How to send a client a WCAG evidence pack

The subject line is the claim. If it says “you’re ADA compliant,” the PDF’s disclaimer is already dead.

A WCAG evidence pack is a dated bundle of automated accessibility findings you send to a client. It covers what was scanned, which WCAG-aligned rules failed, how severe they were, and what to try next. It is a work artifact, not a certificate.

Agencies lose time rebuilding this in Google Docs. Owners lose the thread between “we should fix a11y” and a list a developer can actually use.

Look at the emails agencies actually send. The ones that survive legal review are dull. Domain. Date. Engine. Failed rules. The ones that create risk are cheerful.

Minimum contents

1. Cover: client name, site domain, date, tool/engine (axe-core, Playwright)
2. Scores: overall plus accessibility / cookies / headers if you capture them
3. Issues: severity, rule ID, page URL, message, snippet, fix hint
4. Cookies: third parties and cookies set before consent
5. Disclaimer: not a legal stamp, not a full WCAG audit

The WebAIM Million found an average of 56.1 detected errors per home page in 2026. Grouping by severity is not decoration. It is how a developer decides what to touch this sprint versus next.

Complience.app’s PDF is built for that list. White-label logos and “Prepared for” are included on Pro. See white-label accessibility reports.

In practice, if a pack is missing the date or the engine name, it is a vibe. Clients forward vibes to counsel. Counsel ask what was tested. You want that answer in the file.

How to send it without overclaiming

Subject lines that work: “Scan of example.com, 14 Sep 2026.” Subject lines that do not: “You’re ADA compliant.”

Attach the PDF, link the live report if they have a login, and offer a keyboard pass as a separate line item.

Seyfarth counted 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025 (ADA Title III report). A high automated score does not appear in that count as a shield. A dated pack at least shows what you looked at, on which URL, with which engine.

The W3C’s Understanding Conformance page is the citation to keep in the FAQ. Conformance is not a traffic-light score. If you do not have a paid seat yet, show them the sample report and run a public check on their homepage so the format is real before a contract.

What actually works is offering the manual pass as extra, not burying it. The pack is the machine slice. Say that out loud.

After the send

Put the URL on a schedule. Next month’s pack is a diff, not a new archaeology project. Score drops can email the workspace so you are not the last to know.

Detectable WCAG 2 failures still showed up on 95.9% of top home pages in the 2026 WebAIM Million. The site you just scanned will change. Plugins update. Contrast fails again. The second pack is the product.

Do not wait for a demand letter to invent a process. The process is the retainer.