Buying a Website That Meets a Standard

The word is not a requirement

Website proposals routinely say the site will be accessible, or built to modern accessibility standards, and both are unenforceable.

There is no shared definition of accessible. A supplier who adds descriptions to images and nothing else has arguably met the word.

So the client believes they bought something specific and the supplier believes they delivered it, and neither is being dishonest.

The fix is dull and effective: replace the adjective with a named standard, a level, and a test.

Name the standard and the level

The international guidance on web content accessibility is what almost every jurisdiction points at, and it comes in versions and in three conformance levels.

The middle level is what most requirements specify and what most organisations aim for. The lowest is a floor that leaves real problems unaddressed, and the highest is demanding enough that few sites reach it fully.

Write the version and the level into the agreement rather than referring to accessibility generally.

That single change turns a matter of opinion into something two parties can check, and it tells you immediately whether a supplier knows what they are agreeing to.

Conformance is a claim about pages

A distinction worth understanding before writing anything.

Conformance applies to individual pages rather than to a site in the abstract, and a page either meets the criteria or it does not.

Which means a realistic agreement specifies which pages are covered: usually the templates, since a site of two hundred pages built from six templates is really six things to test.

It also means the claim can be broken later by adding a page or an image, which is why the ongoing responsibility question below matters as much as the delivery.

Who tests, and when

The clause that decides whether any of this is real.

A supplier testing their own work with an automated tool and reporting a pass is not meaningful, because automated tools find roughly a third of the problems.

State what testing is required: automated checking, manual keyboard testing, and testing with a screen reader on the key journeys.

State when: before final payment, not after launch, since a fault found afterwards becomes a change request rather than a defect.

And state who: the supplier, an independent tester, or both. For anything substantial, an independent check is worth the modest cost, because it is the only version that is not somebody grading their own work.

What to put in the agreement

• The standard, version and level, named exactly.
• Which pages or templates are covered.
• What testing will be performed, and by whom.
• When it happens, before final payment.
• Who fixes failures, and at whose cost.
• A retention held until it passes.
• What happens to content you add afterwards.

The sixth is the one that changes behaviour. An obligation with no consequence attached is a statement of intent.

Third-party components are where it breaks

The most common way a well-intentioned build fails.

A site is assembled from a theme, a booking widget, a payment step, a map, a review feed, and a cookie notice, most of which the supplier did not write.

Any one of those can fail on a keyboard or with a screen reader, and the supplier will reasonably say it is not their code.

Deal with it in the agreement: components are the supplier's responsibility to select, and where a chosen component cannot meet the standard, the supplier proposes an alternative.

That puts the selection risk where the expertise is, and it prevents the outcome where the site fails because of a plugin nobody evaluated.

A worked example

An organisation commissioned a site with a proposal promising it would be built to accessibility best practice.

At launch it had unlabelled form fields, a booking widget that could not be operated with a keyboard, and a colour scheme failing contrast on body text.

The supplier's position was that best practice had been followed and none of these had been specified, which was defensible.

The rebuild agreement, with a different supplier, named the standard and level, listed six templates, required keyboard and screen reader testing by an independent tester before the final payment, and made component selection the supplier's responsibility.

Testing found eleven issues, nine of which were fixed within a fortnight and two of which required replacing the booking component.

Total cost of the testing was a small fraction of the build. The first project had cost more in argument than the testing would have cost twice over.

The content is your problem

Worth accepting rather than resisting, because it is where most sites regress.

A supplier can deliver templates that meet a standard. They cannot control what you publish afterwards.

An image uploaded without a description, a heading chosen for its size, a PDF nobody can read, or a video without captions will break conformance on that page regardless of how well the site was built.

So the agreement should include a handover: what your team has to do to keep the site conforming, in writing, plus enough training that they can.

An afternoon of training at handover is worth more than any clause, because it addresses the thing that actually causes the decline.

What it costs

Building to a standard from the start adds a modest amount, usually in the region of a few percent of a build, and most of that is testing time rather than development.

Retrofitting an existing site costs considerably more, because decisions embedded in the design have to be unpicked.

The expensive version is the third one: discovering the problem after launch, arguing about whose responsibility it is, and paying somebody to fix work you already paid for.

Naming the standard at the proposal stage is what avoids that, and it costs nothing at all.

The counter-case

There is a version of this that produces a worse outcome.

A specification demanding the highest conformance level for a small brochure site will either be quoted very high or agreed to by somebody who does not understand what they have signed, and the second is more likely.

Full conformance at the top level is genuinely difficult, and a supplier promising it cheaply is telling you something about their understanding rather than their capability.

The proportionate position for most small businesses is the middle level on the templates and key journeys, honestly tested, with a plan for the content. That is achievable, affordable, and helps real people.

Asking for more than that without budget produces a promise rather than a site.

Before signing

1. Replace the word accessible with a standard, version and level.
2. List the templates the claim covers.
3. Require keyboard and screen reader testing, not just automated.
4. Put the testing before final payment.
5. Make component selection the supplier's responsibility.
6. Hold a retention until it passes.
7. Include training for whoever adds content.

Step one takes a sentence and is the difference between a requirement and an aspiration.

Requests that cannot be priced are covered in the quote request that cannot be quoted.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.