Design · December 10, 2025 · 6 min read
WCAG AA is a floor, not a feature
Accessibility retrofits cost 5–10× what building it in costs. The checks we run in design review, before a line of code exists.
The most expensive accessibility work we do is the retrofit: auditing a shipped product, then fixing contrast, focus management, and screen-reader labels across hundreds of screens. It routinely costs five to ten times what building it in would have cost. So we moved the checks upstream.
Checked in design review, not QA
- Contrast AA verified on real tokens, including disabled and placeholder states everyone forgets
- Focus order and visible focus states designed explicitly — not left for the browser default that got reset away
- Touch targets 44px minimum, checked at the component level once, inherited everywhere
- Every interactive element named the way a screen reader will announce it — written in the design file
The floor mindset
Treating AA as a launch feature invites the question 'can we ship without it?' Treating it as a floor — like 'the site works in Chrome' — removes the question. No one asks whether the checkout can skip working.
One design-system pass makes hundreds of future screens accessible by inheritance. It's the cheapest compounding investment we know in this business.