Why Accessibility Belongs in Your CI/CD Pipeline

Are your developers burning hours working through an endless backlog of accessibility issues? Could violations caught at the last minute derail your next release?

When product and development teams treat accessibility as an afterthought—addressing issues after experiences are already built or live—backlogs grow, costs escalate, and release timelines are at risk.

There’s a faster, more cost-efficient solution. Level CI makes it easy for developers to proactively find and fix issues right in their pull requests—so accessibility is built into the software development life cycle (SDLC), not bolted-on.

In this blog, we’ll explore what product and development leaders stand to gain by adopting a proactive approach to accessibility—and how Level CI can empower your team to seamlessly make this shift.

The advantages of proactive accessibility

By building accessibility into your CI/CD pipeline, you save time and money—while accelerating momentum. Let’s explore four ways that taking a proactive approach to accessible development benefits teams.

Reduce time-consuming remediation.

It’s much easier for teams to fix issues before code reaches production, than to reactively remediate an experience that’s already been built or launched. Development teams that address bugs early, during peer review, reduce the time they need to spend on reactive fixes and free up capacity for new projects.

Curb escalating costs.

Remediating accessibility issues post-release is 10-30 times more expensive than fixing them before production. By proactively embedding accessibility in your CI/CD pipeline, you don’t just save time—you save money.

Cut down your backlog.

Teams that take a reactive approach to accessibility are trapped in a constant state of catch-up. Developers fix issues, only for new ones to emerge with the next update. When accessibility is integrated into the build process, fixes say fixed, and backlogs shrink down to a manageable size.

Keep releases on track.

Teams that don’t test for accessibility until builds are complete find themselves with laundry lists of issues to address at the last minute. If implementing fixes ahead of launch isn’t achievable, product and engineering leaders face a tough decision: either go to market with an inaccessible product—inviting legal and business risk—or delay the launch. Making accessibility a standard part of development keeps timelines predictable and progress in motion.

Ship inclusive, compliant products faster with Level CI.

The case is clear: proactive accessibility is faster, cheaper, and far more effective than the status-quo, reactive approach. That’s why we built Level CI.

Level CI integrates accessibility into your CI/CD pipeline, making it easy to detect and fix issues during the build process—not after the fact. With Level CI, developers can:

• Save time by identifying issues early: Detect errors during peer review with targeted pull request comments and delta scans that highlight new violations introduced by recent code changes.
• Fix errors quickly with AI-powered remediation guidance: Get actionable guidance for addressing issues, including AI code suggestions, right in your pull request.
• Set custom quality gates to block accessibility bugs: Prevent new issues from reaching production with accessibility quality gates tailored to your team’s objectives.
• Enhance accountability with clear visibility into metrics: Make sure your teams stay on track and demonstrate progress to leaders with detailed reporting from both delta scans and overall scans.

Plus, unlike most CI/CD tools for accessibility, which rely solely on testing frameworks, Level CI supports both end-to-end and standalone managed scans. This gives your team the flexibility to embed accessibility into your existing testing processes.

Start accelerating accessible development.

Ready to speed up production cycles, cut time and costs, and protect launch timelines with integrated, intelligent accessibility? Request a demo today to experience Level CI in action.