As accessibility on websites becomes a growing legal requirement, it’s essential to include clear language about accessibility in web design and development contracts. Whether you’re an agency owner or a freelancer, outlining the accessibility services in your contracts helps set proper client expectations and protects you from potential legal issues. A well-defined contract clarifies your services and emphasizes your commitment to creating accessible, inclusive websites.
This article provides insights from our experiences at Equalize Digital and is guided by advice from our attorneys and conversations with well-known attorneys in the digital accessibility space. It provides a helpful starting point for refining the accessibility language in your contracts, but it is not legal advice. Please consult with your attorney to confirm that the information in this article is right for your business.
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Where to Address Accessibility
There are three key areas where accessibility should be addressed to ensure your clients fully understand the services you’re offering:
- Marketing materials: What you communicate on your website, social media, and advertisements about accessibility.
- Proposals: The promises you make during the client acquisition process.
- Contract terms: The Terms of Service (general terms) and the Statement of Work (specific to the project) should include clear accessibility clauses.
Addressing accessibility in these areas will help you manage client expectations and reduce the risk of misunderstandings.
Avoid Promising Legal Compliance
One important thing to remember is to avoid guaranteeing compliance with accessibility laws. While you should strive to meet specific standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), it’s crucial not to promise outright compliance with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the European Accessibility Act. Legal compliance is a nuanced area, and there is often no clear-cut standard for proving accessibility under these laws.
Instead, focus on how your work aligns with established accessibility guidelines, such as WCAG while placing responsibility for legal compliance on the client. For example:
Avoid Saying:
“We guarantee your website will be ADA-compliant.”
Instead Say:
“We will ensure your website meets WCAG standards, which can help you meet requirements under the ADA.”
This approach sets realistic expectations while still showing your commitment to accessibility. It also puts the emphasis on the client being responsible for complying with the law, not the you. You make the website conform to WCAG, the website owner must make sure it complies with laws.
Be Specific and Don’t Overpromise
From marketing to web design proposals and contracts, the most important thing when communicating with your clients is to be specific and not overpromise.
We recently sat down with disability rights attorney Lainey Feingold, and she emphasized the importance of specificity in contracts, saying,
If you have a contract with someone about a website, you have to mention what the accessibility standard is, how it’s going to be tested, and who is responsible for fixing things that come up afterwards. Will there be additional money? All the things that could happen have to be talked about. Not in an adversarial way, but explaining accessibility is a thing you care about. State “We’re going to deliver you an accessible website or we’re going to deliver you a site except you’re going to be responsible for these parts.”
Lainey Feingold
Lainey says it’s not recommended to have a sentence in your contract that says, “I’ll deliver a website that complies with all laws.”
Instead, you need to have a clearly defined scope that explicitly states what you’re measuring accessibility against, how you’re defining accessibility, how the website is being tested, and by whom.
For the people buying the websites, it [needs to be] written down: this will be tested by blind people using a screen reader. As specific as possible without overpromising.
The last thing we want to do is overpromise, because that’s where we get into trouble like with the overlay companies. Be as specific as you can be, especially on the testing part, before you deliver the website.
Lainey Feingold
If you haven’t done so recently, review the language on your website, marketing materials, and proposals to ensure you’re not overpromising what you can deliver.
Accessibility in Your Terms of Service
Include accessibility and relevant definitions in your company’s Terms of Service. This will help ensure that your clients understand the scope of the accessibility work you’re offering.
The following two sections contain the actual language from our Terms of Service at Equalize Digital, as drafted by our attorney. You may want to include similar language in your company’s Terms of Service.
Definitions
Here are two general definitions relevant to accessibility:
- “Laws” shall mean all applicable local, state, federal and international laws and regulations related to accessibility.
- “WCAG ” shall mean the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium.
Including these definitions clarifies words used further down in the terms, specifically the “Compliance with Laws” section.
Compliance With Laws
Not a Law Office. Client understands that Company is not a law office, Company’s employees are not attorneys, and Company does not practice law. Client should not use Company as their sole source of information related to compliance with Laws and should always retain their own legal counsel.
Compliance Standards. The Parties recognize that Laws governing web accessibility are numerous and the regulatory environment is changing rapidly. The Parties further agree that the accessibility of any Site or Deliverable will be measured against WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Due to the rapidly changing legal landscape, Company can not guarantee that conforming with WCAG equates to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 508, or any other applicable Laws. Not withstanding the foregoing and absent more concrete regulatory guidance in the future, Company believes that WCAG is the best accessibility standard for most organizations to adhere to.
Including Accessibility in the Statement of Work
For each project, there is a Statement of Work that defines what is “in scope” for the project. Your Statement of Work should clearly outline the areas of the website that will be made accessible, as measured against WCAG standards.
What’s “In Scope”
At Equalize Digital, we list website components will be guaranteed to meet WCAG 2.2 AA standards, and typically include:
- Headers, footers, and sidebars.
- Web forms.
- Web pages built or assembled by our team.
- Elements on the front end that are solely controlled by our custom theme/code.
Note that we’re not promising that the entire website will be accessible. Content imported from other sources (such as blog posts from their old website) or elements controlled by third-party plugins are explicitly not included here.
What’s Not In Scope
We guarantee the accessibility of our work, not things we have never reviewed, worked on, or have no control over. This is important for limiting accessibility promises in a realistic way and goes back to what Lainey said about not overpromising.
By defining specific areas as in or out of scope for accessibility, you limit your liability for accessibility issues in other parts of the site, such as client-generated content, which you haven’t reviewed or modified.
Handling “Accessibility Add-ons”
When clients want old blog posts or other content reviewed and remediated for accessibility, we typically do that as part of an accessibility remediation plan after the launch of the new site.
Occasionally, additional accessibility remediation is requested prior to the launch of the new site. For an additional fee, it can be included in the site build.
Example Accessibility Language for a Statement of Work
Here’s the exact language from the Accessibility section of our Statement of Work should you want to adapt it for your contracts:
As detailed further in Company’s Terms of Service, the Parties agree that the accessibility of any Site or Deliverable will be measured against WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Provided that they were first developed, coded, or assembled by Company, the following parts of the deliverable will conform to WCAG 2.2 AA: (1) header, footer, and sidebars; (2) web forms; (3) web pages that Company assembled manually; and (4) front-end elements controlled solely by the template and not content areas.
Company can also manually review and correct additional posts or pages that it did not develop, code, or assemble.
The following area(s) will receive additional testing and analysis beyond what is normally covered, as described earlier in this section:
[Numbered list of additional things the client has paid extra to have us test and remediate goes here.]
Consult a Lawyer
While this post provides a solid foundation for addressing accessibility in contracts, it is always advisable to have a legal professional review any legal documents. A lawyer can ensure that the language in your terms and agreements protects you legally, meets your business’s specific needs, and complies with laws in your city, state, or country.
Final Thoughts
Accessibility is a critical consideration in modern web development, and it’s essential to include clear, well-defined language in your contracts to avoid potential legal issues. By focusing on WCAG standards and managing expectations, you can provide valuable accessibility services while protecting your business from unnecessary risk.
If you’re ready to start improving the accessibility of your client’s websites, consider using Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker to find and fix accessibility issues on WordPress sites. For more in-depth support, our team offers accessibility audits and remediation plans tailored to your specific needs. If you have questions about this post, you can tag us on X.
