Generic impact prioritization lists are an empty promise. We can do better.

I mean, at first, they seem useful right? Your website gets an accessibility audit. You get a big list of findings to work on.

Where do we start? What should we do first? How do we prioritize? How about we look at the impact on users. Great! You're thinking about users!

And if it means that you're fixing things, then that's great as well! Plenty of audit reports land in drawers unused. Go get that momentum, and start fixing things!

That's the value of prioritization. Like, prioritization in general. When you look closer, you find out it's not quite right.
(This is where, at least in my head, the silly image ties in.)

But if you're getting a WCAG audit done, you might be aiming for compliance. And compliance is a boring binary judgement. You only comply when -everything- is fixed. There's no 50% compliance.

And what about the website; the subject being audited? WCAG SC 1.3.1 does a lot of heavy lifting on a static website. Captions are way more valuable for that essential video on your frontpage, than for that obscure video on a page nobody visits and maybe you shouldn't have in the first place. Or maybe you have videos all over.

And then there's the public that can differ as well. An app that supports communication for when you're non-verbal has a different public than a generic municipality website, or a productivity app.

What's the alternative? It's not very surprising. The solution is something non-generic.

Maybe a WCAG-audit is not the best way to support the needs of users. Get an expert to inspect your website. Let them find the most impactful issues. And then let them support you in fixing them.

(I've been doing this a lot more lately. I think it's a great approach.)

But if you do get an audit, prioritize together with the auditor. Ask your expert about the impact in the context of your website, and possibly your public. Make that report an actionable document instead of a paper weight.