Accessibility is cheaper early
The cost of WCAG conformance depends almost entirely on when you start. Retrofitting a finished product costs several times more than building it in.
Every audit we have been handed after a launch contained the same categories of finding: focus order, form labels, colour contrast, and error messages announced to nobody. All four are nearly free to get right during development and expensive to fix afterwards, because by then they are distributed across every screen.
Why retrofitting costs more#
A contrast failure in a design token is one change. The same failure discovered after launch is one change plus regression testing of every screen that uses it, plus a stakeholder conversation about the brand colour, plus a release.
On a recent project we compared the two paths honestly. Building conformance in added roughly 6% to the design and frontend effort. The client’s previous product, audited after launch, had cost about a third of a rebuild to remediate.
What we put in the contract#
WCAG 2.2 AA as a stated deliverable. Keyboard and screen reader testing during development, not at the end. Automated checks in continuous integration so a regression fails the build. And an external audit before launch, because we are not the right people to mark our own work.
The commercial argument#
Public sector procurement in the EU increasingly requires a conformance statement. Two of our clients have won tenders where a competitor was excluded for lacking one. That is a stronger argument in most boardrooms than the ethical one, which is a slightly depressing observation, but it is the one that gets budget approved.
