Is It Out of Scope? — Web development
Is adding accessibility (WCAG) compliance out of scope for a web development project?
Usually yes, unless the SOW named a specific conformance level. WCAG compliance touches semantic markup, keyboard navigation, ARIA attributes, and focus management throughout the build — real engineering work, not a settings toggle.
The build shipped to spec and passed acceptance testing. The client later asks for it to meet WCAG standards — sometimes prompted by an automated scanner tool flagging dozens of issues, sometimes by a legal or procurement requirement that surfaced late. Meeting a real conformance level means semantic HTML throughout, correct ARIA usage, full keyboard navigability, visible focus states, and often component-level rework — not a plugin or a quick pass.
Is it out of scope?
Yes, unless a specific WCAG level was named in the SOW as an acceptance criterion. Retrofitting compliance onto an existing build is genuine engineering work across the codebase, and treating it as a bug-fix-sized ask tends to badly underestimate what's actually involved.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Deliverables clause→ — Specifies the technical standards the build was scoped to meet — a conformance level like WCAG AA has to be named explicitly, not assumed as a default quality bar.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
WCAG compliance wasn't in the original SOW's acceptance criteria. Getting the build to [AA] level means an audit (often surfacing more than an automated scanner alone catches) plus remediation across markup, keyboard navigation, and focus handling. I'd like to scope that as its own phase — can we set up a call to talk through priorities and timeline?
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow checks the extracted deliverables and acceptance criteria for any named accessibility standard before classifying — where none exists, a request to "make it accessible" or "fix the WCAG issues" is flagged outside_scope with an explanation distinguishing a scoped requirement from an unscoped retrofit, plus a suggested charge reflecting that this is typically multi-page, cross-component work.