How to Prioritize Accessibility Issues
- Assign labels inside of a prioritization column in Excel or Google Sheets. Sort by the different labels.
- Use ChatGPT / AI to prioritize issues for you.
- Use a tracking platform to sort accessibility issues by prioritization formula.
Of course, each of these three options leads us to the question: what method are we using to prioritize accessibility issues?
With spreadsheets, most teams default to the traditional high-medium-low labels. It works, but it lacks precision. When clients asked us how they should prioritize, they didn’t want broad categories — they wanted to know the exact order to make fixes: 1–2–3–4–5. They needed specificity, not broad categorizations.
AI is a good option if you know what to ask for. You can upload your audit to ChatGPT and get a reordered list in seconds. But what prompt would actually give you meaningful prioritization? How do you tell AI which accessibility issues matter most?
We developed two specific prioritization formulas that anyone can use: user impact and risk factor.
User Impact
User impact scores each issue (which is tied to a WCAG success criterion) by the overall impact on users. The overall impact is derived from the following scoring system detailed in our how to prioritize accessibility issues blog post:
1. Access Blocking Severity (35 points)
Measures how completely the issue prevents users from accessing content
Example: Keyboard accessibility (2.1.1) scores maximum points because keyboard-only users are completely blocked from using non-keyboard accessible websites
2. Workaround Feasibility (25 points)
Evaluates how easily users can find alternative ways to access content when an issue exists
Example: Missing alternative text (1.1.1) scores high because there’s simply no way for screen reader users to understand an unlabeled image
3. User Population Size (15 points)
Considers how many users are potentially affected by the issue
Example: Name, Role, Value (4.1.2) scores high because it affects nearly all assistive technology users
4. Contextual Criticality (10 points)
Assesses how important the affected functionality is to completing core tasks
Example: Error Identification (3.3.1) scores high because without it, users can’t complete forms
5. Frequency/Likelihood Factor (15 points)
Evaluates how commonly the issue occurs on typical websites
Example: Text Spacing (1.4.12) scores at the bottom because it rarely creates significant barriers on modern websites
Risk Factor
Risk factor prioritizes issue by how often they are claimed in complaints filed in state and federal court. This is a completely data driven formula that scores issues (tied to WCAG success criteria) on a 0–100.
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This enables anyone to sort by those issues that are most likely to lead to a lawsuit or demand letter so that you lower your risk as you work through the issues with the highest scores.
Tracker Platform
We built both the User Impact and Risk Factor formulas directly into Accessibility Tracker to make prioritization instant and automatic.
Here’s what the Tracker audit report broad issue view looks like:
Fun fact: Accessibility Tracker actually started as “Prioritizer” because so many clients asked us to prioritize their audit reports. Once we solved prioritization, we realized teams needed help with the entire remediation workflow, so we expanded it into a complete audit-based project management platform.
Summary
If you want the exercise, you can always manually assign issues a score inside of your spreadsheet and then sort by that column.
Or you could have AI take on the task and upload your spreadsheet to ChatGPT and prompt to sort issues.
And if you want our custom prioritization formulas, Accessibility Tracker has those along with several other nice features.
