← Work · Accessibility · WCAG 2.2
A 150-point evaluation, and what it did for the people on the other side.
Conducted while serving as Associate Director of Operations at Level 11 Technology, this engagement covered Collective Roots APG, a recovery nonprofit serving young adults navigating substance recovery.
- Accessibility score
- +58%
- Screen-reader task completion
- 31% → 89%
- Conversion rate
- +162%
- Bounce rate
- −25%
The brief
Collective Roots APG supports young adults moving through substance recovery. The audience they serve includes people in crisis, people on shared devices, and people for whom a frustrating digital experience is enough to close the window. The site needed to feel calm and possible, and it needed to be navigable by anyone arriving with assistive technology.
Approach
A custom 150-point checklist was used, drawn from WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 success criteria and informed by the WebAIM Million study on the most common barriers in the wild. The evaluation moved through first impressions, essential accessibility issues, extended criteria, and usability heuristics. Manual review with screen readers and keyboard navigation was supplemented with SilkTide, WAVE, Axe DevTools, Lighthouse, and a colour-contrast analyzer.
What was looked at, in order of priority
Lowest-scoring areas were treated first. Quick wins for the greatest usability impact were sequenced ahead of complex remediation work. Reporting was structured around the actual experience of users rather than the abstract grade of the page.
What changed
Findings were translated into clear, actionable remediation requests, aligned to specific WCAG success criteria. Final presentations were delivered live to client leadership, with the remediated site walked through together, in plain language. The measured outcomes are above. The harder-to-measure outcome is the one Collective Roots described afterward — that the site felt like a calmer place to arrive.
Reflection
Accessibility work is sometimes framed as a checklist. The honest version is that each item on a checklist points to a person. The measure that mattered most here was screen-reader task completion rising from 31% to 89%, because what that meant in human terms was more people reaching the help they came for.
Notes on artifacts
Detailed evaluation reports were delivered under client confidence. A redacted excerpt and a sample of the 150-point checklist framework can be shared on request. [placeholder] Redacted artifact links will appear here once cleared with the client.