A brand guideline document is a set of instructions written once and followed for years by people who were not in the room.
That makes it the cheapest place to build accessibility in, and the most expensive place to leave it out. A palette that fails contrast will fail on every page, every leaflet and every social post until somebody revisits the document, which nobody does.
Inclusive brand guidelines are ordinary brand guidelines with the accessibility decisions already made.
Inclusive Brand Guidelines: An Accessibility Checklist
Colour: state the pairings, not just the palette
Most guidelines list colours. Few state which combinations are safe to use together, which is where the failures happen.
For each brand colour, specify what text colour may sit on it and at what size. WCAG 2.1 Level AA asks for 4.5:1 on body text, 3:1 on large text and 3:1 on interface components.
Include the failures explicitly. “Do not use white text on the mid-green” prevents more problems than any principle, because it removes the judgement call from somebody working to a deadline.
And state that colour must never carry meaning alone. If a status is red, it also needs a label, an icon or a position.
2. Typography: specify minimums, not just faces
Name the minimum body size and the minimum line height, since these are what get quietly reduced when a layout is tight.
Specify a line-length range. Somewhere near 60 to 75 characters keeps the eye from losing its place, and guidelines that omit this produce full-width text on wide screens.
Limit weights and families. This serves readability and, incidentally, page weight, since every family and weight is a separate file.
Prohibit text baked into images, which cannot be read by screen readers, cannot be zoomed cleanly and cannot be translated.
3. Imagery: representative and described
Say what your photography should show, and mean it. Imagery that only depicts one kind of person tells everybody else something you did not intend.
Include guidance on writing alternative text, since whoever uploads the image is rarely whoever wrote the guidelines. Describe what the image conveys in context; leave it empty for purely decorative images.
Note that images of text are excluded, which catches the recurring case of opening hours or a price list posted as a graphic.
4. Language: plain and specific about it
Give a reading-level target and examples of the difference. Abstract instructions to “keep it simple” produce no change.
Specify how you write numbers, dates and abbreviations, since inconsistency here is harder for screen readers and for anybody scanning.
Include a short list of terms to avoid and their replacements, particularly anything that assumes a reader’s ability, background or circumstances.
Write link text guidance in. “Click here” repeated across a page gives somebody listing the links nothing to work with.
5. Motion and media
State that motion must respect the reduced-motion preference, and that nothing autoplays with sound.
Require captions on video as standard rather than as a request, and specify that captions carry speaker identification and meaningful sound, not only dialogue.
Set a limit on how long anything moves before it can be paused. Level AA requires a mechanism for content moving longer than five seconds.
Make inclusive brand guidelines enforceable
Guidelines nobody can check are aspirations.
Include the contrast ratios as numbers rather than as intentions. Provide the accessible colour pairings as a reference table. Give examples of correct and incorrect use side by side.
Name who to ask when something is unclear, because the alternative is somebody guessing.
Where performance and environmental impact both apply, treat them as the same lever: limiting font families and prohibiting text-in-images reduces unnecessary data transfer and processing, which supports a faster experience while lowering estimated digital carbon, though environmental figures remain modelled rather than directly measured.
Our sustainable web design work builds these constraints into the brief so they hold across everything produced afterwards.