in the rush to keep the site running.

Risk often grows fastest in familiar environments.
- E-commerce sites with large product catalogs and heavy imagery
- Marketing sites with frequent landing pages and promotions
- Sites that use popups for discounts, chat, or cookie consent
- Platforms with filters, carousels, and dynamic menus
- Teams that rely on third-party plugins and scripts
In these setups, small mistakes compound. One missing label becomes a pattern across dozens of pages. One inaccessible modal becomes a blocker across major flows.

Then the human cost shows up.

A customer tries to make a purchase and cannot. They try again later and still have trouble. They contact support and get a workaround that takes extra effort. Over time, it starts to feel like the site was not made for them.

This is when reputational damage begins, even if no one posts about it online. The loss of trust starts long before any legal action.

Lessons You Can Apply Before Risk Turns Into Disruption

Here are the most important lessons for teams who know the basics and want a strategy that works over time.

Start With the Flows That Keep Your Business Running

Pick the tasks your customers must complete. Product search. Navigation. Product detail pages. Cart. Checkout. Account creation. Lead forms. Support contact.

If those flows work well with a keyboard and a screen reader, you are reducing the highest risk first.

Fix the Foundation Before Polishing the Edges

A strong baseline usually comes from a few core areas.
- Semantic headings that match the page structure
- Meaningful names for links and buttons
- Labels and instructions for forms
- Clear error messages that are connected to inputs
- Keyboard support for menus, modals, and interactive widgets
- Text alternatives for meaningful images and icons
These are just the building blocks that help users move through your site without getting stuck.

Treat Content as a First-Class Accessibility Surface

Many digital accessibility problems are content problems. Missing alt text. Vague link text like “click here.” Headings are used for style instead of structure. Images that contain key text with no alternative.

If marketing and content teams are not involved, the site can slip back into old problems, even after a big effort to fix things.

Audit on a Schedule and After Major Changes

Automated scans help, but they are not enough. You also need hands-on testing with real assistive technology. If you release updates often, add small checks to your process so you catch issues early.

Watch Your Third-Party Tools

One script can introduce a major barrier. Popups and overlays are common offenders because they can trap keyboard focus or hide content from assistive tech.

Treat vendor tools as if you built them yourself. Test them, test again after updates, and ask vendors tough questions before you launch.

Building an Approach That Stays Stable

Digital accessibility is easier to handle when it is not just a last-minute fix.

That usually means a few operational moves.
- Add accessibility acceptance criteria to tickets for new features.
- Include accessibility checks in design reviews, not just in QA.
- Build accessible components once, then reuse them.
- Document decisions so new team members do not repeat mistakes.
- Train teams in short, role-based sessions tied to real work.
This approach turns accessibility from a rushed fix into a regular practice. It also makes improvements easier to keep up with when priorities change. That is how digital accessibility becomes part of everyday work, not just something tracked in a spreadsheet.

When “Later” Becomes Harder to Ignore

The Fashion Nova settlement highlights a reality many teams now face. Online access is no longer optional for brands that serve the public. It is closely linked to civil rights, user trust, and legal risks that can grow if accessibility problems are not fixed. What seems manageable now can become much harder if those gaps are ignored.At 216digital, we can help develop a strategy to integrate WCAG 2.1 compliance into your development roadmap on your terms. If you are looking for clarity on where to start or how to strengthen what you already have in place, our team offers a complimentary ADA Strategy Briefing to help you move forward with confidence.
Greg McNeil

December 19, 2025

Web Accessibility Remediation

Accessibility, ADA, ADA Compliance, ADA Lawsuit, ADA Lawsuits, Unruh Act, Unruh Civil Rights Act, web accessibility lawsuits, Website Accessibility
Web Accessibility Tools Worth Using in 2025

Web accessibility tools are becoming part of everyday work for many teams. Scanners run in the background, browser extensions sit ready during reviews, and screen readers are easier than ever to test with. The challenge is rarely whether to use these tools, but how to understand the results they produce. Some findings point to genuine barriers that can frustrate users. Others are technical alerts that look urgent but may have little impact on real interaction.

Teams that use these tools effectively tend to treat them as different viewpoints on the same experience. Automated checks help reveal patterns. Screen readers and mobile readers show how people move through a page. Design and document tools shape the foundation long before anything reaches production. When each tool has a clear purpose, accessibility work feels more manageable and less like a moving target.

What often helps is stepping back and looking at what these tools can actually tell you and what they cannot. That perspective makes it easier to choose the right mix, set realistic expectations, and build a workflow that supports long-term accessibility rather than one-off fixes.

