Making a plan to fix accessibility issues
Prioritise and plan the work needed to fix accessibility issues.
After testing your website, you need to:
- review the issues you have found
- assign a priority level for each issue
- make a plan of how and when the issues will be fixed
If you are testing a new website, your plan should consider what can be fixed before launch and what is reasonable to fix in the future.
To prioritise and plan, we advise meeting with different team members to make decisions together. Invite people with the best knowledge of the website’s code, content and design.
Prioritising accessibility issues
It’s important to understand what each issue is, where it occurs and what it means for users. If an issue makes it impossible for someone to access a new service, this may mean it cannot go live until it's fixed.
Use the following framework to guide which issues you should fix first:
If you have recorded your testing in our basic check template, you can use this to list the issues and assign a priority level.
Highest priority
- Issue excludes users from accessing content and there is no alternative or workaround
- Fixing this would have high impact and take medium or low effort
- Site cannot go live until these issues are fixed
- Examples: Cannot navigate with a keyboard. Missing form labels.
High priority
- Issue prevents user access, but there is a workaround to finish a task
- This issue could escalate to Highest priority if the workaround causes significant frustration
- Site might be able to go live with these issues not fixed, but there must be a commitment to fix
- Example: Colour contrast issue, which could be mitigated with a screen filter.
Medium priority
- Issue causes frustration or inconvenience for users
- Repeated occurrences or feedback from users could increase this to a High priority
- Site can go live with these issues unfixed, but there must be a commitment to fix
- Example: Too many unnecessary screen reader read outs.
Low priority
- Issue causes minor inconvenience
- Fixing issue would have low impact but high effort
- The issue could be part of a journey that is due to close
- Site can go live without fixing these issues. They are low priority and may not be addressed, but should still be listed in the accessibility statement.
Making a plan
After you assign a priority to each issue, you will need to decide what is reasonable to fix now or fix in the future. You might consider:
- the factors that helped you decide what type of testing to do
- the urgency and timeline of your project
- resources available to fix the issues
You should aim to fix as many issues as is reasonably possible, particularly those of high and highest priority. For any issues you cannot fix before a website goes live, document them in a project plan so you can track progress later.
Any unresolved issues must be listed in your accessibility statement with an estimated fix date. Making a plan now will make it easier to write a compliant accessibility statement.
Your plan could cover:
- how highest and high priority issues will be resolved before going live
- how and when any other issues will be resolved in the future
- how you will track and monitor any issues listed in your statement, and escalate if needed
- how you will use all of the above to create and publish an accessibility statement