The request usually arrives sideways. A client forwards a letter from a law firm, or their new marketing hire ran a browser extension and found two hundred “errors”, or a procurement form asks them to confirm the website meets WCAG. Either way, the client turns to the agency that built the site and asks a question nobody on your team was hired to answer.
That is the gap white label accessibility remediation fills. We find and fix the accessibility problems on your client’s WordPress site, you keep the conversation with the client, and the work goes out under your name. It is one of the services described in our overview of how WordPress outsourcing for agencies works, and it follows the same rule as everything else there: we never speak to your client.
One thing first, because it shapes everything below. What follows is general information, not legal advice. We fix websites. We do not tell anyone whether they are legally compliant, and we would be wary of any developer who does.
Why accessibility work is awkward for agencies
Most agencies are not short of skill here. They are short of three other things.
Time to do it properly. Accessibility fixes are fiddly. A colour contrast change can ripple through a whole design system. A menu that does not work with a keyboard may need its markup rewritten, not just restyled. Doing this well on a live client site takes careful, slow hours that your team would rather spend on paid builds.
Confidence about scope. Automated scanners produce long lists, and many items on those lists are duplicates, false alarms or symptoms of a single template problem. Other real problems never show up in a scan at all, because tools cannot judge whether alt text makes sense or whether the reading order matches the visual order. Turning a scanner report into an honest estimate needs someone who has seen enough sites to tell the difference.
A safe way to talk about the law. In the US, the conversation is usually framed around the Americans with Disabilities Act. Website accessibility claims under the ADA have become common enough that many business owners have heard of them, but the legal position depends on the business, the courts and the facts, and it is not something a web agency should summarise for a client with any certainty. WCAG, published by the W3C, is the technical standard most often used as the yardstick. Our explainer on what the WCAG standard actually asks for covers the principles and levels in plain terms.
How the white label arrangement works for accessibility
The basic flow is the same one we use for all agency work, adapted to a job that has more uncertainty at the start.
1. A review before an estimate
You send us the site and whatever triggered the request: the letter, the scan report, the client’s email. We review a representative sample of pages, usually the home page, a typical inner page, the contact or booking form, and for a store the product, cart and checkout pages. We combine automated checks with manual testing: moving through each page with only a keyboard, checking focus visibility, reading the page structure, testing forms with errors, and listening to key parts with a screen reader.
2. Findings grouped by cause
Instead of a raw list, you get findings grouped by where the fix lives. A missing form label in a reusable block is one fix, even if it appears on forty pages. A contrast problem in the theme’s button colour is one decision, which may need your designer’s approval. Grouping by cause makes the estimate honest and helps you explain it to the client.
3. Your decision on scope
Some issues are quick. Some need design changes. Some live in a third-party plugin that cannot be fixed without replacing it. We set these out and recommend an order, usually starting with what blocks people from completing key tasks, such as submitting a form or paying for an order. You decide what to include, what to quote and what to defer.
4. Fixes on staging, then live
We take a backup and work on a staging copy wherever the host allows. Changes are made in the theme, child theme, block templates or page builder, depending on how the site is built. For sites built with a page builder, the work often overlaps with our Elementor work for agencies, because many issues come from how widgets were configured rather than from the theme itself.
5. A retest and written notes
After the fixes, we retest the same pages the same way and write up what changed, what was checked and what remains open. The notes are unbranded, so you can pass them on as they are or fold them into your own reporting.
What usually needs fixing on a WordPress site
The problems repeat from site to site, which is good news for estimates. On typical WordPress sites, the common ones are:
- Images with no alt text, decorative images announced to screen readers, and logos with alt text like “logo-final-v3”.
- Headings chosen for their size rather than their order, so the page outline jumps from an h1 to an h4.
- Navigation menus, dropdowns, sliders and pop-ups that cannot be reached or closed with a keyboard.
- Focus outlines removed in the theme’s CSS, leaving keyboard users with no idea where they are.
- Form fields that rely on placeholder text instead of real labels, and error messages shown only in red.
- Text over background images or brand colours that fails contrast checks.
- Links that say “click here” or “read more” with nothing to tell them apart.
- Embedded videos without captions, and PDFs that were never made accessible.
If your team wants to do some of this in house, our practical accessibility checklist for business sites is a reasonable starting point to share with them.
What your client sees
From the client’s side, the agency handled it. They receive whatever summary you choose to send, written in your voice. If they ask for evidence of the work, you can give them our notes, edited or not, with your branding on them. Our unbranded reports for agencies work the same way for ongoing checks.
What the client should not receive is a statement that the site is now “ADA compliant”. We will not write that, and we suggest you do not either. A more accurate and safer wording is that the site was reviewed against WCAG, the issues found on the tested pages were fixed, and some items remain open for stated reasons. If the client has a legal matter in progress, their lawyer is the right person to decide what is said about it. Our guide for agency owners on answering a client who asks whether their site is ADA compliant has wording you can adapt for that first reply.
What stays under your control
- The client conversation. Every question, update and explanation goes through you. We do not join calls with the client or their legal counsel.
- Design decisions. When a fix changes how the site looks, such as darker button colours or visible focus styles, we propose options and your designer chooses.
- Pricing and scope. You decide how the work is packaged: a one-off remediation project, a fix list worked through over several months, or a recurring check bundled into a care plan.
- Plugin choices. If a plugin is the source of a problem, we explain the options, from configuration changes to replacement, and you decide with the client.
A note on overlay widgets
Clients often ask whether they can install a toolbar or overlay plugin instead. These widgets add controls on top of the page, but they do not rewrite the underlying markup that screen readers and keyboards depend on, and accessibility practitioners widely caution against relying on them. If a client already has one installed, we can work around it, and we will tell you if it is causing problems of its own. We do not sell or recommend them as a fix.
Keeping the work from undoing itself
Accessibility fixes are easy to lose. A new page built in a hurry, a plugin update that changes form markup, or a theme switch can bring old problems back. Three habits help:
- Add a short accessibility check to your QA process before any page goes live. Our checklist for quality-checking outsourced work includes the basics.
- Recheck key templates after major updates, which fits naturally alongside tested updates on client sites.
- Write down the decisions made, such as approved colours and form patterns, in the site’s notes so the next person does not undo them.
Handoff and reporting
At the end of a white label accessibility remediation job, you receive the list of pages tested and how, each fix with where it was made, open items with the reason they are open, and suggestions for anything that needs ongoing attention. If we changed theme files, we tell you which ones, so your developers are not surprised by them later. If the site lives in your repository, we follow your branch and review process.
Accessibility work also sits comfortably alongside our broader development work under your agency brand, so a redesign or a new section can be built accessibly from the start rather than fixed afterwards. If you would rather refer a client to us directly than resell the work, our referral partner program covers that route.