Understanding the Role of Web Accessibility Tools

Accessibility tools tend to fall into a few core roles.

Some focus on evaluation and diagnostics. These scan pages or whole sites for common Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) issues, such as missing labels, low contrast, or heading structure problems. They are good at catching patterns and basic rules that lend themselves to automation.

Others focus on assistive technology behavior. They help teams understand how a screen reader, keyboard navigation, or mobile reader interprets the page. These tools are closer to how people use the site in everyday life.

Another group lives mainly in the design space. Contrast checkers and visual tools help refine palettes, typography, and layout while work is still in Figma, Sketch, or Adobe apps. Catching issues early often prevents expensive redesigns later.

Finally, there are document and PDF tools. As organizations publish reports, forms, and guides, document accessibility has become much more important. These tools help repair structure, order, and tagging so content is usable outside the browser.

There are limits, though. Automated tools miss subtle issues like confusing focus order, unclear instructions, or complex widget behavior. They cannot judge whether an interaction feels intuitive or whether a flow is simply exhausting to complete. Tools strengthen the workflow, but they do not replace thoughtful human evaluation or usability feedback from people with disabilities.

With that in mind, let’s look at the tools that are shaping accessibility practice in 2025.

A General Accessibility Evaluation Tool Where Most Teams Start

Lighthouse

Lighthouse remains a standard starting point for many teams. It is built into Chrome, free to use, and easy to run during development. A quick Lighthouse report gives you an accessibility score and a list of issues that can guide your next steps.

Where Lighthouse helps most is prioritization. The report maps findings back to WCAG criteria and includes clear suggestions that point developers toward specific changes. It is especially useful for early checks on new features, quick reviews before a deploy, and tracking whether your accessibility score improves over time.

There are tradeoffs. Because Lighthouse runs entirely through automation, it cannot assess keyboard paths, mobile gestures, or the experience a screen reader user actually has. Treat it as a baseline check, not a final sign-off.

Screen Readers as Everyday Testing Tools

Screen readers are often framed as tools “for users with disabilities.” That is true, but they should also be a standard part of developer and QA toolboxes. Listening to your site through a screen reader is one of the fastest ways to understand whether the experience is actually usable.

JAWS

JAWS continues to be widely used in professional environments, especially in enterprise and government. It is powerful, flexible, and works across many applications. Advanced scripting support allows teams to simulate complex workflows or tailor testing to specific systems.

The tradeoff is cost and complexity. JAWS is a paid product, runs on Windows, and can feel intimidating at first. For teams that maintain high-traffic platforms or mission-critical services, however, it often becomes a core testing tool.

NVDA

NVDA has become a favorite among developers and accessibility testers for different reasons. It is open-source, free to use, and maintained by a strong community. It works well with major browsers and offers reliable feedback for many everyday scenarios.

While it may lack some of the more advanced enterprise features of JAWS and can still require some practice to learn, NVDA provides an honest look at how many users navigate the web.

Using both JAWS and NVDA gives teams a broader sense of how different setups behave and avoids relying on a single tool as a stand-in for all screen reader users.

Color Contrast and Visual Design Tools That Support Usable Interfaces

Visual design choices can quietly support or undermine accessibility. Contrast tools give teams a practical way to validate those choices before users are affected.

Color Contrast Analyzer

Color Contrast Analyzer is a widely used desktop tool for checking contrast on UI components, icons, and text over images. Designers and developers use it during reviews to confirm that colors meet WCAG thresholds.

It relies on manual sampling, so it does not “understand” context or typography on its own. Even so, its precision makes it an everyday workhorse for UI and front-end teams.

WebAIM Color Contrast Checker

WebAIM’s online checker is popular for its simplicity. You enter foreground and background colors, and it immediately reports whether they pass for different text sizes and WCAG levels.

It is not meant for full-page testing or design system governance. It shines when someone needs a quick answer during design, content editing, or code review.

Adobe Color Contrast Tools

Within the Adobe ecosystem, built-in contrast tools have become more important. Being able to test and adjust color values directly inside Creative Cloud apps helps designers bring accessible palettes into the development process from day one.

These tools focus narrowly on color rather than broader criteria, which is often exactly what creative teams need while exploring options.

Mobile Accessibility Tools for a Touch-First Web

For many organizations, mobile traffic is now the primary way users interact with content. Mobile accessibility tools keep teams honest about how their experiences behave on actual devices.

VoiceOver on iOS

VoiceOver ships with iPhones and iPads and is straightforward to enable. It lets teams test gestures, focus behavior, dynamic content updates, and the clarity of labels on iOS.

