I'm trying to make my site accessible, but I'm stuck!
What to do if you've got most of the way there
"Can we just fix these bits and get WCAG compliance?"
If you've been working in accessibility for a little while, you'll have come across situations where your client has dedicated a massive amount of effort to fixing their site, but there are some blockers that are particularly difficult for them to deliver. It might be that they have lots of video without audio description, some third-party plugin that handles sign-ups and logins or some other type of content that is difficult to deal with. Maybe the site is fine on Desktop but not on mobile.
This question often comes up after an audit, when the true picture of the site's conformance is clear. Behind the question is a fear or concern that they have done a lot of hard work but still come up short. If you are offering some type of certification for websites, then they may be worried that they won't be able to get it without excluding certain areas of the website.
For a WCAG conformance statement, you could write it to include anything you like. If the only page that fully passes is the homepage then you could include that in your scope and nothing else. But you have to ask what the value of that would be.
The recent Carrefour case (https://lnkd.in/ehxxf7bR) highlights the legal situation when a site achieves less than 100% accessibility. be careful how you measure it too. A 100% Google Lighthouse score could actually mean that your site is maybe only 26% accessible. It needs to be a full manual test.
My approach to a scenario where you or a client of yours has worked hard for conformance but hit some blockers is this:
1. Don't try to hide from the issues. You've come this far, don't give up. It's worth it. Acknowledge them and make a plan.
2. Escalate the issues. Most legal departments have no idea about accessibility risks. Make sure they know about all the legal obligations.
3. In your accessibility statement, make it clear that you are working towards WCAG 2.2 AA compliance and provide a feedback link so you can log any issues that people have. Make sure that a link to your accessibility statement is in the footer of all your web pages.
4. Make sure that accessibility conformance is part of procurement going forwards. It's likely that suppliers weren't even asked to deliver it. Don't find yourself in this exact same situation in 2 years time because you didn't fix that. Make conformance part of the contract and set a cadence for fixing issues depending on severity.
5. Test regularly. Unless your site has had no development since the last test, your current report is out of date. Do a full test at least annually. Every 6 months is better. If you are a small team with a small budget then learn how to do this yourself.
6. Don't be tempted by overlays (those accessibility widgets you find on some websites). They don't work and the vendors know they don't work but they will try to sell them to you anyway.