Why Tracking Accessibility Progress Is Your Secret Weapon (And How the W3C Just Made It Easier)
You wouldn’t run your business without tracking revenue, customer satisfaction, or project completion rates. So why would you approach accessibility any differently?
After 20 years building WordPress sites, I’ve watched too many organizations treat accessibility as a one-time checkbox instead of an ongoing commitment. They run a scan, fix some issues, and move on. Six months later, plugin updates and new content have introduced dozens of new barriers—and nobody noticed until a complaint arrived or worse, a lawsuit.
Here’s what successful organizations do differently: They treat accessibility like any other business metric. They track it. They set goals. They measure progress. And yes, they celebrate wins.
The Problem With “Set It and Forget It”
Most websites aren’t static. Your team or client adds new content, updates plugins, changes themes, and implements new features. Every single change is an opportunity to accidentally introduce accessibility barriers.
Without systematic tracking, you’re flying blind. You might think you’re maintaining accessibility, but the reality is that your site is gradually drifting away from compliance—one small change at a time.
This isn’t just about legal risk. It’s about competing in search engines. It’s about showing up in AI platforms. It’s about real people who can’t access your content, complete transactions, or use your services. When we don’t track accessibility systematically, we fail the users who need us most.
What Success Actually Looks Like
Organizations that get accessibility right don’t just track problems—they create a culture of continuous improvement. Here’s what that means in practice:
Set Clear Standards Define what accessibility means for your organization. WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the baseline for most compliance requirements, but your standards should also reflect your specific users’ needs and your organizational values. Document these standards clearly so every team member knows what you’re working toward.
Establish Measurable Goals Vague goals like “improve accessibility” don’t work. Instead, set specific targets: reduce critical violations by 50% in 90 days, achieve zero keyboard navigation issues on core user flows, or ensure all new content meets WCAG 2.1 AA before publication. Make these goals time-bound and measurable.
Track Progress Consistently Schedule regular accessibility scans—weekly for high-traffic sites, monthly for others. Track the number and severity of issues over time. Look for patterns: Are certain page types consistently problematic? Do issues spike after specific team members make updates? This data tells you where to focus your training and improvement efforts.
Celebrate Improvements Recognition matters. When your team reduces critical violations, share that win. When a developer successfully implements accessible patterns, acknowledge it publicly. When content creators consistently produce accessible materials, make sure they know it matters. These celebrations reinforce that accessibility is a valued priority, not just another compliance box to check.
The W3C Just Changed the Game
This is where things get exciting. The W3C recently released the Accessibility Maturity Model—and it’s exactly what organizations have been needing.
Unlike conformance testing that gives you a snapshot of one product at one moment in time, the AMM helps you assess your entire organization’s ability to produce and sustain accessible digital experiences over the long term. Think of it as the difference between checking if your car passes inspection today versus building a maintenance culture that keeps it running perfectly year after year.
Why the Accessibility Maturity Model Matters
The AMM recognizes something critical: accessibility isn’t just a technical problem. It’s an organizational capability that requires coordination across your entire operation.
The model evaluates seven dimensions of organizational accessibility maturity:
Communications – Are your internal and external communications accessible? This includes everything from company announcements to marketing materials to documentation.
ICT Development Lifecycle – Do you consider accessibility throughout your entire development process, from initial concept to maintenance and eventual retirement?
Knowledge and Skills – Do your team members have accessibility expertise appropriate to their roles? Developers need different skills than content creators, who need different skills than procurement specialists.
Oversight and Culture – Is accessibility embedded in your organizational culture, with clear leadership support and accountability?
Personnel – Are people with disabilities represented throughout your organizational hierarchy, bringing their lived experiences to inform decision-making?
Procurement – When you acquire products and services, do you include accessibility requirements in your selection criteria and contract language?
Support – Do you provide appropriate accommodations for employees and accessibility support for customers?
For each dimension, the model defines four maturity levels: Inactive (little awareness), Launch (recognized need but not well organized), Integrate (systematic approach in place), and Optimize (consistently evaluated and improved).
How to Actually Implement This
The beauty of the AMM is that it’s practical and scalable. You don’t need to tackle everything at once. Here’s how to get started:
Assess Where You Are Use the W3C’s assessment tool to evaluate your current maturity across all seven dimensions. Be honest about gaps—this isn’t about looking good, it’s about identifying where to focus your improvement efforts.
Prioritize Strategically You can’t fix everything overnight. Identify the dimensions where improvement will have the biggest impact for your specific situation. If you’re primarily building external websites, the ICT Development Lifecycle dimension might be your first priority. If you’re facing procurement requirements, start there.
Build Proof Points The AMM isn’t just about aspirations—it requires tangible evidence. For each dimension, you’ll develop proof points: policies, training records, assessment results, documented processes. These prove you’re not just talking about accessibility, you’re actually doing it.
Advance Incrementally Maturity levels are cumulative, meaning you can’t jump to Optimize without first achieving Launch and Integrate. This prevents organizations from overpromising and under-delivering. Focus on solid progress at each level before advancing.
Engage the Right Roles The AMM includes guidance on which organizational roles should be involved in each dimension. Accessibility isn’t just IT’s problem—it requires coordination across legal, HR, procurement, content, design, development, and leadership.
Why This Matters for WordPress Organizations
If you’re building or maintaining WordPress sites, the AMM gives you a framework to demonstrate genuine accessibility capability to clients and stakeholders.
Instead of just saying “we do accessibility,” you can point to specific maturity levels across all seven dimensions. When government agencies, nonprofits, or enterprises ask about your accessibility practices, you have a standardized way to show—not just tell—what you’re capable of.
For agencies, this becomes a competitive differentiator. Clients increasingly understand that slapping an overlay on their site isn’t real accessibility. They want partners who have systematic, mature accessibility practices. The AMM gives you a roadmap to build those capabilities and a framework to communicate them clearly.
For internal website teams, the AMM helps you make the business case for accessibility investment. When you can show leadership exactly where you are, where you need to be, and what resources are required to get there, you’re far more likely to secure the support and budget you need.
The Real Goal Isn’t Perfection—It’s Progress
Here’s what I’ve learned building accessible WordPress sites for a decade: Perfect accessibility on day one is impossible. But systematic improvement over time? That’s absolutely achievable.
The organizations that succeed are the ones that treat accessibility as a journey, not a destination. They set standards. They establish goals. They track progress. They celebrate improvements. And they use frameworks like the AMM to ensure their entire organization—not just their technical team—is aligned around making digital experiences accessible to everyone.
Your website doesn’t need to be perfectly accessible tomorrow. But it does need a plan to get there, metrics to track progress, and a culture that values continuous improvement.
The W3C just gave us the roadmap. Now it’s on us to use it.
What’s Your Next Step?
If you’re serious about building accessibility capabilities that last, start here:
- Review the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model at w3.org/TR/maturity-model/ to understand the framework
- Assess your current state honestly across all seven dimensions
- Pick one dimension where improvement would have immediate impact
- Set a specific, measurable goal for the next 90 days
- Track your progress systematically and adjust as you learn
And if you’re building WordPress sites? Consider how virtual browser technology can help you track accessibility improvements more accurately than traditional code scanning alone. Tools that test actual user interactions—not just code syntax—give you the visibility you need to measure real progress.
What’s your biggest challenge in tracking accessibility improvements? What would make this easier for your team?
