WCAG Course Audit Checklist
An accessibility checklist tailored to e-learning, not generic web. Tick items as you fix them — your progress saves automatically in your browser.
Text & typography
Body copy, headings, and on-screen text — the foundation that everything else rides on.
Colour & visual
Colour, icons, charts, and anything else that conveys meaning visually.
Video, audio & animation
The biggest accessibility lift in most courses — and where shortcuts cost the most.
Interactive elements
Drag-and-drops, hotspots, scenarios, and anything else the learner clicks. The hardest items to get right and the easiest to test wrong.
Quizzes & assessments
Where the stakes are highest — a failed accessibility test on a quiz is a failed certification.
Downloads & resources
PDFs, Word docs, slide decks attached to a lesson — they need to be accessible too.
Course-level
Settings, notifications, and metadata that apply across the whole course.
Ship accessible courses by default
LearnBuilder ships with WCAG AA defaults: keyboard-navigable lessons, captions for video, transcript fallbacks, ARIA labels, and contrast-checked theme tokens out of the box.
About this checklist
This checklist is curated for e-learning courses specifically — not a generic WCAG audit. It focuses on the items that show up in courses (captions, transcripts, quiz feedback, drag-and-drop alternatives, downloadable resources, time-limited assessments) rather than items that mostly apply to consumer websites (autocomplete attributes, navigation breadcrumbs, etc.).
Each item links to the relevant WCAG 2.2 success criterion. We've targeted WCAG 2.2 AA, which is the level required by Section 508 (US), EN 301 549 (EU), and AODA (Canada). Items marked AAA are bonus — useful for high-stakes content but not legally mandated.
Important: ticking everything here doesn't guarantee compliance. WCAG covers principles, not implementation; only manual testing with assistive technologies (screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, voice control) can confirm a course actually works. Use this checklist as a starting point, then test with real users where possible.