Accessibility (WCAG) design helps teams build products that work for everyone—across assistive technologies, devices, and real-world constraints. SHAPE translates WCAG into practical UX, UI, and content decisions so you can ship confidently while ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

Talk to SHAPE about Accessibility (WCAG) design

Accessibility is a product quality system: design, build, and validate for real users and assistive technologies.

WCAG overview: what it is (and why it matters)

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the most widely adopted accessibility standard for digital experiences. It defines testable success criteria that product teams can design and build against—core to Accessibility (WCAG) design and ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

If accessibility is only checked at the end, it becomes expensive and inconsistent. Inclusive outcomes happen when accessibility is designed into patterns and components.

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Accessibility improves fastest when it becomes repeatable across your delivery system. Teams commonly pair Accessibility (WCAG) design with:

The POUR principles: the backbone of accessible experiences

WCAG is organized around four principles, often summarized as POUR. SHAPE uses POUR as a shared language across UX, UI, and engineering when ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

Perceivable

Users must be able to perceive content and UI elements—regardless of vision, hearing, or environment. In Accessibility (WCAG) design, this commonly includes:

Operable

Users must be able to operate the interface with different inputs. This is where many products fail basic ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance if not designed early.

Understandable

Users must be able to understand both content and interaction behavior. Accessibility (WCAG) design supports clarity through:

Robust

Content must be robust enough to work across browsers, devices, and assistive technologies—now and as technology evolves.

POUR provides a shared checklist for inclusive interaction: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust.

WCAG conformance levels: A, AA, AAA

WCAG success criteria are grouped into three conformance levels. Most organizations target Level AA because it balances impact and feasibility while still ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

Level AA is where accessibility becomes broadly usable, not merely “technically accessible.”

How SHAPE delivers Accessibility (WCAG) design

SHAPE treats Accessibility (WCAG) design as a repeatable delivery system, not a one-off remediation sprint. Our work focuses on ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance through patterns, documentation, and validation.

1) Accessibility design audit (UX + UI)

2) Component and pattern guidance (build accessibility into the system)

We define how components should behave across keyboard, screen reader, and touch usage. This is often most effective when implemented via UI design systems & component libraries.

3) Build-ready specs and acceptance criteria

We convert accessibility requirements into implementation guidance that engineers and QA can verify. For teams scaling delivery, this pairs naturally with Design-to-development handoff.

4) Validation (assistive tech + real workflows)

We validate key workflows with practical checks and usability signals, and when needed, run sessions via UX research & usability testing to ensure your product is both compliant and genuinely usable.

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Use case explanations

1) You’re redesigning a product and want to avoid accessibility debt

Redesigns introduce new components and navigation patterns—where accessibility issues often reappear. SHAPE embeds Accessibility (WCAG) design into the redesign workflow to keep ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance consistent from day one.

2) Your design system exists, but accessible behavior isn’t standardized

If teams implement the “same” component differently, accessibility becomes inconsistent and expensive to fix. We standardize focus behavior, accessible names, and keyboard interactions—often through UI design systems & component libraries.

3) Enterprise buyers require WCAG alignment evidence

Procurement frequently asks for clear accessibility practices and outcomes. We translate WCAG into documented patterns, acceptance criteria, and verification steps to support ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance without slowing product delivery.

4) QA keeps finding recurring accessibility issues

Repeated issues (missing focus indicators, unlabeled inputs, inaccessible dialogs) indicate missing standards. We fix root causes through reusable patterns and build-ready specs—so Accessibility (WCAG) design becomes a team habit.

5) You need accessibility guardrails that don’t create friction

We implement lightweight, high-impact guardrails: component defaults, content rules, and review checkpoints—so you maintain momentum while ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

Step-by-step tutorial: design and validate WCAG-aligned experiences

This practical playbook shows how to operationalize Accessibility (WCAG) design so inclusive outcomes are designed, built, and verified.

Accessibility improves fastest when you standardize component behavior first—then apply those components across templates and flows.

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