How to Write an Accessibility Policy for Your Organization

If someone asked you to show your organization’s accessibility policy today, could you? For most businesses, the answer is no. There is no written document explaining what standards you follow, who is responsible for accessibility, or how customers can report barriers they encounter on your website.

That is a problem. The European Accessibility Act is now enforceable across EU member states, ADA litigation in the United States continues to rise, and customers increasingly expect digital experiences that work for everyone. An accessibility policy is the foundation that ties all of your compliance efforts together. Without one, accessibility work tends to be ad hoc, inconsistent, and difficult to sustain.

The good news is that writing an accessibility policy does not require a legal team or technical expertise. This guide walks you through what to include, how to structure it, and how to make it a living document rather than a checkbox exercise.

Why Your Organization Needs an Accessibility Policy

An accessibility policy serves several critical purposes that go beyond compliance.

Legal protection. In ADA lawsuits and EAA enforcement actions, regulators and courts look for evidence of good-faith effort. A published accessibility policy demonstrates that your organization has acknowledged its responsibilities and established a structured approach to meeting them. It will not make you immune to legal action, but it significantly strengthens your position.

Internal alignment. Without a written policy, accessibility standards vary across teams. Marketing might publish images without alt text while the development team carefully codes ARIA labels. A policy creates a single source of truth that everyone references, ensuring consistent standards across departments.

Accountability. A policy assigns ownership. When everyone is responsible for accessibility, no one is. Your policy should name specific roles and teams responsible for maintaining accessibility standards, reviewing new content, and responding to user feedback.

Customer trust. Publishing your policy tells customers with disabilities that you take their experience seriously. It provides a channel for reporting issues and sets expectations for how quickly those issues will be addressed.

What to Include in Your Accessibility Policy

A strong accessibility policy covers seven essential areas. You do not need to write pages for each one. Clear, concise language is better than lengthy legal prose.

1. Commitment Statement

Start with a clear statement of your organization’s commitment to accessibility. This sets the tone and should be written in plain language that anyone can understand.

Example: “We are committed to ensuring our website and digital services are accessible to all people, including those with disabilities. We strive to meet or exceed WCAG 2.2 Level AA standards across all of our digital properties.”

Avoid vague language like “we try our best” or “where feasible.” These hedging phrases weaken both the public perception of your commitment and your legal position.

2. Standards and Scope

Specify which accessibility standard you follow and what properties the policy covers.

For most organizations, the standard is WCAG 2.2 Level AA. This is the benchmark referenced by the EAA, recommended by DOJ guidance on ADA compliance, and recognized globally as the practical standard for web accessibility.

Define the scope clearly. Does the policy cover your marketing website only, or does it also apply to your web application, mobile apps, internal tools, and third-party integrations? Being specific here prevents ambiguity later.

3. Roles and Responsibilities

This is where many policies fall short. Assign clear ownership across your organization:

  • Executive sponsor: A senior leader accountable for accessibility at the organizational level.
  • Accessibility lead or coordinator: The person responsible for day-to-day oversight, training, and escalation.
  • Development team: Responsible for building accessible features and fixing reported issues.
  • Content team: Responsible for writing accessible content, adding alt text, maintaining heading structure, and ensuring documents are accessible.
  • QA and testing: Responsible for including accessibility checks in testing processes.
  • Procurement: Responsible for evaluating third-party tools and vendors against accessibility requirements.

If you are a small business without dedicated teams for each area, assign these responsibilities to specific individuals and make it part of their role description.

4. Testing and Monitoring Process

Describe how your organization tests for and monitors accessibility. Include:

  • What tools you use. Automated scanners like axe DevTools or WAVE for catching programmatic issues. Screen readers like NVDA or JAWS for manual testing. Keyboard-only testing for navigation verification.
  • How often you test. At minimum, test before every major release and conduct a full audit annually. Better yet, integrate automated testing into your CI/CD pipeline so every deployment is checked.
  • How you handle issues. Define severity levels (critical, serious, moderate, minor) and target resolution timeframes for each. For example, critical issues that block access to essential functions should be fixed within 48 hours.

