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Accessibility Checklist

Your mission is to serve your community and break down barriers.
What if your most powerful public asset, your website, is unintentionally excluding the very people you aim to support?

A website that is not accessible to people with disabilities is more than a missed opportunity; it is a significant legal and financial liability. In today’s digital-first landscape, accessibility is no longer a matter of choice but a critical component of risk management and mission fulfillment.

Legal Risks
Checklist
The Shifting Legal Landscape

The regulatory environment is solidifying, and the window for voluntary action is closing. Two key factors are driving this urgency:

The Rise of ADA Title III Lawsuits: Nonprofits are increasingly targeted in digital accessibility lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In 2025 alone, over 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in the U.S. This trend affects organizations of all sizes, with average settlements ranging from $8,000–$30,000, plus the cost of website remediation and legal review.

Federal accessibility requirements are raising expectations across the nonprofit sector. Accessibility helps protect funding opportunities, reduce organizational risk, expand community reach, and ensure everyone can access your programs, services, and mission.

Protect Your Organization

Mission-aligned Website

This checklist is designed to provide your leadership and technical teams with a clear, actionable tool to assess your current digital risk. It translates complex WCAG 2.1 AA standards into a straightforward “Pass/Fail” framework, focusing on the areas of highest vulnerability: your public-facing pages, multimedia content, and critical donation workflows.

By identifying these accessibility gaps now, you move from a vulnerable reactive position to a preventive proactive one. You protect your organization from legal threats while ensuring your digital front door is open to everyone, including the millions of potential donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries who rely on assistive technologies.

Use this checklist to perform a high-level audit of your key digital assets. This initial diagnostic is designed to reveal immediate technical debt and areas of significant legal exposure.

Evaluate a representative sample of pages including your homepage, an interior content page, and your primary donation page, against each criterion. 

For each item, determine if your website passes: yes or no. The more “No” responses, the more exposed you are legal action based on ADA Title III violations.

Website Accessibility Checklist

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1. Website Navigation & Core Structure

Effective navigation is the foundation of an inclusive user experience. If users relying on assistive technology cannot navigate your site, your mission and calls-to-action become invisible to them.
1.1. Keyboard-Only Navigation: Can you navigate the entire site, including menus and links, using only the "Tab" key?

Risk Insight: This is a critical failure. Users with motor disabilities who cannot use a mouse are locked out. 
Technical Action: Ensure all interactive elements (a, button, form fields) are focusable and in a logical order.

1.2. Visible Focus Indicator: Is it always clear which element is currently selected when tabbing through the site (e.g., a visible border)?
Risk Insight: Without a visible focus, keyboard users cannot tell where they are on the page. 
Technical Action: Implement a highly visible CSS :focus state for all focusable elements. Do not use outline: none;.
1.3. "Skip to Main Content" Link: Does a link appear at the top of the page when you first press "Tab," allowing users to bypass the navigation?

Risk Insight: Forcing screen-reader users to listen to the entire navigation on every page creates significant frustration. 
Technical Action: Implement an accessible "skip link" that is visually hidden until it receives keyboard focus.

1.4. Descriptive Link Text: Do links make sense out of context? Avoid generic text like "Click Here" or "Learn More."

Risk Insight: Forcing screen-reader users to listen to the entire navigation on every page creates significant frustration. 
Technical Action: Implement an accessible "skip link" that is visually hidden until it receives keyboard focus.

1.5. Color Contrast: Is text easily readable against its background? This applies to text on images, buttons, and colored backgrounds.

Risk Insight: Low contrast excludes users with low vision or color blindness from reading your content. This is a common and easily-identified violation. 
Technical Action: Ensure text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 to meet WCAG 2.1 AA.

2. Multimedia Content & Visuals

Images and videos are powerful storytelling tools, but they create absolute barriers if not made accessible.

2.1. Image Alt-Text: Do all meaningful images have descriptive "alternative text" that conveys their purpose?

Risk Insight: Screen reader users hear the alt-text read aloud. Without it, the image's content and purpose are lost. 
Technical Action: Add descriptive alt attributes to all img tags that convey information. For purely decorative images, use alt="".

2.2. Video Captions: Are all pre-recorded videos equipped with accurate, synchronized closed captions?

Risk Insight: This is a non-negotiable requirement for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. Auto-generated captions are often inaccurate and insufficient for compliance. 
Technical Action: Provide accurate caption files (e.g., .srt or .vtt) for all video content.

2.3. Audio Descriptions: For videos where important visual information is not conveyed through audio, is a separate audio track provided?

Risk Insight: Users who are blind or have low vision miss critical context if action happens visually without being described. 
Technical Action: For complex videos, produce a secondary audio track describing key visual elements and make it available to users.

3. Donation Forms & User Workflows

Your donation workflow is your organization's financial lifeline. Accessibility failures here directly impact your revenue and create significant legal risk.
3.1. Clear Form Labels: Is every input field (e.g., Name, Email, Credit Card Number) clearly and programmatically linked to a visible label?

Risk Insight: Screen readers cannot identify the purpose of a form field without a proper label, making it impossible to complete a donation. 
Technical Action: Ensure every input has an associated label tag using the for and id attributes.

3.2. Accessible Error Messages: When a form is submitted with an error, is the error clearly identified, described in text, and easy to fix?

Risk Insight: Vague errors (like a red box with no text) trap users, leading to abandonment. 
Technical Action: Errors must be identified in text, linked to the specific field, and announced by screen readers.

3.3. Button & Control Clarity: Do all buttons and controls have clear, discernible text? (e.g., "Donate Now," "Submit Payment")

Risk Insight: Unlabeled buttons are unusable for screen reader users. 
Technical Action: Ensure every button element or input of type="submit" has clear, descriptive text. Icon-only buttons must have screen-reader-only text.

4. Downloadable Documents & Third-Party Integrations

Your compliance responsibility extends beyond your website pages to the content you offer and the platforms you embed.

4.1. PDF Document Accessibility: Are your downloadable PDFs (e.g., annual reports, event flyers) tagged for accessibility?

Risk Insight: An untagged PDF is like a scanned image to a screen reader—unreadable. This is a frequent source of litigation. 
Technical Action: Use your authoring software (e.g., Adobe Acrobat Pro, Microsoft Word) to tag reading order, headings, and image alt-text before exporting to PDF.

4.2. Third-Party Platform Risk: Does your embedded donation platform, event calendar, or volunteer portal claim WCAG 2.1 AA conformance?

Risk Insight: You are legally responsible for the accessibility of third-party tools integrated into your site. Their non-compliance becomes your liability. 
Technical Action: Request a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) from your vendors to verify their compliance claims.

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