Service page • Accessibility-first product design

Accessibility (WCAG) Design Services: Ensuring Inclusive Design and Standards Compliance

Accessibility (WCAG) design helps teams create digital products that work for everyone—across devices, environments, and assistive technologies. SHAPE translates WCAG into practical UX, UI, and content decisions so you can ship with confidence while ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

Talk to SHAPE about Accessibility (WCAG) design

Table of contents

What WCAG is (and what it’s for)

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the most widely adopted standard for digital accessibility. It provides testable requirements—called success criteria—that teams can design and build against to make experiences more usable for people with diverse abilities.

For product teams, WCAG isn’t just “web compliance.” It’s a practical framework for Accessibility (WCAG) design—helping you make intentional decisions about structure, interaction, content, and components while ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

Accessibility is a product quality system—not a last-minute checklist

Teams often treat accessibility as a final QA gate. But the highest leverage work happens earlier:

   
by default, not by exception.
 

Who benefits from Accessibility (WCAG) design?

Accessibility improvements support a wide range of real-world conditions, including low vision, motor constraints, cognitive load, temporary injury, screen glare, and noisy environments. Accessible UX also tends to improve overall clarity and efficiency—often benefiting conversion, task success, and retention.

How WCAG is structured: principles, guidelines, success criteria

WCAG is designed to move from high-level intent to measurable requirements. Understanding this structure makes Accessibility (WCAG) design easier to scope, implement, and verify—supporting ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance across design, engineering, and QA.

POUR: the four accessibility principles

WCAG is organized around four principles. Content and UI should be:

Guidelines and success criteria: from intent to tests

Each principle contains guidelines, and each guideline contains success criteria you can evaluate. In practice, teams meet success criteria through:

To make these requirements scalable, SHAPE often pairs Accessibility (WCAG) design with UI design systems & component libraries so accessible patterns become reusable and consistent.

WCAG conformance levels: A, AA, AAA

WCAG success criteria are grouped into three levels of conformance. Most organizations aim for Level AA because it balances impact and feasibility while meeting common expectations for ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

Level A (baseline access)

Addresses fundamental blockers like keyboard access and text alternatives. This is a minimum bar—but by itself may not provide an inclusive experience.

Level AA (common target for products)

Includes high-impact requirements such as color contrast, resizing text, consistent navigation, and error identification. Level AA is frequently requested in procurement and accessibility policies.

Level AAA (selective, context-dependent)

Advanced requirements that can be difficult to achieve across all content. Many teams apply AAA criteria selectively to high-priority experiences.

   
across the rest of the product.
 

What SHAPE delivers: Accessibility (WCAG) design deliverables

SHAPE focuses on Accessibility (WCAG) design that teams can adopt and maintain—so compliance is not a one-time project, but an operational capability for ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

Accessibility design audit (UX + UI)

WCAG-aligned components and pattern guidance

We define how core components behave across keyboard, screen reader, and touch usage—including focus states, accessible names, and interaction rules. This work is especially effective when connected to UI design systems & component libraries so accessibility becomes repeatable.

Design + dev handoff specifications

For teams that need build-ready clarity, we connect accessibility requirements into Design-to-development handoff so implementation stays accurate sprint to sprint.

Validation and usability checks (including assistive tech)

We validate the highest-risk journeys with practical checks, and when needed, usability testing with diverse participants. Pair with UX research & usability testing to evaluate real task success—not just theoretical compliance.

Use case explanations

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

Redesigns introduce new navigation and new components—making regressions likely. SHAPE embeds Accessibility (WCAG) design into the redesign workflow so you can launch confidently while ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

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 define standardized focus behavior, keyboard interactions, and documentation—often by strengthening UI design systems & component libraries.

3) Procurement, customers, or policies require WCAG alignment

Enterprise, government, education, and healthcare buyers frequently ask for evidence of accessibility. SHAPE helps translate WCAG requirements into design decisions and acceptance criteria—supporting ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance without slowing delivery.

4) QA keeps finding the same accessibility issues

Repeated defects—missing focus indicators, unlabeled inputs, inaccessible dialogs—are system problems. We fix the root cause by improving patterns, components, and review checkpoints so Accessibility (WCAG) design becomes repeatable.

5) You’re shipping fast and need accessibility guardrails that don’t create friction

We implement lightweight, high-impact guardrails: checklist-based reviews, design tokens that meet contrast, and component states that work by default—so you keep momentum while ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance.

Step-by-step tutorial: designing and validating WCAG-aligned experiences

This playbook mirrors how SHAPE operationalizes Accessibility (WCAG) design—so inclusive outcomes are designed, built, and verified as part of delivery.

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

Build accessibility into your product, not around it

If you want to expand reach, reduce risk, and ship a better experience for everyone, SHAPE can help with Accessibility (WCAG) design—focused on ensuring inclusive design and standards compliance across design, engineering, and QA.

Start an Accessibility (WCAG) design engagement