5. Feedback and Contact Information

This section is legally important and practically essential. Provide a clear way for users to report accessibility barriers.

Include:

  • A dedicated email address (e.g., [email protected])
  • An accessible contact form on your website
  • A phone number for users who cannot use digital channels
  • Expected response time (we recommend acknowledging reports within two business days)

Make sure the feedback mechanism itself is accessible. A contact form that requires a CAPTCHA a screen reader cannot solve defeats the purpose entirely.

6. Training Requirements

Specify what accessibility training your organization provides and who receives it. At minimum:

  • Developers should receive training on accessible coding practices and WCAG criteria.
  • Content creators should be trained on writing accessible content, proper heading structure, alt text, and accessible document formats.
  • Designers should understand color contrast requirements, focus indicators, and accessible interaction patterns.
  • Customer-facing staff should know how to assist customers who report accessibility issues and how to escalate appropriately.

Training should not be a one-time event. Accessibility standards evolve, team members change, and ongoing education ensures standards are maintained.

7. Review and Update Schedule

A policy that was written once and never updated loses credibility. Include a review schedule:

  • Annual review of the full policy to ensure it reflects current standards and organizational structure.
  • Quarterly check on compliance metrics, open issues, and feedback trends.
  • Trigger-based updates when significant changes occur: new product launches, major website redesigns, changes in applicable regulations, or organizational restructuring.

Making Your Policy Effective

Writing the policy is only the first step. Here is how to make it actually work.

Publish it prominently. Link to your accessibility policy from your website footer, alongside your privacy policy and terms of service. If users cannot find it, it might as well not exist. Many organizations create a dedicated /accessibility page.

Write in plain language. Your policy will be read by people with a wide range of backgrounds, including people with cognitive disabilities. Avoid legal jargon and technical terminology where plain language will do. If you must use terms like WCAG or ARIA, briefly explain what they mean.

Back it up with an accessibility statement. An accessibility policy is an internal governance document. An accessibility statement is its public-facing counterpart. Your statement should summarize your policy commitments, acknowledge any known limitations, and provide the feedback contact information. Many organizations combine these into a single public page.

Track and report on progress. Establish metrics: number of open accessibility issues by severity, average time to resolve reported issues, percentage of pages passing automated checks, training completion rates. Review these metrics regularly and use them to identify where your process is breaking down.

Get leadership buy-in. The executive sponsor named in your policy should actively champion accessibility, not just lend their name. When leadership visibly prioritizes accessibility, it signals to the entire organization that this is real and not performative.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Writing a policy you cannot enforce. Do not commit to standards you lack the resources to meet. It is better to start with achievable commitments and expand them as your program matures than to promise full WCAG 2.2 AA compliance while knowing your site has hundreds of unresolved violations.

Ignoring third-party content. Your policy should address how you handle accessibility for third-party tools, widgets, and embedded content on your site. If your chat widget, payment processor, or analytics cookie banner is inaccessible, that is still your problem as far as users and regulators are concerned.

Treating the policy as a legal shield. A policy alone does not protect you legally. It must be backed by genuine, documented effort to improve accessibility. Courts and regulators can see through a paper policy that exists only on your website while the site itself remains full of barriers.

Forgetting about documents and media. PDFs, videos, presentations, and downloadable resources must be accessible too. Your policy should explicitly address non-HTML content and set standards for document accessibility, video captions, and audio descriptions.

Getting Started Today

You do not need to have perfect accessibility before writing a policy. In fact, a policy written during the early stages of your accessibility journey is often more honest and effective than one written after the fact.

Start with what you know: your commitment, the standard you are working toward, who is responsible, and how people can contact you about issues. Be transparent about where you are in the process and what you are doing to improve.

Then do the work the policy promises. Test your site, fix the critical issues first, train your team, and respond to feedback promptly. A living accessibility policy that evolves with your organization is one of the most powerful tools you have for building a genuinely inclusive digital presence.

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