Accessibility Audit — Complete Guide for Organisations

What is an accessibility audit?

An accessibility audit is a systematic review of your website or digital service. The goal is to find barriers that prevent people with disabilities from using your site. The audit checks your site against WCAG 2.1 Level AA — the standard referenced by both the European Accessibility Act and UK accessibility legislation.

A good audit answers three questions:

1. Where are the barriers? Which pages and elements fail the standards?
2. How bad are they? Which issues block users completely, and which cause minor frustration?
3. How do you fix them? Specific remediation steps for each finding.

An audit is not the same as accessibility testing. Testing is a broader term that covers continuous automated monitoring, user testing with assistive technologies, and component-level checks during development. An audit is a comprehensive, documented assessment that produces a formal report on compliance status.

Why audit your website?

Legal requirements in the EU and UK

Accessibility is a legal requirement across both the EU and the UK. The specific laws differ, but the technical standard is the same: WCAG 2.1 Level AA via the harmonised European standard EN 301 549.

	European Accessibility Act	UK Accessibility Law
Legislation	Directive (EU) 2019/882	Equality Act 2010 + Public Sector Bodies Regulations 2018
Applies to	Private + public sector (EU-wide)	Public sector (mandatory); private sector (reasonable adjustments)
Standard	EN 301 549 / WCAG 2.1 AA	WCAG 2.1 AA
In force	28 June 2025	2018 (public sector); ongoing (private sector)
Enforcement	National market surveillance authorities per member state	Equality and Human Rights Commission
Accessibility statement	Recommended	Mandatory for public sector

Neither law explicitly requires an audit — but both require compliance. An audit is the only practical way to demonstrate that your website meets the standard.

For more on EU requirements: European Accessibility Act — complete guide.

EU enforcement authorities by country:

Country	Authority	Scope
Finland	Etelä-Suomen AVI (Regional State Administrative Agency)	Public sector digital services
Sweden	DIGG (Agency for Digital Government)	Public sector; Konsumentverket for private sector
Germany	Federal and state market surveillance authorities	Products and services
France	ARCOM and sectoral regulators	Digital services
Netherlands	ACM (Authority for Consumers and Markets)	Products and services

Each member state sets its own penalties. Under Article 30 of the EAA, penalties must be "effective, proportionate, and dissuasive." These can include corrective orders, fines, and removal of products or services from the market. Additionally, accessibility failures can lead to discrimination complaints and compensation claims in most EU jurisdictions.

The scale of the problem

The WebAIM Million study analyses 1,000,000 home pages annually. The result is the same every year: over 96% of home pages have detectable WCAG failures. The most common issues — low contrast text, missing alt text, empty links — are identical year after year.

These are not niche issues. According to the WHO, approximately 1.3 billion people — 16% of the global population — live with a significant disability. In Europe, the figure is around 87 million (Eurostat). If your website is not accessible, this user base cannot use your services.

Types of accessibility audits

Automated scanning

Automated tools crawl your website and check each page against WCAG success criteria that can be tested programmatically.

What automated tools detect and what they miss:

WCAG criterion	Example	Automated?
1.1.1 Non-text Content	Missing alt text on images	Yes (presence), no (quality)
1.3.1 Info and Relationships	Missing form labels	Yes
1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)	Insufficient colour contrast	Yes
2.1.1 Keyboard	Keyboard traps	Partial
2.4.2 Page Titled	Missing or non-descriptive title	Yes
3.1.1 Language of Page	Missing lang attribute	Yes
4.1.2 Name, Role, Value	Empty links and buttons	Yes
2.4.6 Headings and Labels	Illogical heading structure	Partial
1.4.11 Non-text Contrast	Button and icon contrast	Partial
3.3.1 Error Identification	Unclear error messages	No
1.3.4 Orientation	Content locked to one orientation	No
2.4.7 Focus Visible	Missing focus indicator	Partial

Research consistently shows automated tools detect roughly 30–40% of WCAG failures. They find technical issues efficiently, but cannot evaluate content quality, navigation logic, or custom component behaviour with assistive technologies.

