Let’s Make An Accessible Brand Book
Brand designers make decisions that clients will reuse long after the final logo files are delivered.
You choose the colors. The fonts. The logo variations. The image style. Maybe you create social templates, presentation layouts, graphics, or other branded assets too.
Then your client takes those pieces and starts using them everywhere.
Their website. Instagram posts. PDFs. Email graphics. Presentations. Videos. Sales materials.
This is exactly why accessibility belongs in the brand guidelines.
You do not need to turn a brand book into a 50-page accessibility manual or become an accessibility specialist. But you can give your client clear rules that help them use their brand without accidentally creating content that is difficult for people to read, understand, or interact with.
Instead of handing over a beautiful palette and hoping they use it well, tell them which color combinations work. Instead of simply listing two brand fonts, explain which weights work best for body copy and which should stay decorative. Instead of giving them one logo file for every possible situation, provide versions that will be recognizable across different backgrounds and sizes.
Those additions to your brand book can make it easier for your client to use these assets more successfully.
In This Article
Why brand designers should include accessibility in brand guidelines
Build an accessible brand color palette your client can actually use
Add typography rules to the brand book
Give clients logo usage guidelines
Set accessibility rules for images and graphics
Create accessibility standards for social media and video
What to include in accessible brand guidelines
Make accessibility part of the brand handoff
Frequently asked questions about accessible brand guidelines
Why Brand Designers Should Include Accessibility in Brand Guidelines
Most brand guidelines do a great job of showing clients what their brand could look like.
Here’s your color palette.
These are your fonts.
This is your brand voice.
You can access your logo files here.
Great.
But none of that tells the client where and how to use the different entities of their beautiful new brand.
A client sees six beautiful brand colors and assumes they can use any of them together. A light accent color becomes paragraph text. A decorative font gets used for an entire Instagram carousel. White text gets placed over photographs because it looked good in the original brand presentation.
None of those decisions mean the client does not care about accessibility. They simply were not given guidance on what to do and what to avoid.
A more useful brand guide tells clients how the visual system should work in real content, not just what looks good on the storyboard. This becomes especially valuable for small and mid-size businesses where the person creating next week's social graphic, presentation, PDF, or website update may not be a designer.
Your guidelines become their reference point.
If accessibility is already built into those rules, they do not have to guess every time they create something new.
Build an Accessible Brand Color Palette Your Client Can Actually Use
Color is probably the easiest place for a brand designer to make an immediate difference.
WCAG requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for regular text and 3:1 for large text and interactive elements.
Don’t make your client pull out a contrast checker every time they design a social post, infographic, or send an email. Do that work during the branding process.
Once you have selected the palette, test the combinations your client is actually likely to use and document them.
For example, your brand guidelines might list the following with sample color swatches,
Body Text: Approved dark text colors on light backgrounds
Reverse Text: Approved light text colors on dark backgrounds
Large Headings: Additional approved color combinations for large text only
Buttons: Approved button and button text combinations
Button Hover States: Approved combinations for hover effects
Link Colors: Approved link colors on light backgrounds (include the reverse)
Accent Colors: Colors that can be used decoratively, but not for text
Avoid: Showthe brand color combinations that do not have enough contrast
That is far more useful than just listing six hex codes with swatches.
Explain that being part of the brand palette does not mean a color is appropriate for every job a color needs to do.
That soft peach might be perfect for backgrounds.
The pale green might work beautifully as an accent.
Neither necessarily needs to disappear from the brand simply because it does not work for paragraph text.
Don't Make Color Tell the Whole Message
Your brand guidelines should also address situations where clients use color to communicate information.
For example, imagine a chart where one service is green and another is red. If the only way to tell them apart is the color, some people with color vision differences may not be able to distinguish the information.
Add another cue such as a label, icon, pattern, shape, or direct annotation.
The same idea applies to things like errors, status messages, comparisons, infographics, and charts.
Color can support the message. It just should not be the only way someone can understand it.
Add Typography Rules to the Brand Book
Typography can make a brand instantly recognizable.