Developers quickly learn where touch targets are too small, where focus jumps in confusing ways, or where announcements do not align with what is on screen. There is a learning curve around gestures, and some apps introduce conflicts when they were not built with accessibility in mind, but the insight it provides is hard to replace.

TalkBack on Android

TalkBack serves a similar role in Android environments. It is deeply integrated into the OS and is used around the world on a huge variety of devices.

Running TalkBack on your own app or site reveals how headings, landmarks, controls, and dynamic content behave on Android. Because the Android ecosystem is so diverse, testing here often surfaces issues that never appear on a single desktop configuration.

As mobile usage continues to grow, teams that rely on VoiceOver and TalkBack gain a more accurate view of what users experience in everyday browsing.

Browser Extensions That Keep Accessibility in the Daily Workflow

WAVE Browser Extension

The WAVE extension overlays accessibility feedback directly on the page. Errors, alerts, and structural details are displayed visually, which makes it easier to discuss issues with designers, developers, and content authors together.

WAVE works particularly well for prototypes, single-page reviews, and quick checks during development. Since it evaluates one page at a time, it pairs nicely with full-site tools like SortSite rather than replacing them.

Document and PDF Accessibility Tools That Are Easy to Overlook

Many organizations rely on PDFs for policies, reports, and forms. If those documents are inaccessible, entire groups of users can be locked out, even if the website itself is in good shape.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

Acrobat Pro DC offers rich tools for editing tag structure, adjusting reading order, writing alt text, and labeling form fields. It allows teams to bring older documents closer to current accessibility expectations instead of rebuilding everything from scratch.

The product is powerful and can feel overwhelming at first. Some basic training goes a long way. Once a team member becomes comfortable with Acrobat’s accessibility features, document remediation tends to move much faster and more consistently.

As more content moves online in document form, this part of the toolkit has become hard to ignore.

Building an Accessibility Toolkit That Lasts

Building an accessibility toolkit that lasts is not about collecting every product available. It is about choosing the tools that give your team more clarity and less guesswork. Automated checks keep recurring problems in view. Screen reader and mobile testing show how interactions feel in everyday use. Design and document tools prevent rework before it starts. Over time, these habits strengthen the experience for everyone who depends on your site.

At 216digital, we help teams build accessibility into their everyday workflow and shape strategies that align WCAG 2.1 compliance with real development timelines. If you want support creating a roadmap that strengthens usability, reduces risk, and fits the way your team already works, schedule a complementary ADA Strategy Briefing today.

Greg McNeil

December 17, 2025

Testing & Remediation

Accessibility, Accessibility testing, automated testing, evaluation tools, Web Accessibility, Web accessibility tools, Website Accessibility, Website Accessibility Tools
AI, Pro Se Plaintiffs, and the Rise of Web Accessibility Lawsuits
Digital accessibility is no longer enforced only by regulators or a small group of plaintiff firms. AI tools now make it easy for individuals to prepare and file complaints on their own, and web accessibility lawsuits are following. Cases arrive faster, with less context, and often land on teams that are already stretched.

The expectation itself has not changed. If a website has barriers that stop people from completing tasks, those barriers still matter, and courts continue to treat them as significant. What has changed is how quickly issues can be turned into legal action. Understanding how AI-generated complaints are assembled and why they are showing up more often helps teams respond with more control instead of reacting under pressure.

The New Wave of Pro Se Plaintiffs Using AI

A growing share of accessibility cases are now filed by individuals representing themselves. In legal terms, these filers are pro se plaintiffs. Pro se litigation has existed for a long time, but its role in Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enforcement has expanded quickly.

In 2025, federal data shows a sharp rise in pro se ADA Title III filings, increasing about 40% over 2024 according to Seyfarth Shaw. This democratization of litigation means that anyone with access to a large language model and basic tools can generate a legally sufficient complaint, lowering the cost of entry that once required retaining an attorney.

For organizations, the enforcement landscape looks different from what it did a few years ago. Complaints now come from a larger mix of people and can appear in higher volume. Some raise legitimate barriers. Others arrive with long lists of issues that do not reflect how the site actually behaves. Either way, they require time, money, and attention from teams that rarely have extra capacity.

How AI-Generated ADA Complaints Are Built

AI-assisted complaints tend to follow a common pattern. The details vary, but the steps are similar.

Drafting the Complaint

A plaintiff starts by describing what happened and where. That narrative becomes a prompt. The AI tool returns a complaint with legal framing, structure, and citations modeled on previous filings. AI tools like ChatGPT and similar large language models can draft these complaints in minutes, generating legal language and structured allegations automatically.

