Designing Beyond Aesthetics: Standardizing WCAG 2.2 AA in CI

Accessibility (a11y) is often treated as a compliance checklist applied at the very end of a project. This approach results in clunky keyboard support and broken screen-reader navigation. At CyberSkill, we treat accessibility as an architectural foundation. Every component we build must satisfy WCAG 2.2 AA standards from its initial markup.

To enforce this, we run axe-core scans against our served routes during integration tests. By automating these checks on a headless Chrome instance in our CI workflow, we catch violations in keyboard focus, contrast levels, and ARIA attributes immediately. If a commit breaks focus order or leaves an interactive element without an accessible label, the gate blocks integration. Accessibility is not assumed; it is verified.