A public-sector energy portal for 190,000 households, designed to WCAG 2.2 AA from week one and certified externally at launch without a remediation phase.
Client
Stadtwerk
Market
Germany
Engagement
Product design
Fee
€26,800
Duration
10 weeks
Shipped
July 2025
01
The problem
The municipal utility served 190,000 households through a portal that failed an accessibility audit on 71 criteria. Under the European Accessibility Act that is not a backlog item, it is a procurement problem.
The previous supplier had quoted a remediation phase. Remediation is what you pay for when accessibility was not a design input, and it costs roughly three times as much.
02
The decision
We designed to AA from the first sketch and wrote the conformance note on the same page as the screen. Contrast, focus order, target size and error identification were review criteria every Friday, not a phase.
We also cut the address-change wizard down from nine steps to three, which turned out to fix more accessibility complaints than any contrast change did.