The real shift: the European Accessibility Act forces earlier decisions
The EAA is an EU directive that sets accessibility requirements for certain products and services across member states, including key digital services. It marks a major change because it goes beyond government sites and explicitly impacts areas like e-commerce and digital services.
One detail agencies keep missing is the microenterprise threshold. If a business has fewer than 10 employees and turnover not exceeding €2 million (or balance sheet total not exceeding €2 million), it may be treated differently under the EAA depending on the scenario. In practice, that line matters when you are qualifying risk, urgency, and scope with a client.
Even if your client is not headquartered in Europe, the practical takeaway is, if they serve EU customers with covered digital services, accessibility is not optional. Agencies that wait for a complaint, or treat accessibility as a final checklist, set themselves up for messy, expensive remediation.
For agencies who also sell into the U.S., you might find some helpful insights from our blog ‘Why ADA Compliance is crucial for Digital Agencies & Client Sites’
That is why accessibility cannot be treated as a final QA box. If you want reliable compliance, you need a system your team can repeat across builds, updates, and content changes.
Accessibility only sticks when it becomes a system
Accessibility requires an ongoing, repeatable approach to building and maintaining websites rather than a one-time sweep of code issues. When agencies treat it as a system, covering design, content, development, and support workflows, the fixes stick and the site improves over time.
Amber’s most valuable insight is the one many teams ignore:
“Accessibility is literal code and content fixes on a website, but it is also making sure you have internal processes in your organization to avoid them in the future.”
That means:
Developers need patterns that do not ship inaccessible components.
Content teams need standards for headings, link text, alt text, and templates.
Support teams need a way to recognize accessibility requests, help the user, and escalate the root issue so it gets fixed permanently.
If you only do the first part, you will keep paying for the same problems.
Start with an audit, then protect the funnel
If you want accessibility work to feel manageable, you need a clear starting point and a sensible order of operations. The most effective approach begins with finding the issues, then fixing the parts of the site that directly affect real users and real revenue.
1) Start with an automated scan, but do not stop there
The fastest first step is automated testing. For WordPress sites, Amber recommends starting with an automated tool to surface obvious, high-volume issues, then fixing global elements first (header, footer, site-wide navigation), because those errors repeat across every page.
Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker plugin is one example of a WordPress-focused approach, built to help identify and resolve accessibility issues directly inside the publishing workflow.
Automated tools catch a lot, but they do not catch everything. Treat them as the first filter, not the final verdict.
2) Do keyboard testing to uncover “real user” breakpoints
Next, do a manual keyboard pass:
Load key pages.
Use Tab to move through interactive elements.
Confirm links work with Return.
Confirm buttons work with Return and Space.
Confirm focus states are visible.
Confirm accordions, menus, and carousels work without a mouse.
This step quickly reveals where your UI is functionally inaccessible, even if the site “looks fine”.
3) Add screen reader testing, or bring in a specialist
Screen reader testing introduces nuances that many teams are not trained for. If you are not confident, or the site is high risk (large e-commerce, regulated industries, or high-visibility brands), Amber’s advice is clear: bring in an accessibility professional.
That protects your client and it protects your agency. You can still own the relationship and deliver the fixes, but you should not be the person making the final call on compliance if you do not have the expertise.
What a useful accessibility audit output looks like
A good audit is not just a list of errors. It should tell you what to fix first, who should fix it, and what success looks like. At minimum, aim for:
Issues grouped by template or component (so you fix patterns, not pages).
A simple severity view tied to critical user journeys (forms, checkout, navigation).
Clear recommendations with owners, dev vs content, plus a realistic timeline.
This makes the work easier to sell, easier to scope, and far less painful to deliver.
Do not fix everything, fix what repeats and what converts
Accessibility work becomes overwhelming when teams treat every issue as equal. Reports can look terrifying because they surface repeated issues across thousands of pages. Start by identifying repeat issues, points that block key journeys, and the areas where changes will have the greatest immediate impact.
Amber’s prioritization model is more practical.
Fix global templates first
Start with header, footer, navigation, and any shared components. If it appears everywhere, fix it once at the source.Then prioritize like a marketing funnel.
This includes:
Checkout flows
Quote and lead forms
Contact forms
Login and account areas
Then move upwards to supporting pages.
