Accessibility in Web Design & Development
Consider building a fully compliant site or eCommerce solution? We offer a complete package of accessible website development and accessible website design. We’ll help your business stay strictly legal and competitive while unleashing the new growth potential.
Accessibility is most cost-effective when it’s baked in from the beginning, and your design and development team works together to make sure that your whole website utilizes accessibility best practices.
Our team has collectively designed and built hundreds of websites and has experience working with almost all popular CMS and Framework like WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, Bigcommerce, Webflow, Magento, Craft CMS, WooCommerce, LearnDash, Codeigniter, Laravel, ReactJS, NodeJS Framework. We have worked with eCommerce, government and nonprofit clients.
Each website or web application we build is designed to meet the specific business and marketing needs of the client and is optimized not only for accessibility but also for search engine ranking, user experience, and conversions. If you’re looking for creative vision and strategic thinking in addition to accessibility expertise, you’re in the right place.
Our Process
Our Accessible Website Development and Accessible Website Design Process
Accessibility is central to our process, and every phase of a project includes accessibility reviews and refinement to ensure your final website meets or exceeds your legal requirements for accessibility.
Step 1: Initial Consultation
We gather key information on your business and define expectations for the project. This preliminary discussion helps us to understand the problem(s) you’re trying to solve, the resources at our disposal, and any limiting factors that may exist. Out of this discussion we’ll create a proposal for your approval.
Step 2: Discovery
Once a proposal is accepted, the project officially begins with a discovery phase. The discovery phase allows us to gain a clearer understanding of business and customer goals, desired design aesthetic, and create a full scope of content needed. We’ll also establish the specific accessibility laws/guidelines which may apply to your organization. During this phase we’ll create user journey maps, navigation structure, a site map, and generate both a content request document and design brief.
Step 3: Content
The content phase is when your team will supply us with all of the content (text, images, CSV files, PDFs, etc.) that will be needed for the website. If desired, we can help you to draft content and can supply stock images. Once all content is ready, we’ll perform a first accessibility review to make sure there are no accessibility problems in the content supplied.
Step 4: Design
We design the home and interior pages needed for the site for both Desktop and Mobile. Just specifying the right colors so that text has enough contrast can make all the difference in enabling them to use your product too. To meet these needs, there is a growing collection of accessibility-focused tools to help you tackle these challenges in your designs. All designs receive an accessibility review to ensure proper color contrast, proximity, etc. By focusing on accessibility early, we create clean, easy-to-navigate designs that draw in visitors and maximize user experience quality.
Step 5: Development
Development begins after designs are approved, though our development team is heavily involved at every stage of your project. Regular check-ins with our developers throughout earlier phases ensures that we are able to execute your project on-time, on budget and within scope. During development, your team will get a break while we turn your designs into a working website.
Step 6: Audit & Testing
Every website project includes a rigorous testing & debug phase, during which our team tests every feature, performs a visual check on every page, checks the website’s performance in all major browsers, and reviews project scope to ensure we’re delivering everything promised. These tests are performed by multiple people and any issues uncovered are compiled into a change list for our development team. We often involve our clients heavily in the testing phase — the more eyes, the better has always been our policy. During test and debug, we’ll also run a full accessibility audit on the completed site and remediate any discovered issues.
Step 7: User Testing & Remediation
For clients who want to go the extra mile to ensure the accessibility and usability of their website, we include a user testing phase towards the end of our test and debug period. In this phase we’ll have users navigate the site with keyboards and screen readers to identify any additional items that need to be fixed. We will remediate all the required accessibility issues if anything left during the development phase.
Step 8: Launch & Training
It’s time to launch your website! As your website is launched, our team runs through a final checklist that includes many items — everything from migrating staging to live site, setting up SSL encryption, optimize site to achieve good score in Google Lighthouse, to configuring Google Analytics conversion goals. This ensures that every website we deliver meets our rigorous internal standards and is delivered securely, in compliance with all current best practices. Following launch, we provide training in the use of your new website.
Frameworks
DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT WITH LEADING WEBSITE FRAMEWORKS
We can build accessible websites and remediate codes seamlessly using leading Content Management Systems, Popular Website Frameworks, top eCommerce Platforms and more.
Design Tools
Design for everyone with these accessibility-focused tools
Colour and Contrast impact accessibility in every design. We are highly skilled in working with these accessibility-focused design tools to help you make your designs better for everyone. We address accessibility challenges like colour contrast with these helpful design tools. Each tool has its own unique features and user interface, so feel free to contact us to see which one works best for you. Get a WCAG-friendly Wireframe or UI/UX design for your next project.
FAQ
Accessible Website Development — Frequently Asked Questions
What is accessible website development?
Accessible website development is the practice of designing and building websites so that everyone — including people who use screen readers, keyboards or screen magnification — can use them with ease. We bake accessibility in from the first line of code and align every build with WCAG 2.2, rather than bolting it on at the end.
Which platforms and frameworks do you build on?
Our team works across almost all popular systems — WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Webflow, Magento, Craft CMS, Laravel, React and Node. Every accessible website development project follows the same accessibility-first process regardless of the platform you choose.
How does your accessible website development process work?
The work runs through eight clear phases, from initial consultation and discovery to design, development, audit, user testing and launch. Accessibility reviews happen at every phase, and where needed we can also run a formal website accessibility audit or carry out accessibility remediation.
Do you follow WCAG and Section 508 standards?
Yes. Every accessible website development project is measured against WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA and Section 508, and tested with real assistive technology such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver and TalkBack. Where you need a compliance statement, we can prepare a VPAT accessibility report.
Can you make my existing website accessible?
Absolutely. If your site is already built, we can audit it, fix the barriers and bring it up to standard through our accessible website development and remediation services — working on our own or alongside your in-house team.