Severity and Impact Triage

A real audit finds dozens of issues. Triage is how you decide what to fix first so the most harmful barriers fall away soonest. 🚦

Severity measures how badly an issue stops a user. A button with no accessible name blocks a task; a slightly low contrast merely strains the eyes.

Impact asks how many people and how often. A broken global nav hurts everyone on every page; a rare modal hurts far fewer users.

A blocker makes a core task impossible, like a checkout button a keyboard user can never reach. These jump to the top of the list.

Below blockers sit critical issues that hurt yet have a workaround, then serious ones that frustrate without fully stopping the user.

A minor issue, like a slightly vague link, annoys but rarely blocks. Log it honestly, then schedule it after the heavier problems.

Anchor severity to WCAG levels. Failing a Level A criterion is graver than missing AAA, since A covers the most fundamental access.

An issue on a page visited a million times a day outranks the same issue on a buried settings screen. Frequency sharpens your ranking.

One of these should be triaged as the highest priority.

Some high-severity fixes are tiny one-liners. Comparing harm to effort helps you grab the quick, high-value wins first.

Pick shared severity labels like blocker, critical, serious, and minor. A common vocabulary keeps triage consistent across every reviewer.

When two issues feel equal, favor the fix that unblocks the most affected users. Triage is ultimately about people, not point scores.

You now rank issues by severity and impact, anchor them to WCAG levels, and weigh effort to fix the worst barriers first. ✅