Creating Accessibility Acceptance Criteria
taught by: Russ Weakley
Session Summary
Learn a clear, repeatable process for writing accessibility acceptance criteria at two levels: page and user flows, and reusable UI components. This session walks through each step for identifying barriers, shaping them into test questions, and converting them into robust, testable criteria your teams can use with confidence.
Description
In this session, we explore how to create strong, testable accessibility acceptance criteria across two levels of a digital product:
- Pages and user flows – the broader experiences where users complete tasks
- Reusable UI components – the building blocks that appear throughout your product
You’ll learn a practical, step-by-step method for turning user needs and potential barriers into clear accessibility tests, and then converting those tests into positive, measurable acceptance criteria. We’ll walk through the full process for each level, including:
- choosing a page, flow, or component
- selecting a user group
- identifying the barriers that group may encounter
- framing those barriers as test questions
- rewriting tests into robust acceptance criteria
We’ll also compare the two levels, highlight where the steps are the same, and explore where component-level criteria require more precision and rigour.
By the end of the session, you’ll have the tools and templates to create incredibly clear, reliable, and reusable accessibility acceptance criteria that support designers, developers, and testers alike.
Practical Skills
- Understand the difference between page/user-flow criteria and component-level criteria, and when to use each.
- Apply a step-by-step method to identify accessibility barriers for specific user groups.
- Turn identified barriers into clear, actionable test questions.