The Ship-It Checklist

Every item on this list is a release-blocker somewhere; the difference between accessible teams and the rest is only where the blocking happens — in review, or in a user's one-star rating. Run it top to bottom before you ship.

1 — Touch targets: every interactive element at least 44×44pt (48×48dp on Android), including the small stuff — close buttons, chevrons, inline links.

2 — Contrast: body text at 4.5:1 against its background, large text at 3:1, and check it in dark mode too, where muted greys quietly fail.

3 — Labels: every button, icon and image either carries a meaningful accessible label or is explicitly hidden as decorative. No 'button'. No filenames.

4 — Focus order: swipe through each screen with the screen reader; the reading order matches the visual logic, and initial focus lands on something useful.

5 — Dynamic Type: key screens survive 200% text. Nothing truncates into meaninglessness, no text lives inside images.

6 — Reduce Motion: honoured — sweeps and zooms become fades, parallax freezes, autoplay pauses.

7 — Announcements: errors, loading states and dynamic content changes are announced, not just painted.

8 — Colour independence: nothing communicates by colour alone — errors carry icons or text, charts carry labels or patterns.

9 — Media: video has captions, audio has transcripts, and the player controls themselves pass checks 1 through 4.

10 — One real session: someone on the team completes the release's headline flow with the screen reader on and the screen curtain down. Not a tool report — a session.

Automated audits catch perhaps a third of real issues — they read structure, not sense. The checklist is what the tools can't do. The last item is the whole philosophy in one line: tools inspect apps; only people experience them.