4. Deferring Findings (Documented Exceptions)
Some findings are not yours to fix, at least not right now. Maybe it is a vendor template you cannot edit. Maybe it is a CMS limitation pending council approval. Maybe the scanner produced a false positive. Documenting an exception keeps your Readiness Score honest while documenting your reasoning.
4.1 When to defer
Defer when one of the five reason categories applies:
- Pending council or board approval: the fix requires a budget or policy decision you have escalated and are waiting on
- Vendor or contractor must fix: the affected page comes from a vendor template and the responsibility sits with them
- Reviewed and accepted as-is: your team looked at it, weighed it, and decided not to change the underlying design (this is rare and should be used carefully)
- Scanner false positive: the issue is not actually a violation; the scanner flagged a benign pattern
- Other: anything that does not fit the four above; you must write a note explaining why
Every exception records:
- Who deferred it
- When
- The reason category
- Any free-text note you added
- The finding details (rule, page, element) so the audit trail is complete
All of this appears in the PDF report appendix so a council member or auditor can see your reasoning.
4.2 How to defer
- Open the finding from the Fix Queue (click the row)
- The detail panel opens on the right
- At the top of the panel, click the Defer button (next to Copy for developer)
- A modal opens. Pick a reason category, optionally add a note
- Click Confirm
The finding moves out of your active list and into the Deferred Findings tab. Your active finding counts adjust right away, and the deferral is recorded (who, when, why) for your audit trail. Deferring does not change your stored Readiness Score by itself; the score and grade recompute at your next scan. If every instance of an open critical barrier has been deferred, the grade cap that barrier was holding lifts when the next scan recomputes the grade. The pre-deferral counts are preserved so reviewers can see both views.
4.3 Which findings can be deferred, and which cannot
Not every finding shows a Document exception button.
- High-confidence WCAG conformance failures (most Critical and Serious findings detected with high confidence) cannot be deferred. These are the cases where the rule violation is unambiguous and the legal exposure is clearest, so we do not let the Readiness Score be talked down past the line. If you open one of these, the top of the detail panel shows a small "Not eligible to defer" chip with a tooltip explaining why.
- Best-practice findings and lower-confidence findings (most Minor and many Moderate, plus some Layer 2 assessments where the scanner is less sure) can be deferred. These show the Document exception button.
This rule is enforced by the server, not the dashboard. If you change roles or refresh the page, the same rule applies.
If you think a finding is wrong and you do not see a Document exception button, the correct path is to email support with the finding ID. We treat scanner false positives as bugs in our rule engine and fix them upstream so every customer benefits.
4.4 The Deferred Findings tab
Click Deferred Findings in the sidebar. You see every currently deferred finding, grouped by reason category. For each row:
- The reason category and date deferred
- The rule and the page
- Your free-text note, if you added one
- A Reactivate button that puts it back on the active list and on your score
The Deferred Findings tab is the "current state" view. The full history (including exceptions that have since been reactivated) appears in the report appendix.
4.5 What exceptions look like in your report
Every PDF report includes a "Deferred Findings" appendix. For each exception, the appendix shows: the rule, the page, the reason category, the note, who deferred it, and when. Whenever the pre-deferral score differs from the active score, both numbers are shown with a one-line explanation. This is what makes the score story defensible in a council meeting: exceptions are visible, with reasons, not hidden.