Gathering “Evidence”

Free and low-cost accessibility scanners are used to crawl key pages. They surface potential barriers related to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and compile reports and screenshots.. These tools do not detect every barrier, and they can mislabel or overstate issues, but the output looks technical and complete. Those reports are often attached as primary exhibits.

Reusing Templates

Complaints that seem effective or are shared online often become templates. Names, URLs, and dates are updated, while large sections of text stay the same. This makes it easy to file similar complaints against many organizations with only small edits.

Filing Online

Electronic court portals allow filings to be submitted from anywhere. There is no need to schedule time with counsel or navigate in-person paperwork to start a case.

Taken together, these steps compress the process. Work that once took days or weeks can now happen in hours. For a small number of individuals, this efficiency makes high-volume filing possible. That is where many business owners feel the impact: not from a single complaint, but from the sense that they can be targeted repeatedly with little warning.

Red Flags That Suggest AI Played a Major Role

Courts and defense teams are starting to recognize patterns that often suggest heavy AI involvement. These signals do not automatically invalidate a case, but they can help teams decide what to verify first.

Common signs include:

Citations That Do Not Exist

Some complaints reference cases that cannot be located in any legal database.

Misstated Holdings

The case is real, but the description of what the court decided is wrong or misleading.

Compressed Timelines

Lengthy, well-structured briefs appear very quickly, especially from non-lawyers who have limited experience with legal drafting.

Generic Lists of Barriers

The complaint lists issues that do not appear on the site, such as CAPTCHA problems when no CAPTCHA is used, or components that the interface does not rely on.

Mismatch Between Writing and Presentation

The legal documents read as if prepared by an experienced litigator, whereas the filer’s explanation in court or correspondence is far less sophisticated.

Even when these patterns are present, judges still look at the underlying question: are there real barriers that prevent people from using the site? For organizations, the practical response is to separate signal from noise. That means confirming which issues are genuine, technical but low impact, or exist only because an automated tool misread the interface. Time and budget are better spent on changes that fix real problems than on chasing every line of AI-generated text.

AI as Assistive Technology Does Not Change Legal Duties

AI is also changing assistive technology. Screen readers and related tools now use AI to generate richer image descriptions, interpret layouts, and infer relationships between elements. For some users, these improvements make certain sites more usable than they were a few years ago.

That progress does not change the legal standard. ADA enforcement focuses on whether the website or application itself is accessible. People are not required to rely on advanced or paid tools to get around avoidable barriers.

If someone using a common screen reader, keyboard navigation, or magnification tool cannot complete a task because of missing labels, incorrect semantics, or inaccessible controls, the barrier still exists. AI support tools do not erase that responsibility.

Courts are also starting to respond when AI is misused in filings. Some federal judges have sanctioned litigants for submitting materials that include fabricated cases or inaccurate citations, and in certain matters have restricted the use of AI in court filings altogether. These responses are still evolving, but they show that judges are paying attention to how AI is being applied in litigation.

From a risk perspective, it helps to treat AI-powered assistive tools as a supplement. They may help some users, but they do not replace the need for accessible design and development. They also do not insulate an organization from complaints if basic tasks remain inaccessible.

Where Web Accessibility Lawsuits Are Landing

Early data from Useablenet’s 2025 mid-year report shows more than 2,000 digital accessibility cases filed in the first half of the year, with projections approaching 5,000 by year’s end. A growing share of these web accessibility lawsuits involve AI-generated or AI-assisted complaints.

Most of these cases are not evenly spread across the web. They cluster in certain industries and patterns:
- E-commerce and transactional experiences
  Close to 70% of cases involve e-commerce sites. Product discovery, cart, and checkout flows draw attention because they are easy to test and directly tied to revenue.
- Mid-sized organizations
  Around 64% of cases involve companies with annual revenue of less than 25 million dollars. These organizations often have lean teams and limited internal legal support. That can make them appear more likely to settle quickly, which in turn can attract more filings.
- Sites using widgets and overlays
  More than 20% of recent cases involve sites that installed an accessibility overlay. Complaints often point out that the overlay did not fix underlying issues in templates, components, or key flows.
For executives and product leaders, the pattern is clear. AI is amplifying enforcement in environments where business-critical experiences are not fully accessible and where teams do not have a strong, documented accessibility program in place. The risk is not only the presence of barriers, but the combination of barriers and a filing landscape that now moves faster and at greater scale.

Building an Accessibility Program That Holds Up

In this environment, the most effective response is not to plan around individual cases, but to build a program that stands up to both user expectations and legal scrutiny.

