The Agency Owner’s Guide to White-Label Web Accessibility

I talk to a lot of web agency owners, and they all tell me the same thing: they think they understand the basics of web accessibility, but they don’t want to be held accountable if something is wrong.

When you build websites for clients, your goal is to create a site that gets them an actual ROI. If you don’t, they are much more likely to find the next agency to help them fix the site within a couple of years. No one really wants that.

But what happens when they come to you at the end of a website build or six months later and ask whether their website adheres to WCAG standards? You panic a bit inside because, while you know you follow many of those best practices, you aren’t fully sure you can guarantee compliance.

How do you handle this? You start Googling for someone who handles white-label web accessibility because you need to do this more quickly than by studying it yourself. (Which may be exactly how you landed on this article.)

In this article, let’s break down how you need to start thinking about web accessibility, the cost of avoiding it (for you and your customers), and how white-label web accessibility services work.

If you have been coding and developing websites for a while, you might remember when responsive web design really became the norm. The agencies that avoided learning or tried to keep building mobile versions of websites were left behind as customers learned the term “responsive web design.”

This actually happened at an agency where I was working. I had just started there, having just worked for a company that only built responsive websites for a couple of years at this point. The agency was still building a separate mobile website, and it was causing a lot of issues. While I pushed for change, a couple of customers went to the same conferences and learned the term. Suddenly, we had to make a massive shift in our workflow, and I had to lead the other web developers through it. Oh, and by the way, we lost a couple of projects in the process.

This is what you are facing with web accessibility. This isn’t a new concept (I’ve been working in web accessibility since 2013, and the UK passed its Equality Act in 2010), but many agencies have put it off.

Now, as the world becomes increasingly aware of how important web accessibility is, agencies are scrambling to build compliant websites.

The cost of not doing anything at all? You are going to start losing clients.

Are you one of those people who have had web accessibility at the back of your head, but you’ve never really prioritized it before now? Hey, I get it. I didn’t understand how important it was until I started learning. Use a screen reader to navigate the internet one time and you’ll suddenly get why this is such a big deal.

But if you have to convince yourself, clients, or even your staff, why this all matters, there are 3 key pillars of the need for web accessibility.

Perhaps the one that gets people’s attention the fastest, web accessibility is a legal requirement. Pretty much all over the world.

In the US, we have to comply with the ADA Title II and Section 508 (for government-funded organizations) or ADA Title III (for private businesses) to provide reasonable accommodations. In the UK, you have the 2010 Equality Act. The EU’s European Accessibility Act went into effect in 2025. Australia has the Disability Discrimination Act.

No matter where your clients do business, they probably have an accessibility law requiring them to follow international standards.

There is a common misconception that web accessibility affects only a small portion of a company’s online audience. False. In just the US alone, up to 28.7% of the population has some kind of disability. That can be temporary or permanent, but disabilities affect more people than you think.

And web accessibility does not just help the blind and visually-impaired. We make adjustments to websites for people with ADHD, epilepsy, dyslexia, or hearing loss, among many others. So when you neglect 28.7% of the potential people in your audience, you are actively excluding a significant portion of your revenue.

More than the money in their pockets, you also run the risk of them telling their entire personal network what it was like to not be able to work with you. That, in turn, earns your client the reputation of not caring about their customers. I am pretty sure no business wants people to believe that.

I sat at a conference a couple of years ago and talked to a UX expert about accessibility. He felt like he was going to miss a lot, but in reality, he learned that UX has a ton of overlap with web accessibility standards.

And that’s just scratching the surface. If you focus on technical SEO, you are probably meeting a lot of WCAG standards. If your focus is on site performance, you are probably meeting a lot of WCAG standards. If you focus on mobile usability – well, you guessed it, you are probably meeting a lot of WCAG standards.

Anything you do to improve web accessibility will positively impact your UX, SEO, and performance. Which also means you may be better at this than you think.

