Accessibility work in publishing tends to be filed under development: a contrast fix here, an ARIA attribute there, a plugin that promises compliance. The awkward part is that the decisions which most often break a story for a reader using assistive technology are editorial. An uncaptioned video, a chart whose only labels live inside the image, a headline written as a fragment that means nothing out of context, a "click here" that gives a screen reader no destination — none of those are engineering defects.
What the guidelines actually ask of a newsroom
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are organised around four ideas: content should be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Translated into newsroom terms, that is a short list of habits. Every image that carries information gets a description of the information, not of the picture. Every video gets captions, and audio gets a transcript. Headings describe the structure of the piece rather than decorating it. Link text says where the link goes. Colour is never the only thing distinguishing one line on a chart from another. Nothing important depends on a hover.
The parts that break most often
Data journalism is the usual casualty. A chart exported as a flat image is invisible to a screen reader, and the fix is not an alt attribute repeating the title — it is a sentence stating what the chart shows, plus the underlying numbers in a table. Live blogs are the second: an endlessly updating column with no landmarks is difficult to navigate by keyboard. Embeds are the third, and the least controllable, because a third-party player brings its own accessibility record into your page.
Checking, rather than assuming
Automated tools catch a useful minority of problems — missing alt attributes, insufficient contrast, unlabelled form fields. Canada's own AChecker validator is one of the long-standing free ones, and it is honest about the distinction between what a machine can verify and what needs a human. For the legal framing that sits behind the technical criteria, the US Department of Justice publishes a small-entity compliance guide. The rest is a manual pass: navigate the page with the keyboard alone, then listen to it. Most newsroom accessibility failures are audible in the first thirty seconds.
Why it belongs in the assignment, not the backlog
Retrofitting is expensive and partial. Writing the caption while the video is being cut, and the chart description while the numbers are still in front of you, costs almost nothing and produces a better result than any remediation pass. It also improves the version of the story that everyone else reads: a chart that can be described in one sentence is usually a chart that was worth publishing.
The cost argument, honestly
Accessibility work is usually presented as an obligation, which is why it loses budget arguments. The practical case is narrower and stronger: the habits overlap almost entirely with good editing. A chart that can be summarised in one sentence is a chart with a point. A caption written while the video is being cut is a better caption. Link text that says where it goes reduces support mail. None of that is charity, and none of it requires a separate project.
Frequently asked
Does an accessibility plugin make a site compliant?
No. Most of what breaks a story for a reader using assistive technology is decided in the writing and the layout, not in a script.
What is the single highest-value habit?
Describing the information in an image rather than the image itself — especially for charts, where the numbers are the content.
How do I test a page quickly?
Navigate it with the keyboard alone, then listen to it with a screen reader. Most failures are audible in the first thirty seconds.
Are automated checkers useful?
For a defined minority of problems — missing alt attributes, contrast, unlabelled fields. They cannot judge whether a description is meaningful.