review

Review Accessibility Decisions

Surface the accessibility decisions that were made — deliberately or by default — in an existing feature, and document them before they get lost.

Process

Step 1: Identify Implicit Decisions

Walk through the feature and list every design choice that affects accessibility, even if nobody explicitly decided it:

• How is keyboard navigation handled?
• What happens with screen readers?
• What colour and contrast choices were made?
• How are errors communicated?
• What motion and animation exists?
• What user preferences are respected?

Many of these were never consciously decided — they were inherited from a framework, copied from another feature, or left at defaults. Those are still decisions. Document them.

Step 2: Assess Each Decision

For each identified decision, determine:

• Was this intentional or accidental?
• Does it meet current accessibility standards?
• Who does it serve well? Who does it exclude?
• Is there evidence behind it or was it arbitrary?

Step 3: Check for Undocumented Tradeoffs

Using tradeoff-analysis, identify decisions where accessibility was traded for something else:

• Speed: "we didn't have time to make this keyboard accessible"
• Complexity: "the accessible version was too hard to build"
• Design: "the accessible version didn't look right"
• Ignorance: "we didn't know this was an issue"

Document each with its current impact on users.

Step 4: Map Current Compliance

Using compliance-mapping, assess the feature's current state against WCAG 2.2 Level AA. Identify conformance gaps.

Step 5: Catalogue Debt

Using accessibility-debt-tracking, create a debt record for every known issue discovered in this review.

Output

Deliver a decision review report:

1. Decision inventory — every accessibility-affecting decision found, marked as intentional or accidental
2. Undocumented tradeoffs — decisions where accessibility was sacrificed, with current user impact
3. Compliance gaps — WCAG criteria not currently met
4. Debt register — known issues with severity, owner, and recommended timeline
5. Recommendations — which decisions should be revisited first