Rollout plan
How accessibility programmes actually sequence, and what to expect at each stage. Useful whether you are on the free tier or running a governed estate.
Why timing is the whole argument#
Every accessibility defect has two prices: fixing it while the code is still in a sprint, and fixing it once a complaint, a regulator letter or a stalled procurement cycle has attached a deadline to it. The second price lands in an unplanned budget.
| Found at | Relative cost to remediate |
|---|---|
| Design and development | 1× |
| After release, in a backlog | 6× |
| Under a procurement deadline | 15× |
| Under legal settlement terms | 30×+ |
These are directional figures based on established defect-cost economics — they frame when to invest rather than quantify any particular estate. Treat them as an argument for sequencing, not as a forecast.
The seven stages#
Nobody starts with a governance programme. They start with one URL and a question.
| # | Stage | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Free scan | One URL, about ninety seconds, no commitment |
| 2 | Accessibility report | A score, a severity breakdown and the failing criteria |
| 3 | AI prioritisation | The queue ordered by impact, risk and effort |
| 4 | Developer fixes | Guided remediation, verified on re-test |
| 5 | Manual audit | Specialist testing for what automation cannot judge |
| 6 | Continuous monitoring | Ongoing scanning with alerts on regression |
| 7 | Enterprise governance | Policies, owners, thresholds and board reporting |
Each stage produces something useful on its own. You do not need to commit to stage 7 to benefit from stage 2.
A realistic first quarter#
Weeks 1–2 — establish the baseline#
Register your properties, run the first full scan across public and authenticated pages, and agree the conformance target (usually WCAG 2.2 AA).
Do not skip the authenticated pages. A public crawler stops at the login form, and if your statements, claims and onboarding flows sit past that point, an unauthenticated scan is testing your brochure and calling it your product. See scanning pages behind a login.
Weeks 3–12 — reduce the critical count#
Work the prioritised queue, clear blocking barriers first, and verify each fix automatically on re-scan. Score movement becomes visible within the first reporting cycle.
Expect the biggest early wins to be template-level: one fix to a shared header, footer or form component often clears the same finding across hundreds of pages.
Quarter 2 onward — hold the line#
Monitoring, thresholds and scheduled reporting keep the estate from drifting back, with audits and conformance documentation layered on as procurement requires them.
Accessibility is not a state you reach, it is a state you lose. A conformant page fails the week a marketing team ships an unlabelled form or a CMS update changes heading structure.
Where to start by role#
| You are… | Start with |
|---|---|
| A digital leader | A baseline report on your top ten properties, with risk framed in business terms |
| An accessibility manager | The platform as a replacement for the audit spreadsheet and the annual PDF |
| A procurement team | Conformance documentation, security review materials and commercial terms |
| A developer | One page scan, then read the report guide and check the selectors |
The measure that matters#
All the scores, charts and exports exist to answer one question:
A score is a proxy for that. When the two disagree, trust the task.
Related#
- Getting started — the first ten minutes
- Enterprise and governance features — what stages 6 and 7 involve
- Running scans — scheduling and coverage
- Reading your report — interpreting stage 2