Sprout Social Sustains Accessibility at Scale Across Its Platform

Problem Solved

Sprout Social’s platform touches dozens of workflows — scheduling, listening, reporting, and team collaboration among them — all shipping on a continuous release schedule. A one-time audit would have gone stale within a quarter.

Sprout Social needed a partner who could test consistently as new features shipped, train engineering and product teams on accessibility as they built, and eventually produce a credible, independently verified conformance report they could point to with customers and prospects who ask for one.

• Solution

  • Set up an ongoing monthly testing and consulting engagement rather than a single audit, so new features could be tested close to release instead of months later. This is the shape of our Managed Accessibility Ops service.
  • Tested using manual keyboard navigation, JAWS 2025 and Narrator on Windows, programmatic ARIA inspection, manual code review of forms and semantic markup, and color-contrast analysis, incorporating Sprout’s own internal VoiceOver testing on macOS.
  • Logged and tracked issues directly with Sprout’s engineering and product teams, and trained developers on accessibility as part of the regular cadence.
  • Partnered with Sprout’s internal accessibility program rather than working around it, reinforcing the guardrails they were already building into their design system and release pipeline.
  • Delivered an independent WCAG 2.2 VPAT once the platform reached a strong, well-documented conformance level.

• Results

  • Sprout Social resolved approximately 600 accessibility issues surfaced through the engagement.
  • 46 of 56 applicable WCAG 2.2 success criteria fully support conformance with no known defects, and no criteria are rated “Does Not Support” anywhere on the platform.
  • Remaining open items are isolated to specific features in the Listening module and select reporting views, each with a documented remediation date.
  • Accessibility scanning now runs on every deployment and can fail a build if a regression slips in, catching issues before they reach customers.
  • Sprout’s design system shifted toward accessible-by-default components, so new features inherit accessibility instead of needing it bolted on later.

• Built to Last

  • Accessibility is now part of Sprout’s Definition of Done, with dedicated champions across business units validating releases before they ship.
  • Accessiblü continues manual keyboard, screen reader and code-level testing on a recurring basis to keep pace with new releases.
  • Remaining findings in the Listening module and reporting views are on a documented schedule, with re-verification through Accessiblü.

  Sprout Social’s approach shows what is possible when accessibility testing runs alongside development instead of behind it. Their platform now carries a third-party VPAT that reflects real, hands-on testing rather than a self-reported checklist, along with the guardrails to keep that report accurate as the platform keeps shipping.

  Related reading: what the WebAIM Million 2026 numbers actually mean. If you want the same cadence for your own platform, see how our testing and audits work.