For incubators and accelerators
Your founders will hit an enterprise accessibility questionnaire the first time they sell upmarket. It is far cheaper to build it in during the programme than to retrofit it during a deal.
The bill arrives during their first big deal.
A founder reaches procurement with an enterprise or public sector buyer, is asked for a VPAT, and has neither the document nor the product to back one.
Nobody mentions it until procurement
Accessibility never comes up in a seed round or a product review. It comes up in a compliance questionnaire, at the point the deal is nearly closed.
Founders build on top of the barrier
A component with no focus state gets adopted across the product in a fortnight. By the time anyone checks, it is in forty places instead of one.
No cohort-wide visibility
You cannot tell which companies in the portfolio are carrying this risk, so you cannot coach the ones who need it most.
01 · Timing is the whole argument
A barrier costs almost nothing at week three.
A pre-seed product has one designer, a handful of components, and no legacy. Fixing a focus style is a five-minute change to something nobody has built on yet.
The same barrier at Series B is a design system migration across four surfaces.
Relative effort, not dollars. The point is the shape: the cheapest moment to fix accessibility is while a founder still owns every line of the product.
02 · What they leave with
Founders graduate able to answer the question.
Not a certificate. A live conformance record, a habit of checking at release, and a product built accessible rather than remediated later.
For a founder selling into government, healthcare, or education, that is the difference between being shortlisted and being disqualified before pricing.
- A live VPAT for their productGenerated from current results, not written the night before a deal
- Accessibility in their release processA CI check that fails new barriers, set up while the codebase is small
- A founder who can answer the questionIn a procurement call, without escalating to a consultant
- A record that predates the dealEvidence the standard held over time, which is what buyers actually want
This is a programme differentiator. Very few accelerators can say their founders leave able to answer an enterprise accessibility questionnaire on day one.
03 · How it runs in a programme
Programme-level, not nine separate accounts.
One agreement covering the cohort. Each company gets its own workspace, and you get a view across all of them so you know who is ignoring it.
When a company raises and outgrows the programme, its workspace moves onto a direct plan with its history intact.
Programme terms
- One agreement for the cohortPriced on cohort size, not per company signing separately
- A workspace per companyTheir data stays theirs, isolated from the rest of the portfolio
- A programme-wide view for youWho has tested, who is improving, who has not started
- Graduation pathCompanies move onto a direct plan as they raise, history intact
- Alumni continuityPortfolio companies keep partner rates for a defined period after the programme
Built accessible, not remediated later.
- Every company baselined in week one, so you know who is carrying the risk before they meet a buyer.
- Barriers caught while a product is small enough that a fix is a five-minute change.
- Founders who can answer an enterprise accessibility questionnaire without escalating to a consultant.
- A differentiator for the programme itself, and a reason alumni stay on partner terms.
Baseline your next cohort in week one.
Nine free tests, one afternoon. You will know immediately which companies would fail an enterprise questionnaire today.