It can also become difficult to use very quickly when clients are only told the names of their fonts.
There is no WCAG rule saying every brand must use a particular font family or one universal font size in order to be accessible. That means you do not need to abandon serif fonts, personality-filled headings, or interesting typography.
You do need to think about how those choices will perform in different scenarios and different sizes.
A decorative typeface that looks great in a two-word headline may be exhausting across several paragraphs. An ultra-light font weight may disappear on smaller screens. Very condensed text may become increasingly difficult to read as content gets longer.
This is where you can provide boundaries for your client.
You should give them instructions such as:
Headlines: Example Serif, Medium or Bold
Body Copy: Example Sans, Regular or Medium Weight
Decorative Typeface: Limited to short accent text; not recommended for paragraphs or important instructions
Now your client knows what to do with the fonts you selected.
You can also provide recommendations for line spacing, paragraph spacing, and text size based on the actual fonts in the brand.
WCAG's text-spacing requirement is about allowing users to adjust spacing without content disappearing or becoming unusable. It does not require every website to use one specific line height or letter spacing by default. That can vary based on the font style. But it is good to test what you are recommending, so your client’s content remains readable on desktop and mobile.
Keep Important Text Out of Graphics When You Can
Brand designers sometimes create graphics for their client’s, like
Quote cards
Sales graphics
Event announcements
Instagram carousels
Website or email banners
Often these elements are created with text embedded into a final image.
Sometimes that makes sense.
But if information can be presented as real text on a page rather than permanently baked into an image, it will be accessible to more people.
Your guidelines can help clients use these elements in the proper way.
Any image with text, like a sales promo, email banner, or presentation deck, must include descriptive alternative text, and even better provide the information in the nearby text on the page.
Give Clients Logo Usage Guidelines
The normal text contrast requirements do not apply to text that is part of a logo.
So a brand designer does not have to redesign a logo because the colors inside it fail a contrast test.
But that does not mean contrast and readability should be ignored.
A logo still needs to be recognizable.
If the wordmark disappears when it gets small, important details blend together, or the logo becomes unreadable against half of the brand palette, your client is going to struggle to use it.
Providing variations solves a lot of those problems.
Consider including a primary logo, simplified version, one-color version, reversed version, small-space option, and brand mark where appropriate.
Then make it clear to the client where each version should be used.
You might specify that the reversed logo should only appear on approved dark backgrounds or that the primary logo should not be placed directly over busy photography.
These are normal brand guidelines that you likely give every client.
Mentioning accessibility simply gives the client more reasons to follow them.
Set Accessibility Rules for Images and Graphics
Brand image guidelines typically talk about things like photography style, lighting, composition, filters, illustration, and subject matter.
Accessibility can fit naturally into that same conversation.
For photography, think about whether the subject and message remain clear when images are viewed at smaller sizes. Avoid routinely placing important text over visually busy areas. If your templates use text over photographs, build in a solid or controlled background area so the text stays readable.
For illustrations and icons, make sure meaning does not depend entirely on subtle color differences.
And if your client creates charts, diagrams, maps, or infographics, add standards for those too.
Complex graphics often contain far more information than can be communicated through a short image description alone. Good visual design can make that information easier to understand before alternative text is even considered.
Directly label data when practical
Use shapes or patterns along with color
Reduce unnecessary visual clutter
Make the main takeaway obvious.
Then make sure whoever publishes the graphic knows that the important information also needs to be available in the nearby text.
A brand designer is likely not the person writing every future alt text or extended description.
What you can do is help educate your client’s on what to look for (or look out for), and how to consider writing good alt text and image descriptions.
Create Accessibility Standards for Social Media and Video
This is one area many traditional brand guides barely touch, even though clients create social content constantly. A branded social media template should work on more than a giant desktop mockup.
It needs to work on a phone too.
That usually means larger readable text, clear hierarchy, strong color combinations, enough breathing room, and less information crammed into one graphic.
Your guidelines can also remind clients that important information contained inside an image should be available through the post content or appropriate image description.
