---
title: "ADR 0025. The WCAG 2.2 AA audit is author-run"
description: "Every component was audited against WCAG 2.2 AA and the findings fixed. Auditing your own work is not independent review, and clinical review is still pending."
url: "https://opsinjs.pensievelabs.org/project/decisions/0025-the-audit-is-author-run"
source: "https://opsinjs.pensievelabs.org/project/decisions/0025-the-audit-is-author-run.md"
section: "Project"
kind: "project"
reviewed: "2026-09-21"
reviewer: "engineering"
aliases: ["author-run audit", "WCAG 2.2 AA audit", "the components were audited", "ADR 0025"]
---
> Elements written as `` below are opsinjs documentation
> components. Their attributes are the content: the values they render are
> generated from `tokens/*.json` and `registry/catalogue.ts` and are
> published separately at https://opsinjs.pensievelabs.org/r/index.json and under the Reference
> section.
> Nothing is missing from this page. The data simply does not live in
> the prose.
## Status [#status]
**Accepted.** 2026-09-21. All sixty components in `registry/bases/base/` were taken
through a WCAG 2.2 AA audit, a static source pass and a rendered pass against the live
`/view` page, and the findings were fixed in the component sources in the same change.
`REVIEW_FLOOR_NOTICE` in `lib/status.ts` and rule SAFE001 in `scripts/assert-ia.mts`
now read "Audited against WCAG 2.2 AA. Clinical review pending." rather than "no
accessibility review and no clinical review." This record supersedes the review-floor
paragraph of [ADR 0023](./0023-three-release-phases.mdx) and the "when the first
accessibility review lands" condition of [ADR 0024](./0024-the-component-page-is-lean.mdx);
the rest of both records stands.
## Context [#context]
When ADR 0023 set the three release phases and ADR 0024 shortened the component page,
no component had been checked for accessibility, so both records could say plainly that
`shipped` meant the source installed and nothing more. That is no longer true. Every
component has now been audited against WCAG 2.2 AA and the findings were fixed, so the
flat sentence "no accessibility review" is false wherever it still appears. A fact that
has changed cannot keep being stated as though it has not, and a design system for a
health audience is the last place to leave a stale claim about what has and has not been
checked. The question this record answers is exactly what the site may now say, and what
it still may not.
## Decision [#decision]
The site says "audited against WCAG 2.2 AA" and says who ran the audit. It does not say
"reviewed", "conformant", "accessible" or "WCAG 2.2 AA compliant", because those are
claims about an assessment somebody else signs, and nobody has. The per-component box
reads "Audited against WCAG 2.2 AA. Clinical review pending." Every machine surface and
doctrine page that carried the flat "no accessibility review" now reads "no independent
accessibility review", which stays true after an author-run audit. "Not for a production
health surface" stays wherever it is a general statement, because clinical review is what
gates that sentence and clinical review has not happened.
## Consequences [#consequences]
The audit was run by the authors of the components. An author auditing their own work
finds what they already knew to look for and is blind to what their own model of the
component hides, so this is a floor raised, not a verdict delivered, and calling it
"independent" would be the exact overclaim ADR 0023 was written to stop. Clinical review
is still pending in full: no clinical safety officer, no hazard log, no clinical safety
case and no data protection impact assessment exists for any component or screen
specimen, and none is claimed. ADR 0023's premise is now partly historical. Its argument
that alpha and beta claimed a difference nobody had measured still stands, but its
observation that no component had had an accessibility review is now dated, and its
"revisit when a component passes an accessibility review" condition has half fired: there
is a measured audit, it is not independent, so a reviewed tier is still not earned and
the three phases stay. ADR 0024's "revisit when the first accessibility review lands"
condition has fired in its author-run form: the Accessibility section on each component
page now reports audited results rather than a proposed bar, and the word budget held, so
LEAN001 does not move.
## Alternatives considered [#alternatives-considered]
A fourth release phase for "audited" was rejected. A phase word is a claim about code, an
audit is a claim about a process, and wiring the two together is how "beta means
accessibility reviewed" happened the first time; the audit rides in the box and in
`REVIEW_FLOOR_NOTICE`, never in the phase. Rewriting ADR 0023 and 0024 in place was
rejected as well. They are dated records of what was decided when, and editing their
premises would erase the history this record exists to add to; each keeps its text and
gains one pointer line to here. Claiming conformance rather than an audit was rejected
because conformance is a statement an independent assessor makes, and substituting the
authors' own audit for it is the substitution this whole record refuses.
## Revisiting this [#revisiting-this]
Revisit when an independent accessibility audit is commissioned, because that is the
event that lets the box drop "author-run" and say a second party checked the work.
Revisit separately when a clinical safety officer signs a safety case, because that is
the event that lets a page drop "Clinical review pending" and speak about a production
health surface. Neither has happened, and until one does the sentence stays exactly as
it reads now.