Cognitive Accessibility Audit for Continuous Compliance
As the app evolves, new screens and components risk introducing cognitive accessibility regressions — too many choices on one screen, ambiguous labels, missing help text, or broken wizard flows. The cognitive accessibility audit component must run as part of the CI pipeline and flag screens that violate defined cognitive load rules (e.g., more than 3 interactive elements per step, missing field labels, help content without registry entries). Audit results must be actionable and include the specific screen, component, and rule violated.
User Story
Acceptance Criteria
- Given a new screen is added to the app, When the CI pipeline runs, Then the cognitive accessibility audit checks that the screen has a visible title, labelled navigation, and no step with more than 3 inputs
- Given the audit detects a violation, When the build completes, Then the CI output includes the screen name, the violated rule, and a suggested fix in plain language
- Given the audit passes, When a release is deployed, Then the cognitive load rule engine reports confirm all active wizard flows comply with the step-complexity limit
- Given the help content registry is queried during audit, When a form field lacks a registered help entry, Then the audit flags this as a warning (not a blocking error) with the field identifier
- Given the audit runner is integrated, When I as a developer add a new wizard step, Then I receive immediate feedback on whether the step passes cognitive accessibility rules before merging
- Given audit results accumulate over releases, When a compliance report is generated, Then it shows a trend of pass/fail rates across the last 5 releases
Business Value
Without automated audit, cognitive accessibility regressions are caught only by users — typically those most harmed by them. An automated audit embedded in CI prevents regressions from reaching production, protecting all users with cognitive challenges across all four partner organisations. This ensures that the MUST HAVE accessibility commitments remain honoured as the codebase grows through Phase 2 and beyond.
Components
- Cognitive Accessibility Audit Utility infrastructure
- Cognitive Load Rule Engine service
- Error Message Registry data
- Help Content Registry data
- CI Accessibility Lint Runner infrastructure
- Flutter Accessibility Lint Configuration infrastructure