Not a compliance checkbox. A measure of how well your product actually works for the full range of people using it.

Accessibility is the practice of designing products that work for people with a range of abilities — including visual, motor, auditory, and cognitive differences. In product terms: a screen reader can navigate the interface, interactive elements are reachable by keyboard, text meets minimum contrast requirements, and the product doesn't create unnecessary barriers for users who experience the world differently.

The common framing of accessibility as compliance is technically correct but practically limiting. Teams that treat it as a legal checkbox end up with products that technically pass an audit and still fail real users — because they optimized for the test rather than the experience.

WCAG — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — is the international standard for web accessibility, published by the W3C. It's organized around four principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR).

Conformance is graded at three levels: A (minimum), AA (the standard required by most regulations), and AAA (enhanced). Most legal requirements — including the EU Accessibility Act and the ADA as applied to digital products — reference WCAG 2.1 AA or 2.2 AA.

The full specification is long, but the practical requirements covering 80% of real-world issues are much shorter: sufficient color contrast, full keyboard navigation, text alternatives for images, and forms that work correctly with assistive technology.

Accommodations designed for people with disabilities routinely improve the experience for everyone. Curb cuts were designed for wheelchair users — they're now used by cyclists, delivery workers, and parents with strollers. The same pattern plays out in product design.

High-contrast text is easier to read in sunlight. Keyboard navigation benefits power users who prefer not to use a mouse. Clear error messages and simple language help everyone, not just users with cognitive differences. Accessibility improvements and general usability improvements overlap more than most teams expect — teams that treat them as separate workstreams miss that compounding value.

Roughly one in four US adults has some form of disability, according to the CDC. That number grows when you include situational impairments: a broken arm, a noisy environment, a bright screen outdoors.

For B2B products specifically, accessibility is increasingly a procurement requirement. Enterprise buyers in regulated industries — healthcare, government, financial services — routinely include WCAG 2.2 AA in vendor evaluation criteria. Products that can't produce an accessibility conformance report lose deals before the demo. It's no longer a niche consideration.

If a product has never had an accessibility audit, the first step is a structured evaluation against WCAG 2.1 AA — this surfaces the highest-priority gaps quickly. Automated tools like Axe catch roughly 30% of issues. The rest require manual testing and assistive technology review.

Fix in order of severity: keyboard traps and screen reader failures first, then contrast and labeling issues, then more nuanced cognitive accessibility concerns.

Building accessibility into the design process — using accessible components, reviewing color contrast in design reviews, specifying focus states in handoff — is far cheaper than retrofitting. A UX Audit covers accessibility evaluation alongside broader usability review.