W3C Accessibility Maturity Model Explained

Maturity Model Blog Post Summary

The W3C Accessibility Maturity Model (AMM) is a framework designed to help organizations measure and improve their digital accessibility, ensuring websites, software, and documents are usable by everyone, including people with disabilities.
Accessibility maturity is important not only for inclusion but also to mitigate legal risks (such as ADA lawsuits) and to realize business benefits like increased ROI, brand loyalty, and employee morale.
The model defines four Maturity Levels: Inactive, Launch, Integrate, and Optimize.
There are seven key Dimensions in the model: Communications, Culture, ICT Development Life Cycle, Knowledge and Skill, Personnel, Procurement, and Support, which together ensure a comprehensive approach to accessibility.
Each dimension includes “proof points” for evidence and measurement, allowing organizations to assess, set goals, track progress, and embed accessibility into everyday work.

A Simple Guide to Understanding Accessibility Progress

Recently, the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Accessibility Maturity Model (AMM) became a published draft. This is a big deal! For five years, a random group of people who all care about accessibility and helping organizations address digital accessibility have been coming together every week, working on a… wait for it… note!

Yes, a note. When I think of a note, I picture a pink sticky square of paper plastered to a cabinet door in my kitchen, reminding me to take out the recyclables or call the plumber… or something else I’m sure to forget. So, five years for a sticky note to become a published draft? Well, that’s not quite what happens at the W3C. At the W3C, notes and drafts are much cooler and the result of a lot of hard work by smart and caring folks.

When the W3C releases information, a “note” is an informal document meant to share ideas, guidance, or research. Notes are not official standards and don’t go through the same approval process. A “published draft,” on the other hand, is a formal step toward creating a standard. Published drafts are reviewed, updated, and may eventually become official recommendations that organizations are expected to follow.

So, here we are now, a shiny, newly published draft of the Accessibility Maturity Model.

What Is the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model?

The W3C Accessibility Maturity Model (W3C AMM) is a framework to help organizations measure and improve how well they address digital accessibility. Digital accessibility is the usability of websites, software, and documents for everyone, including people with disabilities. In an organization, we’re talking about the ability to make all that good stuff accessible to everyone. The thing that is being matured is that ability.

Why Does Accessibility Maturity Matter?

It’s the Right Thing

There are a lot of reasons why accessibility matters. You’re reading the Inclusion Blog, so let’s start with including all people. Business is by people for people, and all people should be included, full stop. However, in a world of Key Performance Indicators, Earnings Before Insurance Taxes and Amortization, and whatever other boring spreadsheet metric a business needs to worry about, we need to look further.

Mitigate Risk

Title III of the ADA mandates that places of public accommodation be accessible to people with disabilities. Yes, that includes websites that face the public. In 2024, over 4,000 ADA-based digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in US courts. Currently, that is projected to increase by 25% in 2025. It is estimated that each case costs $5,000 to $75,000, and in 2024, 41% of the cases were against companies that had already faced litigation.

Better Business

Here is the good news. There is also a great Return on Investment (ROI) for businesses that make sure their digital assets are accessible. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 1.3 billion people worldwide have a disability. That is 1 in 6 people. Never mind that the aging population is increasing that number. So, the simple math on ROI is that the potential increase for businesses could be as high as 16% just by making sure everyone can access your digital properties. That is, without adding other factors like increasing brand loyalty and perception, and higher employee morale, all of which also come with digital accessibility.

How Does the Model Work?

Maturity Levels

Like most maturity models, the W3C AMM breaks down accessibility efforts into different levels called Maturity Levels. Think of it as a ladder that the organization climbs as it becomes better at accessibility. The W3C AMM’s levels look like this:

Inactive – basically not yet aware of digital accessibility
Launch – knowing there is a need, and some ad hoc efforts have been launched.
Integrate – there is a plan and it’s being executed
Optimize – it is fully integrated, being evaluated and adjusted.

Dimensions

There are 7 Dimensions contemplated in the W3C’s AMM. These Dimensions represent areas of the organization that influence its ability to output accessible digital content.

Communications
Culture
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Development Life Cycle
Knowledge and Skill
Personnel
Procurement
Support

Organizing the model around these dimensions helps ensure that the effort is thorough. For example, I’ve seen many organizations focus their efforts on ICT, making sure websites are audited against the WCAG, training their developers in accessible code, integrating automated accessibility scans, and even creating policies and procedures in the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), only to have inaccessible third-party tools unknowingly make their way through procurement. I’ve also seen many organizations take great effort to make their digital properties accessible and forget to include a way for people with disabilities to provide feedback.

Proof Points

Now we’re at the business end of the AMM – proof points. These little guys are going to make you work. Each dimension has a set of proof points that go with it. The thing to keep in mind here is that the W3C AMM is a framework, not a regulation. That means that you may run across proof points that don’t make sense for you. However, the W3C AMM’s proof points will serve to give you the basis for the evidence and measurement you’ll need to understand your level of maturity and what to do to improve it. You may deprecate some, change some, and add some of your own.

One thing the model doesn’t address, but I personally recommend thinking about, is what maturity level each proof point belongs in. A simple example is that you’re probably not going to do user research with people with disabilities on a website until you have first audited against guidelines. That would be like test-driving a race car to see where it needs to be tuned before you make sure the wheels are bolted on, the engine runs, and the brakes work.

Therefore, you may look at the proof points something like this:

accessibility reviews are part of the design process – Level 2 Launch
user research includes disabilities – Level 3 Integrate
conduct user research focusing only on disabilities – Level 4 Optimize

This approach may also help you judge the overall maturity level of your organization more accurately.

How Can Organizations Use the Model?

The model can be used for many things. Largely, it is to understand your capabilities and improve them. It may also be to have evidence of your accessibility efforts and plan to improve them. Here are some ways I’ve seen maturity models used:

Assessing current accessibility practices.
Setting goals to improve accessibility.
Tracking progress over time.
Make sure accessibility becomes part of everyday work.

Conclusion

The W3C Accessibility Maturity Model is a helpful tool for organizations that want to make sure their digital products are usable by everyone. It helps create a step-by-step guide to improving accessibility practices, making the web a more inclusive place for all.