Is It Out of Scope? — Web design
Is adding accessibility (WCAG) compliance out of scope for a web design project?
Usually yes, unless it was named as a requirement up front. WCAG compliance is a defined standard with specific, often extensive design implications (contrast ratios, focus states, content structure) — it's a deliverable in its own right, not something a design naturally has by default.
The design was approved and built to look and function a certain way. Sometime later — often triggered by a legal concern, an internal policy, or a client discovering the site fails a basic accessibility check — the client asks for it to be made WCAG compliant. That request sounds like a fix, but WCAG compliance (at a stated conformance level like AA) touches color contrast, focus indicators, heading structure, alt text, and often layout decisions the original design never evaluated against those criteria.
Is it out of scope?
Yes, unless accessibility compliance was named as a requirement in the original scope. Meeting a specific WCAG level is a defined, auditable standard, not a vague quality bar — bringing an existing design up to it usually means a real audit followed by real design changes, which is its own body of work rather than a quick pass.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Deliverables clause→ — Names what standards the design was built to meet — WCAG compliance is a specific, separate standard that has to be named explicitly to be included.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
Accessibility compliance wasn't part of the original scope — meeting WCAG [AA] means an audit against specific criteria (contrast, focus states, heading structure, and more) followed by design changes to fix what fails. I can scope an accessibility audit and remediation as a separate project; want me to put together a quote?
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow checks whether accessibility or WCAG compliance appears anywhere in the extracted deliverables before classifying — a request referencing accessibility on a project where it was named upfront reads as inside scope, while the same request on a project where it wasn't reads as outside_scope, with an explanation the account manager can use to correct a client who assumes accessibility is an implicit baseline rather than a scoped requirement.