Typical results
- WCAG 2.2 AA conformance across key templates and user flows
- Lighthouse accessibility score into the high 90s
- Full keyboard operability and screen-reader-tested navigation
- Brand palette adjusted to meet colour-contrast requirements
Representative outcomes for this type of accessibility work; exact figures vary by scope.
This is a generic WordPress accessibility case study — the approach I take whenever a team decides, rightly, that accessibility is a launch requirement and not a post-launch chore.
WordPress accessibility from day one
Accessibility is cheapest and most complete when it is built in from the first component. Retrofitting it after launch means re-opening finished work, and the result is usually partial. Treating WordPress accessibility as a requirement — the same as performance or security — changes the outcome entirely.
Why retrofits fall short
When accessibility is an afterthought, it becomes a checklist bolted onto markup that was never designed for it: missing landmarks, unlabelled controls, keyboard traps, and colour contrast that fails on the brand palette. Fixing those at the end is slow and brittle, and it rarely covers screen-reader users properly.
The approach
I build accessibility into the workflow against the WCAG guidelines: semantic HTML with real landmarks and headings, keyboard-navigable components with visible focus states, sufficient colour contrast checked against the design tokens, and screen-reader testing as part of the build rather than a final audit. It pairs naturally with my custom WordPress development and technical SEO work, since clean, semantic markup serves both.
Components, not pages
Accessibility lives in the component library. When the button, accordion, menu, and form field are each correct — labelled, focusable, announced — every page assembled from them inherits that correctness. That is how WordPress accessibility scales without slowing the team down.
Testing that reflects real use
Automated tools catch perhaps half of the issues, so I combine them with keyboard-only passes and screen-reader checks on the actual templates. The aim is not a green score; it is a site a real person using assistive technology can navigate without hitting a wall.
Documentation and handoff
Accessibility erodes when no one knows the rules, so I document the patterns: how focus order is managed, which contrast pairs are approved, how to label an icon button, and what to check before publishing. With the patterns written down and baked into the components, the team can extend the site months later without quietly reintroducing barriers.
The business case
Beyond being the right thing to do, accessible sites reach more people, reduce legal risk, and tend to be faster and better structured. The same semantic markup that helps a screen reader also helps search engines understand the page, so accessibility and SEO push in the same direction rather than competing for budget.
The outcome
The site launches meeting its accessibility goals, with a component library the team can extend without reintroducing barriers. Accessibility stops being a risk hanging over the launch and becomes a durable property of the design system — and the cleaner, more semantic markup tends to help SEO and maintainability too.
Common pitfalls we design out
A handful of mistakes account for most accessibility failures, and all of them are predictable. Icon buttons ship without a label, so a screen reader announces nothing useful. Custom dropdowns and modals trap or ignore the keyboard. Body text sits at a contrast ratio that fails against the brand palette. Focus styles are removed for being ‘ugly’, leaving keyboard users lost. Headings are chosen for size rather than structure, so the document outline makes no sense. Because each of these is handled once at the component level — labelled controls, managed focus, approved contrast pairs, semantic headings — they never reach a real page. Preventing them up front is far cheaper than discovering them in a post-launch audit.
The takeaway
Make WordPress accessibility a requirement, build it into reusable components, and test the way people actually use the site. Done from day one, it is far cheaper than the retrofit — and far more complete.