Make Accessibility Part of Your Website Launch

A website launch checklist often gives accessibility a single checkbox. That leaves important questions unanswered: which journeys were reviewed, which issues remain, and who will prevent the next content update from reintroducing a problem?

Make accessibility a visible part of the project from the beginning. Define the target, assign responsibilities, and test the tasks people actually need to complete on the site.

Agree on the scope and the standard

The W3C overview of WCAG explains that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines contain testable success criteria and conformance levels. State the version and level your project is working toward, along with the pages, components, documents, and journeys included in the review.

A scope might cover the main templates, navigation, enquiry form, booking flow, and downloadable brochure. Identify third-party components such as chat tools or booking widgets early, because the team may have limited control over their implementation.

Give design, development, and content owners their own responsibilities. For example, the content editor may own useful image descriptions, while the developer owns the behavior of a custom menu.

Start with the journeys that matter

Choose tasks a visitor needs to complete: understand the offer, compare services, submit an enquiry, buy a product, or access an account. Follow each journey through every state, including errors and confirmation.

Consider an enquiry form that looks clear before submission. A person enters an invalid date, receives an error above the visible area, and cannot tell which field needs attention. Reviewing the initial page alone would miss the obstacle. Include deliberate mistakes and recovery in the test script.

Document the environment used for the review and involve people with relevant accessibility expertise. Where feasible, include users with disabilities in research so the team learns about practical barriers beyond its own assumptions.

Use initial checks to find obvious barriers

WAI’s Easy Checks covers introductory checks such as page titles, headings, text alternatives, contrast, keyboard focus, forms, and moving content. It explicitly describes these as limited preliminary checks, rather than a complete accessibility evaluation.

As an initial project pass, try navigating the main journey with a keyboard, enlarging text, and reviewing the page structure and form instructions. Record what prevents progress, what creates confusion, and where a specialist assessment is needed. An automated result can contribute evidence, but it should not be treated as the entire acceptance decision.

Write issues so someone can fix them

A useful issue record contains the location, steps to reproduce, observed behavior, intended behavior, and the affected task. Include the relevant acceptance requirement and enough evidence for the owner to understand the problem.

For the enquiry form example, specify which field fails, how the error appears, and what happens when the user tries to correct it. “Accessibility problem on contact page” leaves too much investigation for the next person.

• Assign a clear owner and priority.
• Identify whether the issue affects one page or a shared component.
• Describe the proposed correction in practical terms.
• Retest the original journey after the change.
• Check other places that use the same component.

Discuss unresolved barriers explicitly before launch. Record the decision, the responsible owner, and the planned correction. Avoid turning an incomplete review into an unsupported claim of complete accessibility.

Prepare editors for the next update

Give the team examples drawn from its own website: how to structure an article, write a meaningful link label, describe an informative image, and publish a document that readers can use. Include checks in the normal publishing workflow.

When adding a new plugin, animation, or campaign template, review the affected journeys again. Accessibility work continues as the site changes, so handover should identify who performs those reviews.

LeapHover can help assess and remediate website accessibility, then turn the findings into design, development, and content practices your team can maintain.