Core elements include:

Anchor on WCAG 2.1 Level AA

Courts and regulators continue to lean on this standard when they evaluate access. Using it as your baseline keeps internal expectations aligned with external review.

Use Both Automated and Manual Testing

Automated tools are useful for catching common issues early and monitoring regressions, but they do not see everything. Manual testing with screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, zoom, and voice tools gives a clearer picture of what people experience and highlights problems automation misses.

Prioritize Templates and Critical Flows

Start with navigation, search, account creation, forms, cart, and checkout. Improvements in these areas remove barriers that show up often in complaints and protect the journeys most tied to revenue and trust.

Integrate Accessibility Into Existing Workflows

Add practical checks into design reviews, code reviews, and QA. Keep them focused and repeatable so they fit into current processes. When accessibility is part of the way releases ship, it becomes harder for issues to build up unnoticed.

Document What You Are Doing

Keep records of audits, remediation work, training, vendor requirements, and standards for components and content. This documentation helps teams stay aligned and provides a concrete way to show effort if a demand letter or complaint arrives. Over time, this kind of documentation becomes one of the strongest defenses an organization can bring to the table when facing web accessibility lawsuits.

For leadership, this approach places accessibility in the same category as security and privacy: an ongoing operational responsibility. It also creates a clearer position when responding to AI-assisted complaints that blend legitimate issues with errors or overreach.

Responding When an AI-Generated Complaint Arrives

When a complaint comes in, whether clearly AI-generated or not, the first goal is to reduce confusion and avoid unnecessary escalation.

Helpful steps include:

Validate the Issues

Test the specific barriers named in the complaint. Sort them into groups: incorrect claims, technically accurate but low-impact issues, and serious barriers that block tasks. This makes remediation plans more realistic and gives legal teams better information.

Review Citations and References

Confirm that cited cases exist and that the summaries are accurate. Flag problems so counsel can address them with the court or opposing party.

Avoid Rushed Surface Fixes

Installing a new overlay or making untested changes can introduce new issues or send a signal that accessibility is being treated as a checkbox. Focus on changes that are tested, documented, and consistent with your broader standards.

Feed Lessons Back Into the Program

Use what you learn to update components, patterns, and checks. Close gaps in design systems and QA so similar issues are less likely to reappear.

Handled this way, a complaint becomes part of an ongoing process rather than a series of disconnected emergencies.

Reducing Risk in an Era of AI-Generated Web Accessibility Lawsuits

The pace and shape of accessibility enforcement are changing, and no organization is fully prepared for the speed that AI has introduced into the process. Even teams that care about accessibility and make steady improvements can feel caught off guard when a complaint arrives that was drafted quickly and filed with little warning. You are not alone in that experience. Every industry is adjusting to a landscape where expectations remain familiar, but the mechanics are new.

There is still uncertainty in how digital Title III claims will evolve, especially as AI lowers the barrier to filing. What organizations can control is how they operate. Maintain a steady accessibility practice, align with established standards, and document decisions and remediation. That combination does not eliminate risk, but it holds up far better than reactive changes made under pressure and gives you a stronger footing when facing web accessibility lawsuits driven by AI.

If you need support building that foundation, we can help.

At 216digital, we can help develop a strategy to integrate WCAG 2.1 compliance into your development roadmap on your terms. To learn more about how our experts can help you confidently create and maintain an accessible website that supports both your business goals and the needs of your users, schedule a complementary ADA Strategy Briefing today.
Greg McNeil

December 16, 2025

Legal Compliance

Accessibility, ADA Lawsuit, ADA Lawsuits, ADA Website Compliance, Web Accessibility, web accessibility lawsuits, Website Accessibility
ADA Title II vs. Title III: What’s the Difference?
Websites and mobile apps are now the primary way people access services, complete transactions, and manage information. For users who rely on assistive technology, accessibility determines whether those tasks can be completed at all.

As digital accessibility expectations continue to evolve, many organizations are reassessing how the ADA applies to their online services and overall ADA web accessibility requirements. In particular, teams are working to understand whether their websites, applications, and digital documents fall under Title II or Title III, especially as new Title II accessibility standards take effect this year and private enforcement activity under Title III continues to grow.

Below, we’ll explain where Title II and Title III apply online, what each title expects, and how those expectations connect to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the primary benchmark for ADA website compliance. We’ll also outline the practical steps needed to meet those obligations so you can reduce legal risk while improving accessibility for the people who rely on your digital services.

Where Title II and Title III Fit in ADA Web Accessibility

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a civil rights law enacted in 1990 to prevent discrimination and ensure access for people with disabilities. Early enforcement centered on buildings, transportation, and other physical spaces.

