How to perform an accessibility audit

Besides helping you avoid legal implications, an accessible website is an opportunity to welcome a wider audience and boost your conversion rate.

Even if you think people with disabilities only represent a smaller segment of your target audience, you still need to meet their needs. Not only does this provide equitable access, but it can also be transformative for your marketing reach and reputation.

Conducting a comprehensive accessibility audit can help ensure your site aligns with accessibility guidelines and best practices. Let’s take a closer look at this process.

Website accessibility means developing websites so that all users, including those with disabilities, can interact with them. Disabilities that may prevent your target audience from accessing your website include the following:

• Visual impairments (such as blindness, low vision, or color blindness)

• Hearing impairments (such as deafness or hearing loss)

• Motor impairments (such as limited mobility or tremors)

• Cognitive impairments (such as dyslexia or ADHD)

• Other conditions (such as seizure disorders or situational disabilities)

Inclusivity

By making your website accessible, you open your content to a much larger audience. Approximately 16% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. If your website isn’t accessible, you potentially exclude millions of users from engaging with your brand.

Accessibility and inclusivity ensure everyone can access your brand’s content. Any measures you implement to make your site accessible reflect your commitment to social responsibility.

Here are some of the benefits of implementing comprehensive website accessibility tactics:

Compliance

Website accessibility is a legal requirement. While there isn’t one specific law regulating website accessibility, many other laws are applicable, including the following:

• Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): this act makes it unlawful to discriminate against people with disabilities. It mandates that state and local governments must provide equal access to their programs, services, and activities for people with disabilities.

• NC Persons with Disabilities Protection Act—168A-7: this North Carolina law follows Title II of the ADA and prohibits government entities, including higher education institutions, from excluding individuals due to their disabilities. This means websites and online resources must be accessible to all.

• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (last updated in 2017) requires federal agencies to ensure that their electronic and information technology (EIT) is accessible to people with disabilities.

• European Accessibility Act: this act ensures that services and products in the European Union are accessible. It will go into effect in June 2025.

To help companies ensure their websites are accessible, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. These guidelines outline best practices for designing websites that accommodate various abilities.

SEO benefits

Many best practices that make your website accessible also help search engines rank your content. Here are some of the accessibility improvements you can make that will also benefit your SEO: 

• High-quality heading structure

• Descriptive link text

• Alternative text for images

• Podcast and video transcriptions

Accessible websites tend to have cleaner code, which makes them faster and more optimized for mobile devices. Both of these are important factors in SEO.

A website accessibility audit involves thoroughly evaluating your website to determine how well it meets established accessibility standards (mainly WCAG).

The goal is to identify barriers that prevent people with disabilities from fully interacting with your website. It involves reviewing various elements of your site, including visual design, content, navigation, and code.

You can identify most issues with automated tools. However, a manual review can help you discover complex problems. The audit will give you a list of items to prioritize and resolve, which you should do as soon as possible.

Regular accessibility audits are a necessary part of your website maintenance. A rule of thumb is to run an audit every six months or when changes are made.

When launching a new website

Ideally, you should perform an audit whenever you launch a new website or make significant updates.

For example, redesigning your site, adding new features, or posting a large volume of content are reasons for an audit. These changes can introduce accessibility barriers that may not be immediately obvious.

When accessibility guidelines are updated

WCAG regularly posts updates. When these come into effect, you may need to run an additional accessibility audit to ensure your website complies.

Feedback

You’ll need to take immediate steps to make improvements if your users report experiencing accessibility issues on your site.

New markets

Run an accessibility audit if you are planning to enter new markets, especially if you are targeting government contracts. Accessibility requirements in educational institutions and government organizations are strictly enforced.

You can take several approaches to performing website accessibility audits, including the following:

Manual audit

A manual accessibility audit involves a human evaluator checking the website for compliance with accessibility standards. This type of audit allows for a more in-depth review of issues that automated tools may miss.

Manual audits help you identify usability problems that affect real users. While time-consuming, these audits comprehensively analyze your website’s accessibility.

Automated audit

An automated audit uses software to scan your website for accessibility issues, identifying common errors in seconds. These tools are a great choice for spotting widespread problems as they can review many pages simultaneously.

However, they have limitations. Automated tools can’t detect complex issues like whether alternative text appropriately describes an image or if your site works well with screen readers.

Hybrid audit

A hybrid audit combines manual and automated approaches. It balances speed with accuracy, offering the best of both worlds.

You start by using automated tools to catch easy-to-find issues, then follow up with a manual review to address more nuanced problems.

Accessibility audits should be as thorough as possible. The steps are the same, no matter the size of your website.

Step #1: Designate an audit team

You have two options for running an audit: designating an in-house team or hiring a third-party auditor.

• In-house team: conducting the audit internally can be an effective option if your organization has experienced developers or accessibility specialists. The process will be easier because they are already familiar with the website.

• Third-party auditor: hiring an external accessibility expert can provide an objective view of your website. Third-party auditors often have specialized tools and deep expertise in WCAG.

You may also need to opt for a third-party auditor to receive a certificate of compliance.

Step #2: Choose sample pages of your website for the audit

Auditing a large website can be overwhelming and extremely time-consuming. Selecting a representative sample of pages to test is a more practical approach.