One of my white-label partners came to me a few months ago because they knew they needed to address web accessibility, but didn’t have the capacity to handle it internally. Their clients were asking about ADA standards, but given the volume of federally funded organizations they build websites for, doing it themselves was not an option.

That’s exactly what a white-label web accessibility partner can help you do. Experts like myself are there to provide web accessibility services while you run your business. As someone who has been digging through WCAG standards for 13 years, not everyone finds it as fun as we do.

The absolute best parts of a white-label partner? They can help you provide vital services for your clients, charge more for the work you are doing (higher value FTW!), and help keep everything running smoothly.

For some of our clients, we help them build in recurring revenue options, check projects during the build to save time, or even help them feel comfortable selling to new clients. You just get to sit back and focus on the creative and strategy.

I don’t know many agency owners who have never worked with a contractor or white-label partner. But web accessibility is a bit different from hiring a copywriter, an ads expert, or even a web developer. You need to be able to trust that you have hired someone who can actually help, especially when legal compliance is a focus.

Let’s talk about a few things you want to look out for when hiring a web accessibility partner.

Anyone who recommends any kind of overlay, immediately run away. Overlay widgets have proven time and time again to make websites more difficult to use, fail to fix underlying issues, and have become a target in lawsuits.

You also want to avoid anyone who says they run tests using only automated tools. Automated testing tools find about 30% of real web accessibility issues.

Another big red flag? Someone who claims they can start fixing things right away without any type of audit process. We never skip a thorough check, or you will spend way more time and money on remediation.

On the flip side, someone who offers full audits as their first step is a huge green flag. Those audits should be a mix of automated testing (because those tools are what some attorneys use) and manual testing. This saves time and ensures that all the problems are found.

Another huge green flag? They need to be running tests with actual screen-reading tools. There are a lot of things that look “fine” in the code but may not be working correctly for actual users.

If you are looking and unsure of what services you need, a web accessibility expert should provide a mix of a few core services.

• Accessibility Reports – These audits should provide a detailed list of issues, which WCAG standards they violate, and, in the best ones, even tell you how to address them.
• Accessibility Remediation – Not everyone will want to fix your websites’ issues, but a good web accessibility expert should be able to help address the issues they found and remediate them.
• Website Project Reviews – While you’re working on a new website, having someone to help you check the structure, content, design, and code along the way will save a ton of time (and confusion with clients).
• Custom Website Development – For projects where the code really, really matters, a good web accessibility partner should be able to code your website to ensure compliance from the ground up.

Starting to feel like you need to add web accessibility to your services and processes? While you do not need to learn everything about WCAG, there are some places you should start.

First, start reviewing your current client roster for high-risk industries. In the US, this includes anyone who gets government funding (Title II Part H goes into effect April 2027), education, or eCommerce (the most commonly sued industry). Beyond that, you should check whether you have any clients with locations in, or who actively do business in, the UK or EU.

Next, have your lawyer work on your contracts. If you want to build websites that follow web accessibility guidelines, you need to be legally covered. There was an agency in California that was sued for lying about building an accessible website, so make sure you outline exactly what you do in your contracts.

Finally, it’s time to find someone to help with your web accessibility processes. A great partner can act as a consultant to keep you protected, help you talk to customers about their internal procedures, and run the checks and remediation for you.

(Hint: that’s definitely us.)

We will say this over and over again: web accessibility is about more than just compliance. Yes, will some of your customers come to you, upset because they now understand they need to follow certain laws? Sure. But the real thing that will set you apart with your customers is when you advocate to take care of theirs.

Web accessibility is an act of empathy. It clearly demonstrates a brand’s values. Beyond the just-be-good-people reasons, web accessibility provides real ROI, improves search visibility, and lowers your overall risk.

Do not wait for all of your clients to attend the same conference and come back and ask you why their website is not compliant. Let’s get you moving with a web accessibility partner who can help make it possible.

Schedule a call with our team and start breathing easier.