What should a website accessibility audit cover, and what does it cost?
An audit checks a site against WCAG 2.2 at level AA, combining an automated scan with manual testing of the user interaction that matters: keyboard only, screen reader, forms and error messages, contrast, headings and alt text. For a small site the audit is one to two days. Fixing what it finds is separate.
The standard being measured against
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2, level AA. This is the reference, written as an auditable test, that every website should adhere to.
What the automated scan finds
Missing alternative text, insufficient colour contrast, form fields with no label, invalid markup, missing page language, and headings that skip levels. This is real work done in seconds, and it is the cheapest part of the audit.
It is also the minority of what matters. An automated tool can see that an image has alt text; it cannot see that the alt text says "image1.jpg". This limit is inherent to the method rather than a shortcoming of any particular tool.
What only manual testing finds
- Keyboard only. Unplug the mouse and complete the main task. Anything unreachable, or reachable but invisible because focus is not shown, fails.
- Focus order. Whether tabbing moves through the page in the order the page appears to have.
- Screen reader. Whether the page read aloud makes sense, and whether links say where they go rather than "click here".
- Forms and errors. Whether an error is announced, says what is wrong, and returns you to the field.
- Meaningful alt text. Whether descriptions describe, and decorative images are marked as decorative.
- Video and audio. Captions, and a transcript.
- Motion and timing. Whether animation can be stopped and whether anything times out without warning.
Which rules apply to you
| Organisation | What applies |
|---|---|
| Private business, charity, social enterprise | The Equality Act 2010 duty to make reasonable adjustments. No prescribed standard, but WCAG AA is the accepted measure of having tried. |
| Public sector body, and some bodies funded to deliver public services | The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018: WCAG AA, plus a published accessibility statement. |
Most small organisations are in the first row and treat accessibility as optional. The people who cannot use the site do not experience it as optional, and they are potentially a larger share of your visitors.
What you should get out of it
A list of findings ordered by how badly each one blocks a real person, each with the page it appears on, the criterion it fails, and the change that fixes it.
The effort involved
| Stage | Effort |
|---|---|
| Automated scan across the site | Minutes |
| Manual testing of the main tasks | 1 to 2 days for a small site |
| Written, prioritised report | Half a day |
| Fixing what was found | Depends entirely on the findings, quoted afterwards |
Sites built on a standard content management system usually fail in predictable, cheap-to-fix ways. Sites with custom front ends are where the expensive findings crop up.
The free 15-minute health check includes the automated half of this, as part of a 79-point scan of your site. It will tell you whether a full audit is worth commissioning.
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