Askem's quality assurance does this automatically and continuously — not once, but every time your site changes. Request a free report to see your current state.

Manual expert audit

A manual audit is performed by an accessibility specialist who reviews the site using assistive technologies. A typical testing environment covers:

Assistive technology	Platform	Purpose
NVDA	Windows	Most widely used free screen reader
VoiceOver	macOS / iOS	Built into Apple devices
TalkBack	Android	Built into Android devices
Keyboard only	All	Navigation without a mouse
200% zoom	All	WCAG 1.4.4 — text resizing

Manual testing is especially important when your site has:

• Custom interactive components (date pickers, carousels, modals)
• Complex forms with validation
• Single-page applications (SPA) or heavy dynamic content
• Video players and media content

Manual auditing finds the issues automated tools miss: navigation logic, alt text quality, screen reader announcement clarity, and custom component operability.

Combined approach — the best strategy

The most effective approach combines both. Askem's automated monitoring provides broad, continuous coverage and catches regressions immediately. Manual auditing focuses on key user journeys and finds the issues machines cannot detect.

In practice, this means: set up Askem's continuous monitoring for daily use, and commission a manual audit once a year or after a major redesign. Organisations like the City of Hämeenlinna and HSY operate exactly this way.

How to prepare for an audit

Before commissioning a manual audit, do these:

1. Run a free automated check first

Request a free accessibility report from Askem — enter your website URL and email, and we'll send you a WCAG analysis within 24 hours. Fix the obvious issues before the manual audit. This way the expert's time focuses on problems machines can't find.

2. Define scope

On a large site, you cannot audit everything at once. Prioritise:

• Homepage — most visited page, first impression
• Key user journeys — signup, purchase, contact, booking
• Content templates — one of each page type (blog post, product page, landing page), since template-level fixes benefit all pages using that template
• Highest-traffic pages — Askem's web analytics shows which pages are most visited without cookies or GDPR complexity

3. Compile background information

A good audit brief includes:

• List of pages and user journeys to audit
• Technologies in use (CMS, JavaScript frameworks, third-party widgets)
• Target audience and known usage scenarios
• Previous accessibility assessments and known issues
• Target level (typically WCAG 2.1 AA)

The audit process step by step

1. Automated scanning

The site is scanned automatically against WCAG criteria. This produces a list of technical failures grouped by severity and WCAG criterion.

Group findings into:

• Template-level issues — header, footer, navigation, page templates. These repeat on every page.
• Content-level issues — individual page problems.

Fix template-level issues first. A single fix in the navigation can resolve hundreds of individual failures.

2. Keyboard testing

Navigate your site using only the keyboard:

Key	Action
Tab	Move to the next interactive element
Shift + Tab	Move to the previous interactive element
Enter	Activate a link or button
Space	Activate a button or toggle a checkbox
Arrow keys	Navigate within menus, radio groups, tabs
Escape	Close a modal or dropdown

Check for:

• Keyboard traps — can you get stuck in a component?
• Focus indicators — can you always see where focus is?
• Unreachable elements — is there anything you can't reach by Tab?
• Illogical order — does focus move in a sensible order?

3. Screen reader testing

Test with at least one screen reader:

• Are images announced with meaningful descriptions?
• Are form fields announced with their labels?
• Do headings create a logical document outline?
• Are error messages and status changes announced?
• Can you understand and operate all custom components (modals, tabs, dropdowns)?

4. Content evaluation

Check content understandability:

• Is the language clear and easy to read?
• Are instructions and error messages understandable?
• Is navigation consistent from page to page?
• Is information conveyed by means other than colour alone?

5. Documentation

For each issue, record:

• WCAG success criterion — which criterion fails (e.g., SC 1.4.3 Contrast Minimum)
• Severity — Critical (blocks access), Major (significantly impairs use), Minor (causes inconvenience)
• Location — URL and element, with screenshot
• Remediation — specific steps to fix

Askem's quality assurance automates documentation for automatically detectable issues: every finding is logged with its WCAG criterion, location, and remediation recommendation.