Today, much of that same activity happens online. People pay taxes, renew licenses, book appointments, manage benefits, and purchase services through websites and apps. In practice, those digital experiences carry the same access expectations as a front counter or an office doorway. ADA web accessibility requirements are now a core part of how access is measured.

The ADA is organized into five main titles.
- Title I addresses employment.
- Title II applies to state and local governments and their services.
- Title III applies to private businesses that serve the public.
- Other titles address areas such as telecommunications and enforcement.
For digital accessibility, Title II and Title III are the pieces that shape most decisions. A city website, a public university portal, or a transit app is treated as a public program. A retail site, a banking platform, or a healthcare portal is treated as a public accommodation. If your organization offers services online in either context, those experiences sit within the ADA’s scope. Misunderstanding which title applies does not change that responsibility, it only makes planning, prioritization, and risk management more difficult than it needs to be.

In real terms, that includes your public website, authenticated portals, mobile apps, online forms and workflows, PDFs and office files, embedded media players, chat tools, maps, and booking systems. If someone needs it to complete a task with you, it needs to be usable with assistive technologies and aligned with modern digital accessibility expectations.

Who Title II Covers for Government Web Accessibility

Title II applies to state and local government entities and to the programs and services they provide. That includes:
- City and state agency websites
- Public schools, colleges, and universities
- Public transit systems and trip-planning tools
- Courts, election portals, and public records systems
- Public hospitals, health departments, and benefit portals
Many of these services run on vendor-built platforms or include third-party modules for payments, scheduling, or forms. When a public entity relies on outside providers, accessibility responsibilities do not stop at the agency boundary. Agencies and vendors are responsible for delivering digital services that meet the same standards, so Title II web accessibility becomes a shared concern.

For public entities, federal requirements are now explicit. In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice set WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the accessibility benchmark for government websites and mobile applications and attached firm timelines:
- Larger entities must comply by April 24, 2026.
- Smaller entities and special districts must comply by April 26, 2027.
These expectations cover the full digital service, not just the main site. If a resident needs to complete a permit application, pay a bill, download a form, or check case status online, that journey needs to work with screen readers, keyboard navigation, magnification, and other assistive tools.

This has pushed many agencies to treat accessibility as part of digital governance rather than a side project. Design systems, content guidelines, vendor contracts, and remediation plans are being aligned to WCAG 2.1 Level AA because the standard is now clearly tied to Title II obligations. For public entities, there is no longer any ambiguity about the technical standard federal regulators will use when reviewing digital services or ADA web accessibility compliance.

How Title III Applies to Private Websites, Apps, and Digital Services

Title III covers public accommodations, which includes most private organizations that offer goods or services to the public. That list spans retail, eCommerce, hospitality, banking and financial services, healthcare, fitness and recreation, professional services, museums, and private colleges and universities.

The ADA does not write a technical accessibility standard into the text for these businesses. In practice, however, courts and the Department of Justice repeatedly look to WCAG 2.1 Level AA when they evaluate whether a site or app meets effective communication and equal access requirements. Website accessibility cases, including recent decisions that treat websites as places of public accommodation, are built around this expectation.

For many organizations, Title III shows up through demand letters, lawsuits, or settlement negotiations that center on digital journeys. The focus is rarely on a single static page. It is on flows that matter to customers:
- Is the full checkout flow usable for someone navigating with a screen reader?
- Can someone using a keyboard manage their account or update billing details?
- Are users able to schedule appointments, request support, or apply for services without getting stuck in the process?
If those paths fail, the business function fails for that user. That is the point where legal exposure increases and trust erodes. It is also where accessibility work is most visible to regulators, plaintiff firms, and users themselves.

There is no fixed federal deadline for private entities. Instead, risk is continuous. New campaigns, visual refreshes, marketing widgets, and third-party integrations can reintroduce barriers at any point. Building and maintaining alignment with WCAG 2.1 Level AA across your core templates, components, and user journeys is the most dependable way to manage Title III risk, support ADA website compliance, and serve users who rely on assistive technologies every day.

Shared Goals, Different Paths for Title II and Title III Web Accessibility Compliance

Both titles are grounded in the same idea: people with disabilities should be able to use your services in a comparable way to everyone else. The gap lies in how expectations are spelled out and how they are enforced.

Under Title II, public entities have a defined technical standard and clear dates. WCAG 2.1 Level AA is written directly into federal requirements, which gives agencies a specific target for their websites and apps. That clarity supports long-term planning. Teams can tie budgets, staffing, and remediation schedules to a known expectation and build digital accessibility into their broader compliance programs.