This is the part agencies can sell confidently: you are not “doing accessibility”, you are protecting conversion paths and customer experience.
WordPress decisions: fix the theme, fix the plugin, or replace it
In WordPress, accessibility problems often come from patterns, not individual pages. Once you know whether an issue lives within your theme, a plugin, or the content workflow, you can choose the most efficient fix and avoid chasing the same bug across the whole site.
One of the most actionable points from Amber is how agencies should think inside WordPress:
If the issue is in the theme, fix it at the theme level so it does not repeat.
If the issue is in a plugin, report it to the plugin developer with a clear reproduction path. Many developers respond quickly when the problem is well documented.
If the plugin developer cannot or will not fix it, decide between:
a temporary patch (sometimes JavaScript-based), or
replacing the plugin with a more accessible option, including core blocks where possible.
This is why WordPress literacy matters in audits. Generic audits often tell you what HTML should look like, but not how to solve it efficiently inside WordPress.
Accessibility statements and support workflows are part of the work
A major EAA-related expectation is that organizations document what is known, what is being fixed, and how users can get help.
For agencies, this matters because it turns accessibility into an operational deliverable, not just a dev task.
Amber’s operational advice is sharper than most compliance talk:
Do not hide behind a vague statement.
Where you knowingly link to inaccessible content (like an unremediated PDF or a third-party platform), add a clear note and a way to request an accessible alternative.
Train support to recognize an accessibility request, help the person, then escalate the underlying issue so it is fixed for everyone.
Amber told Cory, “The biggest thing with all of these laws is to get people access and help them.” That principle is what connects each of these steps and turns a one-off response into a system that improves over time.
That last step is the difference between “we responded” and “we improved”.
The business case agencies can use
Accessibility is often framed as a cost center. In practice, it behaves more like a quality and performance upgrade with multiple returns.
For a start, accessibility is not a niche. The WHO estimates 1.3 billion people, around 16% of the world’s population, experience significant disability.
And even beyond direct impact, the work tends to clean up the underlying structure of sites, which improves usability for everyone, not only users who rely on assistive technology. It can also reduce confusion in interfaces, which can lower support volume over time.
Sell accessibility as ongoing care, not a one-off project
If you are building websites for clients, accessibility is now part of what “done” means.
Accessibility is best delivered the same way you deliver performance and security, through continuous improvement. Agencies that package it as ongoing care reduce risk, avoid emergency remediation, and create a clearer long-term value story for clients.
A good agency approach looks like this:
Audit and triage.
Fix global templates.
Protect conversion paths next.
Split remediation across dev and content teams for cost efficiency.
Publish an accessibility statement and a support pathway.
Add training and workflow checks so issues stop coming back.
That is not only safer, it is also a cleaner retainer story: accessibility becomes part of ongoing website care, alongside performance, security, and maintenance.
What to do next
Getting started comes down to building momentum, even without a perfect roadmap. A few hours of scanning, keyboard testing, and prioritizing the highest-impact fixes can dramatically improve how accessible your site is, and give you a clear plan for what comes next.
This week, do the basics:
Run an initial automated scan on your homepage, header, and footer.
Do a 20-minute keyboard test on your homepage, contact page, and checkout or lead form.
List the top 10 issues blocking navigation or form completion.
Decide what is theme-level, plugin-level, and content-level.
Create a simple internal process: when support sees an accessibility request, they escalate it into your tracking system.
Then turn it into an agency service:
Run an audit and group issues by template and journey.
Fix global patterns first, then protect the funnel.
Publish an accessibility statement with a clear support pathway.
Set expectations: accessibility improves in releases, not in one sprint.
Add training for content, dev, and support so issues stop returning.
If you can do only one thing, start at the bottom of the funnel. Fixing the paths where customers convert is the quickest way to make accessibility feel real, valuable, and measurable.
Accessibility is part of delivery
Website accessibility is part of delivering a working site in 2026. It can no longer be pushed to the end of a project.
The agencies that handle this well will be the ones with a repeatable process: audit properly, prioritize fixes that protect the funnel, document what is known in a clear accessibility statement, and train teams so issues do not keep coming back.
Do that, and accessibility stops being a panic-driven remediation project and becomes what it should have been all along: a quality standard that improves UX, reduces avoidable support load, and helps more people complete the actions your website exists for.
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