Continuous accessibility treats conformance as a moving target that needs ongoing maintenance, not a box checked once and forgotten, since every new feature, content update, or redesign can introduce new issues even on a site that passed a full audit the month before. It typically combines automated monitoring, periodic manual spot-checks, and accessibility criteria built into regular development workflows.
This model reflects a broader shift in mature accessibility programs away from the traditional audit-then-fix-then-forget cycle, toward accessibility being treated the same way security or performance already are: an ongoing discipline rather than a project with a defined end date.