Web Accessibility Content Review Guides
June 09, 2026 | Emily Lapayowker
Digital accessibility is an important process that makes websites, files like Word documents or PDFs, and other digital products accessible to people with disabilities, as well as making these products more user-friendly overall. There are many criteria to meet when making your digital content accessible.
The guides on this page serve as checklists for ensuring that web content and digital products are accessible, as laid out in the 2024 ADA Title II Web Rule, and meet the current standard of WCAG 2.1. Neither will address the web development needs laid out in WCAG, but they are useful for most digital content creation. The two checklists represent two different approaches to meeting accessibility standards: standards-driven and content-driven.
It is important to remember that many of the techniques contained in each are not exclusive to websites, emails, or Microsoft Office products; they can be used for all forms of digital content.
Guide for Meeting WCAG Web Accessibility Standards
The structure of this checklist template roughly corresponds with the Preliminary Easy Checks Checklist by W3C. Each section contains a list of relevant WCAG links that detail the criteria and conformance levels covered in that section. It also indicates which checks are manual and which can be done by an automated checker, like the applet ANDI.
Get the Checklist for Meeting WCAG Accessibility Standards (automatic Word download)
Special thanks to the PHIG team at the Alaska Department of Health and ASTHO staff member Heidi Westermann, MPH, for contributing to this resource.
Guide to Reviewing Digital Content for Accessibility
This checklist has a content-first focus and is less technical than the Guide for Meeting WCAG Web Accessibility Standards. Sections are organized to keep like-topics together. Overarching sections include document content, document structure, and multimedia.
Get the Guide to Reviewing Digital Content for Accessibility (automatic Word download)
This work was supported by funds made available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), National Center for STLT Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce, through OE22-2203: Strengthening U.S. Public Health Infrastructure, Workforce, and Data Systems grant. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.
Public Health Infrastructure Grant
Learn more about the successes of the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) on the PHIG Partners website.