What an audit report contains

A good audit report is a document you can act on. It typically contains:

1. Summary — compliance status (fully, partially, or not compliant), audit scope, and methods used
2. Findings by severity — critical issues first, then major, then minor
3. Detailed findings — for each issue: WCAG criterion, description, location, screenshot, and remediation recommendation
4. Statistical overview — breakdown of findings by severity and WCAG principle
5. Recommendations — prioritised remediation plan with suggested timeline

For public sector organisations in the EU, the report forms the basis of the required accessibility statement.

Most common accessibility issues

The WebAIM Million 2024 study found these issues across 1,000,000 home pages:

Issue	% of pages	WCAG criterion	Automatically detectable?
Low contrast text	81.0%	1.4.3	Yes
Missing image alt text	54.5%	1.1.1	Yes (presence)
Empty links	48.6%	4.1.2	Yes
Missing form input labels	45.0%	1.3.1	Yes
Empty buttons	28.2%	4.1.2	Yes
Missing document language	17.1%	3.1.1	Yes

All six of these issues appear on the majority of websites, and all are automatically detectable. Askem's quality assurance catches them and alerts you automatically. If your site has these problems, a free report is the fastest way to surface them.

What an audit costs and how long it takes

A manual expert audit typically costs £2,000–£12,000. Price depends on site size, technical complexity, and the number of user journeys audited.

Audit scope	Typical cost	Duration	Suitable for
Focused (5–10 pages, 1–2 user journeys)	£2,000–£4,000	2–5 days	Small site or single service
Standard (20–30 pages, 3–5 user journeys)	£4,000–£8,000	1–2 weeks	Typical organisation website
Comprehensive (50+ pages, all user journeys)	£8,000–£12,000	2–4 weeks	Large web service or online store

These are one-off costs for a single snapshot. A week later, the site has already changed.

Askem's approach is different. Instead of paying thousands for a single report, you get continuous monitoring that checks your site automatically and alerts you the moment issues appear. You also get user feedback, web analytics, and WCAG quality assurance — all in one package.

For most organisations, the best solution is Askem's continuous monitoring for daily use, supplemented with a manual audit once a year or after a major redesign.

When do you need an audit?

An audit is needed in these situations:

• First time — if your site has never been audited, now is the time (especially after the EAA became applicable on 28 June 2025)
• After a major redesign — visual refresh, CMS migration, or technology stack change
• New service launch — new online store, customer portal, or mobile app
• Annual review — to keep your accessibility statement current
• After a complaint — a user or authority has reported issues

Between audits, Askem's continuous monitoring catches regressions immediately — so you don't have to wait for the next manual assessment to discover new problems.

How Askem helps

An accessibility audit is a snapshot from one point in time. But websites are not static: every content update, every new page, and every code change can introduce new issues. You need both the audit's thoroughness and continuous monitoring's responsiveness.

Automated accessibility monitoring

Askem's quality assurance monitors your site automatically and alerts you when accessibility issues appear. You get notified when someone publishes a page without alt text or with insufficient contrast — before enforcement authorities or users notice.

User feedback directly from pages

Automated tools catch roughly 30–40% of issues. The rest — like confusing navigation, unclear instructions, or broken custom components — only surface when a real user encounters them.

Askem's feedback tool collects feedback directly from users on your pages. Many accessibility laws require a feedback mechanism — the EU Web Accessibility Directive requires public sector organisations to provide one, and the EAA requires economic operators to demonstrate conformity. User feedback is the most practical way to find issues machines miss.

Cookie-free analytics

Askem's web analytics shows which pages are most visited — without cookies and without GDPR complexity. Prioritise accessibility fixes based on actual usage data, not guesswork.

Everything together

Together, these three — quality assurance, user feedback, and analytics — cover technical monitoring, user experience, and prioritisation data. It's the closest thing to continuous auditing you can get automatically.

Request a free accessibility report — enter your website URL and email, and we'll send you a WCAG analysis within 24 hours.

Further reading

• European Accessibility Act — complete guide
• Accessibility statement — what to include
• WCAG 2.2 — what's new
• EAA compliance checklist
• WCAG checklist
• Contrast checker
• E-commerce accessibility guide