Handbook

Accessibility (blueprint)

**Purpose:** Deep, **project-agnostic** guidance for building accessible digital products. Covers standards, implementation patterns, testing approaches, and organizational practices.

Accessibility (blueprint)

Purpose: Deep, project-agnostic guidance for building accessible digital products. Covers standards, implementation patterns, testing approaches, and organizational practices.

Accessibility as a right, not a feature: Inclusive design is a baseline quality bar, not an edge-case backlog deferred to “phase two.” Standards like WCAG encode expectations for perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust experiences; keyboard support, semantics, and ARIA complete behaviors for assistive technology. Treat accessibility like security or performance: explicit targets, automated checks, manual verification, and regression discipline.

Audience: Teams adopting UX / UI Design; project docs in docs/design/accessibility/. Core knowledge: UX-DESIGN.md. Bridge: UX / UI Design ↔ SDLC ↔ PDLC bridge.

Accessibility implementation workflow

flowchart TD P[Policy e.g. WCAG 2.2 AA] --> DS[Design system a11y tokens] DS --> DEV[Build and code review] DEV --> AUTO[Automated CI checks] AUTO --> MAN[Manual test pass] MAN --> AT[Assistive technology smoke] AT --> REL[Release] REL --> MON[Regression monitoring]

Topic guides

Topic	Focus	Deep guide
WCAG conformance	POUR, levels A/AA/AAA, criteria by guideline, testing layers, legal overview, VPAT/ACR	`wcag-guide.md`
ARIA patterns	Native-first rule, roles, states, APG widgets, live regions, testing	`aria-patterns.md`
Keyboard navigation	Focus order, skip links, traps, custom widget keys	`wcag-guide.md` · `aria-patterns.md`
Screen reader compatibility	Landmarks, names/roles, live regions; NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver, TalkBack	`wcag-guide.md` · `aria-patterns.md`
Color and contrast	Ratios, tooling, tokens	`wcag-guide.md`
Motion and animation	`prefers-reduced-motion`, seizure safety	`UX-DESIGN.md` · `wcag-guide.md`
Forms and inputs	Labels, errors, autocomplete, grouping	`wcag-guide.md`
Inclusive design	Permanent, temporary, situational barriers	`UX-DESIGN.md`
Audit and testing	Scope, automated scan, manual + AT, remediation loop	`wcag-guide.md`

External references: WCAG 2.2, WAI-ARIA APG, Microsoft Inclusive Design, WebAIM, The A11Y Project.

Keep project-specific accessibility audits in docs/product/ and remediation plans in docs/development/, not in this file.

Canonical source

Edit https://github.com/autowww/blueprints/blob/main/disciplines/product/ux-design/accessibility/README.md first; regenerate with docs/build-handbook.py.