A response to Accessibility Costs Considered (March 2024)
In March 2024 I closed out my pricing series with the cost that clients most often overlook: accessibility. I opened with this:
“If there is one aspect of website project pricing that’s most overlooked, it has to be accessibility.”
Most of us never notice how a site works with a screen reader, or how its menus behave when you navigate with the tab key instead of a mouse. People who need those things notice right away.
My main point was about cost. The deeper you go into accessibility standards, the more it affects design, development, and content production. I described each layer: running designs through contrast checks, building navigation that works with screen readers, writing alt text for every image, and styling focus states for menus and form fields. I called that last part a rabbit hole.
That was true at the time. Here is what has changed, and what hasn’t.
The development cost has dropped
In 2024 a lot of accessibility work was a fight with the framework. Page builders generate their own markup, and it isn’t always clean or well labeled. Getting menus, sliders, and accordions to behave properly with keyboards and screen readers often meant working around the builder, or buying another add-on and hoping it did the job.
When AI agents write custom code under experienced direction, that changes. We write the markup ourselves, for that one site, so we can build it correctly from the start: proper headings, real buttons, labeled links, keyboard-friendly menus. Accessibility becomes part of how the theme is built, not a layer bolted on afterward. Our agents follow a playbook and design standards, and accessibility belongs in those standards.
Out of the rabbit hole
Remember the rabbit hole? I wrote:
“You can chase these kinds of low level accessibility styling options pretty far down the rabbit hole.”
Custom focus styles for every menu item, checkbox, and dropdown used to be an expensive extra. Every one of them meant more programming time. Now they are a quick, consistent change across the whole site. Clients who used to settle for browser defaults to save money no longer have to make that call on cost alone.
That is the theme of this whole series. We used to accept a trade off between a fully accessible, carefully styled site and a reasonable budget. We don’t have to accept it anymore.
What still takes people
Some of my 2024 advice is exactly as true as it was.
The standards still have levels, and the right level still depends on the client. Public services and large institutions may have it mandated by policy. Others get to choose. So I still ask strategic questions up front about how far a client needs to go. That is a planning decision, and it belongs to people.
Design decisions still matter. Color contrast limits some choices, and a designer still has to make the palette work for everyone. Agents can check contrast quickly, but someone has to decide what looks right.
Content still matters most of all. I said every image needs a clear verbal description in its alt text. Agents can draft those descriptions, and that saves a lot of time on a large site. But a person who understands why an image is on the page should review them. A technically accurate description that misses the point doesn’t help anyone.
And testing still takes people. Automated tools catch a lot, but someone needs to tab through the site, listen to it with a screen reader, and make sure it actually works for the people who depend on it.
Considered again
Accessibility should never have been the thing that got cut when budgets got tight. In 2024 it often was, because doing it well took real development time. Now that development costs have dropped, the budget can go where it should: into planning, content, and careful testing. And because accessible sites need ongoing attention as content changes, it helps to have someone looking after the site after launch.
¡Viva la Revolución!