100 points to know about...
Digital accessibility

Keep in mind that the implementation of accessibility of a site requires both human and financial resources that can represent a significant budget. It requires specific skills in development, consulting, audits, UX/design, compliance...

When to integrate the necessary budget?

The earlier you integrate the issue of accessibility, the more you will be able to optimize your budget and put in place processes and best practices from the start. Moreover, by making your site accessible to the greatest number of people, you increase the reach of your audience with the possibility of making your investment profitable.

Internal or external human costs

Check that your team is sufficiently trained or recruit an internal or external e-accessibility expert to accompany you.
Beware of the legal aspect, the fines for not respecting the obligations are very costly. Here again, hiring an accessibility expert can ensure better cost control.

The type of digital service

The richer and more complex your digital project, the higher the cost of compliance. List the different interactive elements (functionalities, animations) that require interaction with the user to estimate its degree of complexity (shopping path, videos, forms...). An e-commerce site will automatically be more expensive to comply with than a small company presentation site...

The available contents

You must also list the contents of your website: images that will require alternative text, videos that require subtitling or transcription, PDFs that will need to be converted into web pages...

Evaluate and audit your service.

To determine whether or not your service complies with the WCAG criteria (W3C international standards), an audit will be necessary with automated and manual tests. Only part of the tests can be automated. Manual testing is mandatory ; it consists of an inspection of the code to validate/invalidate the various criteria from the WCAG or the RGAA (French Accessibility Guidelines based on WCAG2 also available in English, with a set of helpful technical documents to easily check if your web page respects the WCAG guidelines or not), such as:

• The relevance of an informative image
• Keyboard navigation
• Contrast levels
• The correct use of HTML tags
• Etc.

Manual testing also involves testing by people with disabilities using assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Once the audit is complete, you can determine the problems to be solved, estimate a budget and a schedule. Don't forget that regular audits are necessary to ensure a sustainable accessibility of your web content.
Incorporate a maintenance plan from the start to optimize resources, processes, training, teams and tools for your accessible digital strategy.