Under Title III, technical details are shaped more by case law and agency guidance than by statute text. WCAG 2.1 Level AA still functions as the reference point, but it appears in consent decrees, settlement agreements, and court decisions. Private organizations have more freedom in how they build their accessibility programs, yet far less freedom in the outcome when users cannot complete essential tasks. The question regulators and courts ask is simple: can people with disabilities use the digital service as intended?

For your digital experience, this leads to the same practical conclusion. Accessibility work cannot stop at isolated pages or one-time audits. It needs to follow the paths users actually take:
- Finding content through navigation and search
- Signing in or creating an account
- Filling out and submitting forms
- Completing payments or purchases
- Accessing support, documentation, and media
If these journeys hold up for people using screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, magnification, voice input, and other assistive tools, you are in a stronger position under both Title II and Title III. That alignment also gives you a consistent way to talk about ADA compliance internally: not as a separate legal track, but as part of delivering reliable, accessible digital services.

A Practical Roadmap for Title II and Title III Web Accessibility Compliance

To move from legal language to day-to-day work, you need a structure that fits how your teams already build and release digital products. The outline below can be adapted to the size and complexity of your environment.

1. Clarify How the ADA Applies to You

Determine whether you are operating as a public entity, a private business, a technology provider to public entities, or some mix of these. Document this clearly. It will shape which enforcement context applies, how you talk about risk internally, and what kind of evidence you need to demonstrate alignment with Title II or Title III and related ADA web accessibility requirements.

2. Map Your Full Digital Surface

List every public-facing asset a user might rely on. Include your main site, microsites, campaign pages, portals, mobile apps, and document libraries. Add the third-party pieces that sit in critical paths, such as booking engines, payment services, chat tools, video players, and embedded forms. If users depend on it to complete a task, it belongs in scope for accessibility work and ADA website compliance.

3. Audit Against WCAG 2.1 Level AA

Combine automated scanning with targeted manual testing. Use automation to find recurring issues across templates, such as color contrast problems, missing form labels, or non-descriptive link text. Use manual testing to check keyboard operation, screen reader behavior, focus handling in dialogs, error messages, and dynamic content. Start with the journeys that matter most to your organization and your users, such as account access, applications, and checkout.

For organizations looking for a structured model, you can explore our accessibility audit process, which shows how automated scans and expert testing work together.

4. Prioritize Remediation by Impact

Not every issue carries the same weight. Address blockers first by fixing controls that don’t respond to the keyboard, adding accessible labels to forms, correcting navigation that traps focus, and rebuilding interactive components with proper semantics.Then resolve issues that affect structure and consistency, such as heading hierarchy, landmark use, reusable component patterns, and document templates. This order improves usability quickly while also laying groundwork for long-term digital accessibility and maintainability.

5. Integrate Accessibility Into Delivery

Fold accessibility into existing processes instead of treating it as a separate layer. Add accessibility criteria to design reviews, user stories, acceptance criteria, and QA checklists. Make sure your design system or component library encodes WCAG 2.1 Level AA expectations so new work inherits accessible patterns instead of reinventing them. This is how you prevent regressions instead of chasing them and keep ADA web accessibility requirements connected to everyday decisions.

6. Align People and Vendors Around Shared Expectations

Everyone who touches your digital experience plays a role, from visual design and UX to engineering, content creation, and testing. Provide role-specific guidance so each group understands the decisions they own. For external partners, write explicit accessibility requirements into contracts, including alignment with WCAG 2.1 Level AA and support for any Title II or Title III obligations you carry through that relationship.

7. Monitor, Document, and Adjust

Treat accessibility as an ongoing quality measure. Schedule regular scans and focused reviews, especially around major releases, redesigns, or platform changes. Track issues, fixes, and regressions alongside other key metrics. Provide a channel for users to report accessibility problems and treat that input as a signal for pattern-level improvements, not just small fixes. Thorough documentation of this work also helps demonstrate due diligence if your organization ever faces complaints or legal scrutiny around ADA website compliance.

Regardless of whether your primary obligations arise under Title II, Title III, or both, the goal is the same. People with disabilities should be able to use your digital services confidently and independently. Centering work on WCAG 2.1 Level AA, critical user journeys, and repeatable workflows gives you a practical way to honor that goal and meet your ADA web accessibility responsibilities at the same time.

Using Title II and Title III Insight to Shape Sustainable Accessibility

Accessibility work isn’t simple, and it rarely begins with a perfect map. Most teams step into it while juggling releases, supporting users, and keeping digital services running. Getting clear on whether Title II, Title III, or both apply gives that work direction. It removes guesswork and helps teams invest effort where it matters most.

