Understanding Accessibility Drift - And How to Prevent It

Why do accessibility standards erode after audits, and what can continuous monitoring can do about it?

Six months after your accessibility audit, someone publishes a new landing page. The template looks fine. The automated checks pass. But the call-to-action button receives keyboard focus with no visible focus indicator, and the form has no error validation for screen reader users.

Three months later, you're facing a complaint that exposes you to legal risk and reputational risk.

This isn't a failure of intent - it's the reality of how digital products work. Websites evolve constantly. Teams rotate. Third-party tools update. Content gets published by people who haven’t received accessibility training. Without continuous monitoring and expert guidance, standards slip. And this typically happens through the simple mechanics of organisational life.

This is accessibility drift - and it's inevitable without the right systems in place.

What Is Accessibility Drift?

Accessibility drift occurs when organisations complete an audit, remediate issues, then assume the problem is solved. But digital platforms evolve constantly - new content, features, templates, and team members. Without continuous monitoring, accessibility standards gradually degrade through the mechanics of how digital work actually happens.

A developer creates a new component without considering keyboard navigation. A content editor publishes an infographic with inadequate alt text. A third-party tool updates and breaks ARIA labels. A marketing team changes a template and removes focus indicators. Someone adds a video without captions because the deadline is tight and 'we'll add them later'. Small issues accumulate. The good work from that initial audit quietly erodes.

The question isn't whether accessibility drift will happen. It's how you'll detect and address it before it becomes a compliance risk or, more importantly, before it stops real users from accessing your services.

Why Accessibility Drift Is Inevitable

You can't re-audit every quarter. You can't have an accessibility specialist review every content update. And you can't expect every team member to remember every WCAG criterion from a half-day training session six months ago.

The organisations we work with aren't asking 'do we need accessibility?' - they're asking practical questions about sustainability:

• How do we know when new issues appear across multiple sites without manually checking hundreds of pages?
• When automated tools flag 400 potential issues, which ones actually matter to users - and where exactly do they appear across our digital estate?
• How do we ensure 15 content creators across different teams all maintain accessibility standards when they're publishing dozens of pages weekly?
• What does 'demonstrating ongoing compliance' actually look like to a board or regulator?
• Point-in-time audits answer 'where are we now?' They don't answer 'how do we stay on track?' or 'how do we prevent accessibility drift?'

Small Changes, Big Impact

One organisation discovered that every time their marketing team updated campaign landing pages, the automated header navigation was being replaced with a manual version that had no keyboard access. It wasn't intentional - it was a template issue no one had spotted.

Without continuous monitoring, it persisted for months until the next annual audit - affecting every campaign in that period. Users who relied on keyboard navigation couldn't access the main site menu. Every landing page had the same barrier.

The cost of fixing one template: minimal. The cost of remediating 40 campaign pages retrospectively: significant. The reputational cost of users being unable to navigate your site: harder to quantify, impossible to ignore.

This is how accessibility drift happens - not through dramatic failures, but through small, unnoticed issues that compound over time.

Preventing Accessibility Drift: What Actually Works

Preventing accessibility drift requires two things working together: continuous technical monitoring and periodic expert validation.

Continuous monitoring provides visibility

Weekly automated scanning detects issues as they appear - missing alt text, colour contrast failures, form label problems, heading structure errors. You know within hours, not months, when new problems are introduced. You can see exactly which pages are affected and how frequently each issue appears across your estate.

This visibility is essential. You can't fix what you can't see.

Periodic expert audits provide judgment

But automated scans can't tell you everything. Expert audits - quarterly, or annually depending on your needs - provide the human judgment automated tools miss. Testing with actual screen readers. Validating keyboard navigation across user journeys. Assessing whether errors genuinely block users or are edge cases that can be deprioritised.

You receive a clear action list: what to fix, why it matters, and how to do it.

Together, they prevent drift

Continuous monitoring catches issues as they're introduced. Expert audits validate what actually matters and provide remediation guidance. Between audits, the platform provides ongoing visibility - tracking trends, flagging new issues, showing you exactly where problems appear.

This combination prevents accessibility drift by making accessibility systematic rather than reactive.

The True Cost of Accessibility Drift

Accessibility drift carries costs beyond compliance risk:

User exclusion compounds over time

Every barrier introduced stays in place until it's detected and fixed. If your audit cycle is annual, issues can persist for months. That's months of users being unable to complete tasks, access content, or use your services.

Remediation costs escalate

Fixing one template takes 15 minutes. Remediating 40 pages built from that template takes days. The longer drift continues, the more expensive it becomes to fix.

Your initial investment erodes

You've invested in an audit, remediation, training. Without continuous monitoring, that investment gradually loses value as new issues appear and standards slip. You're not maintaining what you built.

Organisational confidence drops

Leadership teams need assurance that accessibility is under control. Accessibility drift creates uncertainty - you can't confidently answer 'what's our current accessibility status?' between audits.

How User Vision Helps Organisations Prevent Accessibility Drift

Access360 is our managed accessibility service designed specifically to prevent accessibility drift. It combines automated platform monitoring with User Vision's specialist expertise - continuous technical visibility backed by expert human judgment.

The platform provides weekly automated scanning of your digital platform against WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 standards. Real-time detection of issues as content changes. Visual dashboards showing accessibility status across sites, pages, and components. Not just how many issues you have, but where they appear and how frequently.

User Vision wraps the platform with the specialist support that transforms data into action:

• expert manual audits that catch issues automated tools miss
• remediation guidance on what to prioritise and how to fix it
• disabled user testing to validate real-world impact
• and capability-building support so your teams can maintain standards themselves.

We offer three service tiers matched to organisational maturity - from foundational monitoring with manual audits, to strategic partnerships with governance frameworks and accreditation support.

Learn more about the Access360 service and service tiers →

Is This Right for Your Organisation?

Preventing accessibility drift is particularly critical for:

• Organisations with multiple websites where content is published by teams across different departments who weren't part of the original accessibility training.
• Financial services, healthcare, and regulated industries where accessibility risk carries significant regulatory and reputational consequences.
• Large enterprises with multiple teams publishing content weekly, where centralised review of every update isn't feasible.
• Public sector organisations managing compliance with accessibility regulations across complex digital estates.
• Any organisation that has completed an accessibility audit and is asking 'how do we make sure this actually sticks?'

If your organisation has already invested in accessibility - through audits, training, or remediation - preventing accessibility drift protects and extends that investment.

If your organisation hasn't yet invested in accessibility - continuous monitoring provides the foundation to build sustainable practice from the start, rather than reactively fixing problems after complaints arrive.

Next Steps

Accessibility drift is inevitable without the right systems. The question is whether you'll detect and address it systematically, or discover it through complaints and annual audits.

If you're asking yourself 'how do we make sure our accessibility investment actually sticks?', we'd be happy to talk.

Book a 30-minute consultation

We'll discuss your current accessibility maturity, show you what continuous monitoring looks like for your digital estate, and help you determine the right approach for preventing accessibility drift in your organisation. We can even show you how Access360 works on your websites by providing an example of the monitoring, reporting, dashboards, and insights on your live sites.

Learn more:

• Access360 Service Overview and Tiers
• Accessibility Toolkit: Accessing, Auditing and Accreditation
• Accessibility Toolkit: Maturity Audits

Access360 is powered by Accessibility Cloud, used by leading organisations including the Scottish Government to manage accessibility across their digital estate.