Here are some key types of pages to include in your audit:

• Home page

• Product or service pages

• Solution pages

• Pages with images

• Blog or article pages

The goal is to test various content types—text, media, forms, and interactive elements—to capture all potential accessibility issues.

Step #3: Run an automated audit

Automated accessibility audit tools provide a quick overview of your website’s accessibility issues. Some tools focus on specific standards like WCAG 2.2, while others give general accessibility overviews.

Popular automated accessibility audit tools are:

• WAVE (web accessibility evaluation tool): WAVE is a free, browser-based tool that provides a detailed summary of errors and alerts.

• Axe by Deque: free and paid versions available. The free Chrome extension lets you check individual pages.

• Siteimprove: this paid, enterprise-level tool offers in-depth insights and reports for entire websites.

• Accessibility Insights for Web: this is a free tool by Microsoft (available as a Chrome extension) that runs quick checks and offers guidance for remediation.

To choose the best tool for your needs, pay attention to the following elements:

• Scope of audit: free tools like WAVE or Axe are good starting points for a simple scan. However, for enterprise-grade reporting or compliance documentation, you need paid instruments.

• Ease of use: look for tools that integrate with your existing workflow (like browser extensions or plugins) to streamline the process.

• Reporting: check that the tool provides clear and actionable reports.

Once you have the automated accessibility report, you can use it to identify areas that must be checked manually.

Step #4: Perform a manual test

A manual review is a comprehensive process that includes multiple checks, which you can do over time. Running manual tests can be time-consuming, but it uncovers issues that automated scans often miss.

Here are some of the elements you’ll need to check:

• Images: check that every image has appropriate alternative text that accurately describes the content. If images are purely decorative, make sure they are coded correctly so that screen readers ignore them.

• Form fields: labels should be associated with each input field. Forms need to be usable with both a mouse and a keyboard.

• Videos and audio: check that all multimedia content has captions, transcripts, and descriptions. Videos should also be compatible with screen readers.

• Error messages: check that error messages are helpful and guide users toward resolving their issues, especially when filling out forms.

• Mobile and desktop experience: test the site on multiple devices and browsers. Many accessibility issues are platform-specific.

• Keyboard navigation: every element on your website must be fully navigable using just a keyboard. Test for keyboard traps (where users get stuck) and ensure tab navigation follows a logical order.

• Pop-ups and interactive content: pop-ups should be accessible to screen readers, and interactive content like sliders or dropdowns must be usable by all input methods (such as keyboard, mouse, and touch).

Step #5: Get feedback

Before you start analyzing accessibility issues, consider getting feedback from real users. This can highlight real-world challenges that even the most thorough audit might miss.

Here are some ways to gather feedback:

• Arrange one-to-one sessions: conduct live, moderated sessions, either in person or remotely, using screen-sharing tools or video conferencing. Ask participants to complete predefined tasks while observing their interaction with the interface. Encourage them to verbalize their thoughts as they navigate through.

• Ask customers or clients: your customer success team can reach out to people with disabilities who already engage with your brand. Ask them to share any challenges these users face when navigating your website. Consider offering something in exchange, such as access to gated content, a gift card, a special offer, or a monetary reward.

• Analyze customer support tickets: review and analyze customer support tickets to find common issues that could be preventing users from accessing your website properly.

• Conduct surveys: create online surveys focused on accessibility issues. Ask users about their experiences with navigation, forms, multimedia, and general usability.

• Unmoderated tests: if your budget allows, consider using remote tools like Fable or AccessWorks for unmoderated testing with a larger sample size. Participants can perform the test in their own time, leading to more accurate, unbiased feedback.

• Set up focus groups: consider organizing focus groups with users who have disabilities. This approach allows for more in-depth feedback. You’ll also be able to observe users interacting with your website in real time.

Taking the time to listen to your users and implementing their feedback will show your audience you care about their needs.

Step #6: Analyze results

Once you finish the audit, you need to use the reports to gain insights and guide further actions.

• Prioritization: prioritize issues based on their severity. Address accessibility problems that block essential site functions first, such as navigation or form completion.

• Categorization: categorize errors into different types, such as visual design, navigation, or media issues. This makes it easier to assign them to the right teams for resolution.

After you have fixed the most urgent issues, you may need to re-audit the site to ensure the changes are effective.

Changes sometimes introduce new problems. Be sure to watch Google Analytics and Google Search Console closely to catch any unexpected drops in site traffic or rankings. They may signal that your implemented changes aren’t working as expected.

Anyone with a website needs to conduct website accessibility audits. Running them regularly can prevent compliance issues and bring new people to your site.

To minimize accessibility issues in the future, consider creating comprehensive guidelines for adding new elements to the website. Each new image, piece of content, video, and form should be accessible to users with disabilities.

The four principles of accessibility, also known as the acronym POUR, are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

• Perceivable: information and user interface components must be presented in a way that users can perceive. For example, you can make your site perceivable by providing text alternatives for non-text content.

• Operable: user interface components must be operable by all users, for example, by allowing keyboard-only navigation.

• Understandable: information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable. Use clear language and consistent navigation.

• Robust: content must be robust enough to work with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies.

The average cost of an accessibility audit is anywhere between $500 and $10,000. This highly variable price tag depends on multiple factors, including the number of web pages, the complexity of the audit, and the party conducting it.