From there, the work becomes more manageable. When teams clarify their obligations and anchor their work to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, they keep accessibility progressing with the platform rather than trailing it.

You don’t have to navigate that alone. At 216digital, we help organizations translate ADA requirements into practical accessibility strategies that fit their workflows, technical environments, and long-term goals. To take the next step, schedule an ADA briefing with 216digital. We’re here to support your team and help you build digital experiences that work for everyone.
Greg McNeil

December 15, 2025

Legal Compliance

Accessibility, ADA Compliance, ADA Title II, ADA Title III, ADA Website Compliance, Title II, Title III, Website Accessibility

What TalkBack Is and Why It Matters for Mobile Accessibility Testing

Preparing Your Device for Effective Screen Reader Testing

Enabling and Disabling TalkBack Without Breaking Your Flow

Core TalkBack Gestures You Actually Need for Testing

Using Menus to Navigate by Structure

A Repeatable First-Pass Screen Reader Workflow

High-Impact Scenarios to Test More Deeply

Capturing Findings and Making TalkBack Testing Sustainable

Defining the Scope: What a Meaningful WCAG Audit Should Cover

How Testing Is Approached in a WCAG Audit

Automated and Manual Testing Work Together

Real Environments Should Be Part of the Picture

Understanding WCAG References Without Getting Lost

How a WCAG Audit Turns Issues Into Action

Issues Should Be Clear Enough to Fix Without Follow-Up

Severity and Frequency Should Guide What Gets Fixed First

Accessibility Beyond the Checklist

Reporting, Tracking, and Measuring Progress

Turning a WCAG Audit into Real Risk Mitigation

A Quick Refresher on WCAG and the Three Levels

The Four Principles of WCAG

Perceivable

Operable

Understandable

Robust

Why WCAG Level A Is Not Optional

Common WCAG Level A Failures Teams Miss

Alt Text That Breaks Meaning

Forms Users Cannot Complete

Keyboard Interaction That Is Assumed

Behavior That Changes Without Warning

How to See Where You Stand Today

A Practical Path to WCAG Level A, and Staying There

Address Issues at the Pattern Level

Give Teams Clear Guidance

Build Accessibility Into Daily Workflows

Revisit Regularly

Building a Confident Accessibility Foundation

Why Web Accessibility Still Gets Pushed Back

Many Barriers End in Abandonment

“Make It Accessible” Is Not a Plan

What Waiting Costs

Support Load and Operational Friction Add Up

Brand Trust Erodes in Subtle Ways

Teams Burn Out on “Not Yet”

Pressure Creates Rushed Work

Reframing Web Accessibility as a Shipping Standard

A Practical Path That Makes Progress Visible (Without Blowing Up Scope)

Start With Critical Journeys, Not “The Whole Site”

Turn Findings Into a Short Priority List Teams Can Act On

Create a Leadership Snapshot So the Work Stays Funded

Fix Patterns, Not Pages

Define a Release Floor That Fits Normal Delivery

A 90-Day Path That Builds Momentum Without Burnout

Days 1–30: Baseline the Journeys That Matter

Days 31–60: Remediate the Highest-Impact Components

Days 61–90: Add Guardrails So Progress Sticks

From “Someday” to “Starting Now”

VPAT and ACR, Untangled

When a VPAT Is Expected

The Risk of Treating Documentation Like a Formality

VPAT Myths That Waste Time and Energy

How to Decide If a VPAT Makes Sense for Your Organization

How to Make the Document Useful, Even When It Is Not Perfect

So, Do You Really Need a VPAT, and Where 216digital Fits

Dyslexia and Digital Reading: What’s Actually Going On?

What We Already Know About “Dyslexia-Friendly” Fonts

How WCAG Supports Dyslexic Readers in Practice

Core Characteristics of Dyslexia-Friendly Typography

Examples of Dyslexia-Friendly Fonts and How to Use Them Wisely

Layout Choices That Affect Reading Stability

Making Dyslexia-Friendly Typography Part of the System

Letting Users Personalize the Reading Experience

Fonts as One Powerful Piece of a Larger Accessibility Story

What the Fashion Nova Settlement Signals for Digital Accessibility

How the Case Turned Into a Digital Accessibility Class Action

Why the ADA Applies to Websites in Practice

Why WCAG Became the Working Standard for Digital Accessibility

The Hidden Costs That Show Up Before a Lawsuit

Lessons You Can Apply Before Risk Turns Into Disruption