Halo Media Accessibility Guidelines
Proposed accessibility audits as a new revenue stream for Halo Media, then created the guidelines and ran the first audit, improving Mercer Pen Central's Lighthouse score by 37%. The guidelines became the agency's standard.
Accessibility was missing from the offer
Halo Media was doing strong design work, but it had no way to help clients know whether their products were usable by people with disabilities. ADA compliance is real legal exposure for any digital product, clients were starting to ask about it directly, and Halo had no clear process.
I spotted the gap, then built the service
I brought the gap to leadership as a new service: audits clients needed, competitors were starting to offer, and Halo was leaving on the table. Leadership approved it. I built it, proving the model on a live client while writing the internal standards that would make it repeatable.
Defining the service first
With Diego Fiorentin, Halo's Vice President of Operations, I put together a pitch deck framing accessibility as both a compliance need and a business opportunity for clients. The process I designed covered five pillars, each with a clear scope and a defined output:
- Hierarchy
- Color and contrast
- Development handoff
- Touch targets
- Testing
The first client, from 67 to 92
Mercer Pen Central was the first engagement. I audited their homepage with Lighthouse for scoring and Axe for user impact. The baseline was 67, with unnamed buttons, missing alt text, unlabelled form fields, duplicate ARIA IDs and contrast failures throughout.
Three goals shaped the work
- Improve the Lighthouse score to 90 or above
- Make the site navigable for users with disabilities
- Achieve ADA compliance on the homepage
I documented every issue by severity and guided the developers through the fixes. The score went from 67 to 92, the proof of concept for the service.
Four rules every design follows
Hierarchy and visual structure
Layout, emphasis and HTML order working together so the reading experience matches the visual design. CSS controls appearance but screen readers follow HTML, so designers and developers agree on reading order before anything is built.
Focus order and actions
Sequencing interactive elements with a clear button hierarchy: one high-emphasis action per layout, with secondary actions supporting it.
Color and contrast
Applying the Halo tonal palette so it meets WCAG requirements for both text and non-text elements.
Visual cues beyond color
For users who can't distinguish color, design has to communicate through stroke, pattern, text, and shape.
A gap became a packaged service
Mercer Pen Central's score went from 67 to 92, and the site became meaningfully more usable for people with low vision, motor impairments, cognitive disabilities and situational limitations. The guidelines became Halo's internal standard and the pitch deck a client-facing sales tool: a packaged service with a proven delivery model the agency could repeat with any client.
The case mattered more than the score
What I'm most proud of isn't the score. It's spotting a real business opportunity, making the case for it internally, and building something the agency could use beyond the first engagement. That meant thinking across design, development and business value at once, which is where I find the most interesting problems.