Don't Forget Video Branding
If video is a regular part of the client's marketing, add video rules to the brand book too.
You might already specify intro graphics, lower thirds, text styles, transitions, or logo placement.
Add accessibility to that same section.
For prerecorded video where audio communicates important information, captions are required under WCAG. Those captions need to include meaningful spoken and non-speech audio, not just a rough automated transcript.
From a branding perspective, you can help by choosing a readable caption style, maintaining strong contrast, and leaving enough clear space in video templates so graphics and lower thirds do not constantly fight with captions.
You can also encourage clients to plan for visual information that is not explained in the audio. Depending on the content, audio description may be needed so someone who cannot see the video still receives the important visual information.
These considerations are much easier to plan for before the video is edited.
What to Include in Accessible Brand Guidelines
When creating your client’s brand book, you do not need a separate accessibility section.
Naturally integrate it right into the content you are already compiling for them.
Here is what to consider adding
Color: Approved text/background combinations, contrast-safe button colors, accent-only colors, combinations to avoid
Typography: Recommended fonts and weights by use, readable body styles, decorative font limitations
Logos: Versions for light/dark backgrounds, small-space options, minimum-use recommendations
Photography: Text-overlay rules, image composition considerations, guidance for informative vs. decorative imagery, resources for writing alt text.
Charts/Graphics: Direct labels, alternatives to color-only distinctions, text alternatives for important information
Social Media: Readable templates, text limits, contrast guidance, image-description reminders, leave space for captions
Videos: Caption styling, text-overlay placement, visual-information and audio-description considerations
The goal is to remove guesswork for your clients.
When someone on their team creates a new graphic, they should have clear instructions on how to keep it on brand and accessible.
Make Accessibility Part of the Brand Handoff
A good brand guide does more than show a client what their brand looks like.
It helps them use it.
Accessibility fits naturally into that process.
You have already done the work of choosing colors, testing typography, building logo versions, creating templates, and deciding how the brand should show up across different platforms. A few additional accessibility rules can protect those decisions once the files leave your hands.
It also gives the next person in the process a much better starting point.
The web designer knows which color combinations are approved. The social media manager has templates that are readable on a phone. The person creating a presentation knows which font styles are intended for body copy and how to handle visual data graphics. The video editor knows they need room for captions.
One final consideration: if you deliver your brand guide as a digital PDF, think about the accessibility of the guide itself too. A document explaining accessible brand practices is much more useful when someone using assistive technology can actually navigate and read it.
You do not have to take responsibility for every accessibility decision your client will ever make. Give them a strong system, document the decisions you already control, and make the accessible choice easier to recognize.
That is a pretty valuable addition to any brand package.
We helps small businesses build websites that are accessible, clear, and easier for EVERYONE to use from the start. If you want a professional review of your site’s accessibility, we’d love to take a look.
Frequently Asked Questions About Accessible Brand Guidelines
What should an accessible brand guide include?
Accessible brand guidelines should explain more than which colors, fonts, and logos belong to the brand. Include approved color combinations, typography usage, logo variations, guidance for images and graphics, social media templates, and video standards when those formats are part of the client's marketing. The specific sections will vary by client. The goal is to give them practical rules they can continue using after the branding project is complete. And give them a list of what NOT to do.
Do all brand colors have to meet WCAG contrast requirements?
No. A brand can absolutely include light or low-contrast colors. The issue is how those colors are used. A pale brand color may work perfectly as a background, border, or decorative accent even though it should not be used for regular text. Instead of removing those colors, document which combinations are appropriate for text and which should remain decorative.
Do logos have to meet WCAG color contrast requirements?
Text that is part of a logo or brand name is exempt from WCAG's minimum text contrast requirement. It is still smart to design logo variations that remain recognizable across different backgrounds and sizes. Accessibility requirements and good design practice are not always exactly the same thing.
What typography guidance should brand designers include?
Useful guidance includes minimum digital text sizes, approved body copy weights, readable heading and paragraph pairings, text-over-image rules, and spacing guidance that avoids cramped reading.
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