Accessibility statement template
- Reviews until you can claim full conformance
- $1.42
- Months to clear the known issues
- 9
- Issues still open at the next review
- 10
- Statement reviews a year
- 2
These sheets have almost no constants. Every number is worked from the figures you enter: the pages, the templates, the images without alt text, the forms, the videos, the PDFs, the criteria failing, the minutes a fix takes, your developer's and the auditor's hourly rates, the sample share, the retest rate, the open issues and the rate you close them. The one figure that is not yours is the count of WCAG 2.2 Level AA success criteria the checklist scores against, which is the standard's own and is cited where it is used. The defaults are one 240-page site's worked example, not a benchmark this site publishes.
The figures are a worked example for a 240-page site with nine templates: $1.42. Put your own page count in and the answer changes.
Download the Accessibility statement template worked example (CSV)
This is the accessibility statement sheet, and it stops you publishing a promise you cannot keep. Enter the issues you already know about, how many your team closes a month, the months between statement reviews, the working days you promise to answer feedback in, the third-party components you do not control, the minutes an accessibility enquiry takes to answer and how many arrive a month. It returns the months to clear the known issues, how many will still be open at the next review, the reviews a year, the working hours behind the promise you are about to publish, the support time it costs, and how many reviews away a full conformance claim is.
The date you can honestly publish
34 open issues closed at four a month is between eight and nine months to clear. With a six-month review cycle, ten issues are still open at the next review, which is a number to publish rather than a reason to delay the statement.
The promise the statement makes for you
Five working days to answer feedback is 40 working hours, and it binds you the moment it is published. Two enquiries a month at half an hour each is 12 hours a year, which is small, and missing a published response time is the one part of a statement anybody outside can check.
The components you do not control
Three third-party components have to be named, with what you have asked the vendor for and the alternative route a user has. A statement that quietly omits the booking widget is the statement that gets contradicted by the first person who tries to book.
Where the constants in this tool come from
Questions people ask about the Accessibility statement template
Should we publish before we are conformant?
Yes. A statement listing known issues and a closing rate is stronger evidence of a programme than silence, and silence is what regulators and courts have treated least kindly.
How often should it be reviewed?
Six months for most sites. The sheet prints how many issues will still be open at that review so the date is one you can meet.
What if the closing rate is zero?
Then the statement should say so and give a date when work resumes. A stalled programme published honestly is recoverable; a false claim is not.