Best Practices for Creating an Accessible Content Strategy

Accessibility compliance can feel like an uphill battle. First, you’ve got to remediate existing content to make sure it complies with ADA and other formal requirements — and that alone can feel like an impossible task. Then you have to ensure each new piece stays accessible, even as guidelines continue to grow and shift.

To avoid compliance consuming more time and budget than your team can sustainably manage, you need to build a content strategy that incorporates accessibility at every stage.

The important thing to keep in mind is that accessibility is more than a series of checklists. This guide offers a strategy recipe for best practices that combines:

• A foundational mindset
• The right tooling
• The best places to start
• Strategic planning

This way, accessibility is baked into your content lifecycle rather than frosted on after the fact.

What’s the best way to approach content accessibility? 

Accessibility isn’t about following rules for their own sake; it’s about usability. When it’s a mindset rather than a step in your workflow, you can be confident your content works for all visitors on all their devices, and meets the legal regulations affecting your field. The key is consistent best practice instead of spot-checking or a triage approach: rather than the goal, compliance becomes the outcome of removing barriers to every visitor’s access.

Developing this attitude can be a daunting prospect when you’re faced with years of existing content requiring updates and refinement. While using an automated audit process eases the cost and commitment of getting started, an accessible content strategy also means planning for a future of evolving standards, new technologies, and new ways people can access information.

A checklist may help you meet today’s requirements and avoid current penalties, but an accessibility-first attitude is what prepares your content for challenges you can’t yet anticipate. 

Accessibility for all your visitors

Since a content strategy should set you up for ongoing success, a great way to cut through the complicated array of accessibility standards and requirements is to start with broad principles, like understanding your goals.

Accessibility is the goal, right? Yes, but it’s an awfully big one to set as your single target. Ensuring your visitors can actually use your content starts with identifying practical outcomes. 

Accessible content: 

• Works: Visitors can reliably access content when they follow a link, open a document, or arrive from search — regardless of device or assistive technology.
• Welcomes: Your language is inclusive, your structure intuitive, and your design inviting.
• Withstands: Content holds up under review, testing, and iteration, and improves over time in response to real user needs.

With those outcomes in mind, accessibility frameworks like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) become practical tools rather than abstract rules. You’ll need to check which standards apply to you; the WCAG is a common underpinning, but there may be additional requirements in your region or professional field.

For example, public sector organizations in the U.S., including state and local governments,  must meet Section 508 requirements, nearly all public and private entities operate under the ADA, and other regions and industries may follow additional regulations — all of which commonly reference WCAG 2.1 as their baseline. By grounding your strategy in shared principles first, you can adapt to specific standards as needed without rebuilding your approach each time requirements evolve.

Setting up your strategy

Start with a thorough audit of your existing content library, then follow up with a systematic plan to review and address any gaps you identify before outlining the steps you’ll take for future content.

Key principles to keep in mind

Formal standards provide the foundation on which to build digital governance, site infrastructure, and multimedia expectations. But regardless of which rules apply to your organization, accessibility consistently depends on a shared set of content principles:

• Plain language: Visitors can’t benefit from your resources if they can’t understand them. Rather than jargon or complex phrasing, use clear, simple, readable language — and be mindful of whether the specific words you’re choosing include or exclude parts of your audience.
• Multiple ways to access media: Not every visitor can engage with every format in the same way, so offering ideas in multiple ways helps to invite a wider audience. Simple additions like captions and full-text transcripts for videos, alt-text descriptions of visual components, and parsable summaries of content like data tables help assistive devices translate your media to a comfortable format.
• Simple structure: Use organizational cues and semantic HTML to build an infrastructure that machines and humans can read effectively. Rather than a wall of text, aim for the short paragraphs, lists, and subheadings — and then make sure those adjustments are included in your page templates or site code.  

Each of these principles contributes to the larger goals of inclusion and functionality that we’re seeking — and is a great first step toward a more comprehensive accessible content strategy. 

Key strategies for success

Accessibility comes from a coordinated effort: your whole team — developers, editors, and leadership — must be on board, or small errors and oversights will stack up to undermine your goals.

Make sure everyone understands their role with explicit responsibility descriptions. Content writers and marketers tackle some pieces of the puzzle like plain language and inclusive phrasing, but site structure and semantics are up to your site design and development teams. And ultimately, it’s up to your editors and oversight team to bring those pieces together and keep your approach consistent over time.

Build accessibility into your content lifecycle. Once a piece of content is live, it’s fair game for search engines and generative output. Embed accessibility checks into governance workflows, supported by guidelines, templates, and — yes, even checklists where they add clarity. And regular audits help ensure your full content library continues to align with your principles. 

Key tools for your kit

There are lots of tools available to help you meet all these accessibility outcomes, so you don’t need to tackle this on your own. A strong strategy is supported by tools that reinforce best practices and reduce manual effort, including:

• Accessibility-friendly content models that embed requirements in structure and fields
• Regular audits to review existing content and identify areas that need more attention—especially as new guidelines emerge
• A CMS that enables accessibility by default. Open source platforms like Drupal are a great option, since many of them prioritize accessibility as part of their philosophy
• Editing environments that help authors understand how content will appear to end users as they create it

AI-assisted tools can also help automate routine procedures, surface potential issues earlier, and reduce the time and cost of an audit process. 

Living the accessibility lifestyle

Building a content library that all your visitors can use is a long-term project. While you work to establish foundational principles and strategies to ripen your content crop, you can harvest some low-hanging fruit to improve accessibility right away.

Start by auditing your existing content to identify gaps, and apply inclusive practices to anything currently in development. Focusing on a single, frequently produced content type, like news items, can be an effective way to begin—giving you a practical place to test templates, workflows, and guidelines.

Resist the urge to fix everything at once: first, understand what problems you’re actually facing, then you’ll know what tools to bring to the table. Pick one challenge at a time, and ask for help when you need it. And as you make changes, document everything so you can iterate quickly and check your progress.

Ready to start reviewing your content strategy through an accessibility lens? Partner with Palantir to make measurable progress, quickly and at scale.