Website accessibility
SEOD reviews and improves accessibility barriers using WCAG-informed engineering, automated testing, manual checks and practical remediation. That helps more people use your website, and it reduces avoidable accessibility risk at the same time. Those are the same job, not two competing ones.
More than one in four American adults, 28.7 percent according to the CDC, reports a disability. They are already trying to use your site.
Every SEOD Foundation build includes an accessibility-minded baseline, tested before launch. You do not pay extra for a site that works properly.
Start With FoundationWe review what you have, tell you which barriers actually matter, fix what we agree on, and show you what we tested. Custom scope after review.
Talk About Your SiteWhere this stands
Two things get confused constantly, and the difference matters for your business.
| Title II | State and local government. In April 2024 the Department of Justice adopted WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard, with compliance dates of April 26 2027 for larger entities and April 26 2028 for smaller ones. This rule does not apply to private businesses. |
|---|---|
| Title III | Businesses open to the public, which is almost certainly you. DOJ has consistently taken the position that the ADA reaches the goods and services a business offers online. There is no regulation setting detailed technical standards, and businesses have flexibility in how they comply. |
If a vendor tells you a 2024 federal regulation requires your restaurant or clinic to meet WCAG 2.1 AA, they are describing the rule for city government, not for you.
Real cases
Three matters, stated plainly. No damages figures we cannot source, and no suggestion that you are about to be sued.
Ninth Circuit · 2019
A blind customer could not order using a screen reader. The court held Title III applied, because the website and app connected customers to the goods and services of Domino’s physical restaurants. It also held that the absence of DOJ regulations did not eliminate the statutory duty.
California Court of Appeal · 2019
A restaurant website could not be used with a screen reader. The court held Title III applied, and that at minimum it covers a website with a nexus to a physical place of public accommodation. A single California restaurant with a website.
DOJ settlement · 2024
A private clinic’s patient and records portals did not work with screen readers. The agreement required an accessibility policy, conformance to WCAG 2.1 AA, a named coordinator, staff training and reporting. It reached the clinic’s contractors, including the portals themselves.
The Springfield matter is the one most worth knowing. It is a private business under Title III, and the obligation followed it to its software vendors. A booking tool or portal you did not build is still part of your customer’s experience.
Our engineering target
WCAG is the accessibility standard published by the W3C. We use version 2.2 at Level AA because it is current, testable, and widely accepted. It is how we work, not a legal guarantee, and we will not tell you otherwise. Meeting a technical standard and being legally compliant are different claims, and only one of them is ours to make.
Included in Foundation
Every SEOD Foundation build is developed and tested against the baseline below before it launches. We check keyboard use, contrast, structure, forms and responsive behaviour, fix what we find, and check again. It is part of building a website properly, not an upsell.
This baseline is inside the normal Foundation scope, which starts at $3,500. There is no accessibility surcharge for building a site correctly. Unusually complex remediation, on large sites or third-party systems we do not control, is scoped separately.
| Structure | Semantic HTML, one h1, correct heading order, landmarks |
|---|---|
| Navigation | A working skip link with a real target, full keyboard operation, no traps |
| Focus | A visible focus state on every interactive element |
| Forms | Labels tied to inputs, errors described in text, instructions that do not rely on colour |
| Images | Alt text that carries meaning, empty alt on decoration |
| Colour | Contrast measured, not eyeballed |
| Targets | Tap targets sized so they can actually be hit |
| Motion | Reduced-motion preferences respected |
| Zoom | Reflow to narrow screens, usable at 200 percent zoom |
| Video | Captions where the content carries meaning, no autoplay audio |
| Testing | Automated checks, a manual keyboard pass, and screen reader spot checks |
| Remediation | Barriers found in testing are fixed, then retested |
| Pre-launch review | A final accessibility review before the site goes live |
| Reporting | A published way for someone to report a barrier and reach a human |
For sites we did not build
Five stages, in order, with the scope written down before we start.
Custom scope after review. What the work costs depends on how large the site is, how it was built, and how much of it we are asked to fix, so we do not publish a flat number we would have to walk back.
Start with a no-cost conversation about what you need. Accessibility testing, remediation and documentation are scoped separately from that conversation, and you see the scope in writing before anything begins.
An automated score on its own is not an audit. DOJ's own guidance pairs automated checkers with manual evaluation, and so do we. Anyone selling you a scan result as an audit is selling you a number, not access.
Keeping it
Where SEOD maintains your site under Care, we can include ongoing regression checks. We only monitor sites we actually maintain, because we cannot be responsible for a site we do not control.
Websites change after launch. Care helps monitor for accessibility regressions caused by:
Care helps monitor, maintain and remediate within agreed scope. It does not guarantee continued compliance, it does not make the site permanently compliant, and we will not tell you it does.
See how Care worksStraight answers
Here is what we will not tell you.
Next step
We will tell you what is actually wrong, in plain language. Custom scope after review.
Talk About Your Site