How to Perform a Website Accessibility Audit (Step-by-Step Guide)

How to Perform a Website Accessibility Audit (Step-by-Step Guide)

Most businesses are doing accessibility all wrong. 

They’re either blissfully ignoring it, hoping it will go away, or the fear of it completely paralyses them. Both approaches are costing them a fortune.

You've probably heard the term “accessibility audit” and imagined a miserable process involving lawyers, incomprehensible technical documents, and a hefty bill.

Forget that.

An accessibility audit isn't a punishment. It's not a chore. 

It's a commercial opportunity hiding in plain sight. It’s a map to a vast, loyal, and underserved market that your competitors almost certainly ignore.

This is your guide to understanding what an audit really is, why it matters to your bottom line, and how you can get started without breaking the bank or your spirit.

What Really Is a Website Accessibility Audit?

An accessibility audit is not about running a free online tool and calling it a day.

It's a structured, methodical review of your website to see how usable it is for people with disabilities. The inspection isn't based on opinion; it’s measured against a global standard. That standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG.

Think of it like a building inspection. An inspector doesn't just glance at the building; they have a detailed codebook to check against for structural soundness, fire safety, and electrical wiring. WCAG is the codebook for your website.

De-Mystifying WCAG: A, AA, and AAA

WCAG has three levels of conformance. You don't need to be an expert, but know what they mean for your business.

• Level A: The absolute bare minimum. Failing this level means your site has significant barriers that make it unusable for some groups.
• Level AA: This is the accepted standard for most businesses and the level often cited in legal cases. It's your target. Meeting AA means your site is usable and accessible for most people.
• Level AAA: The highest, most stringent level. This is typically for specialised websites or government services serving a disabled audience. It's not a practical target for most small businesses.

For your business, the goal is WCAG 2.1 Level AA. That’s the benchmark that matters.

The Four Pillars of Accessibility (POUR)

WCAG is built on four core principles. If you can grasp these, you understand the entire philosophy of web accessibility. The acronym is POUR.

1. Perceivable: Can users take in your content? This means providing text alternatives for non-text content, like alt text for images or captions for videos.
2. Operable: Can users navigate and interact with your site? This means everything must work with a keyboard, not just a mouse, and users have enough time to read and use the content.
3. Understandable: Is your content straightforward, and are interactions predictable? This means using plain language, providing clear instructions, and ensuring the website behaves as users expect.
4. Robust: Can your content be reliably interpreted by a wide variety of technologies? This ensures your site works with assistive devices like screen readers, both now and in the future.

That’s it. That’s the theory. An audit simply checks your website against these principles.

Why Bother? The Three Reasons That Actually Matter

You'll hear plenty of fluffy talk about how accessibility is “the right thing to do.” It is, but that rarely motivates a budget holder. Here are the three practical reasons your business needs to take this seriously.

Reason 1: The Commercial Incentive (The Money You’re Leaving on the Table)

This is the most overlooked part of the equation. The disabled community is the largest minority group in the world.

Globally, over 1.3 billion people live with some form of disability. Their combined disposable income, known as “The Disability Dollar,” is estimated at a staggering $13 trillion.

In the UK alone, the spending power of disabled people and their families—”The Purple Pound”—is valued at £274 billion annually.

Yet, a massive 71% of disabled customers will abandon a retail website that is difficult to use. They won't complain; they'll just take their money elsewhere. An inaccessible website is the digital equivalent of locking your front door to one in five potential customers.

Reason 2: The Legal Stick (The Lawsuit You Don't Want)

Yes, the legal risk is real. Web accessibility lawsuits have been climbing year-on-year, and they don’t just target massive corporations. Small businesses are increasingly in the crosshairs.

The most famous example is the U.S. Supreme Court case involving Domino's Pizza. A blind man sued because he couldn't use their website or mobile app with his screen reader software. 

The courts sided with him. The message was unambiguous: your digital storefront is a place of public accommodation and must be accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

While laws vary by country, the direction of travel is the same everywhere. Ignoring accessibility is a quantifiable legal and financial risk.

Reason 3: The Brand Advantage (Looking Like You Give a Damn)

An inaccessible website is bad for your brand. It's like a shop with a grand entrance but no ramp—it sends a clear message about who you do and don't value.

Conversely, an accessible site provides a better experience for everyone.

• Video captions help a person who is deaf, but they also help someone watching in a loud office without headphones.
• Good colour contrast helps a person with low vision, but it also helps someone using their phone in bright sunlight.
• Clear, logical navigation helps a user with a cognitive disability, but it also allows a distracted, stressed-out parent trying to buy something quickly.

These features often correlate with better SEO rankings. Google rewards websites that provide a good user experience. Accessibility is user experience.

The Three Flavours of Accessibility Audits (And What They Cost)

Not all audits are created equal. They generally fall into three categories, each with a different price tag and value proposition.

Good: The Automated Scan (The £0 – £100 Check-up)

This is where you use a software tool like Google's Lighthouse, WAVE, or Axe DevTools to scan your site. It spits out a report in seconds.

• Pros: It’s fast, cheap (or free), and fantastic for catching low-hanging technical fruit like a missing image alt tag or an obvious colour contrast failure.
• Cons: This is where my first pet peeve kicks in. An automated scan is not an audit. These tools only detect around 30-40% of potential WCAG issues. They cannot tell if your alt text is meaningful, your site is navigable with a keyboard, or the user journey is logical. They generate a lot of “false positives” and can't assess real-world usability.

Better: The Manual Expert Audit (The £1,000 – £5,000 Deep Dive)

Here, a human expert—a consultant or an agency—manually tests your website's pages against each relevant WCAG 2.1 AA criterion. 

They use a combination of tools and manual checks, such as keyboard-only navigation and code review.

• Pros: Far more thorough and accurate than an automated scan. It finds nuanced, high-impact issues that software misses.
• Cons: The cost is significant. Worse, the deliverable is often a dense, 150-page PDF report filled with technical jargon. My second pet peeve is the gold-plated report that nobody understands and acts on. It sits in a digital folder, gathering dust, having achieved nothing.

Best: The Hybrid Audit with Usability Testing (The Real-World Test)

This is the gold standard. It combines a manual expert audit with usability testing performed by users with various disabilities. 

An expert can tell you if your site is compliant, but a screen reader like JAWS or NVDA user can say to you if it's usable.

• Pros: It moves beyond a technical checklist to answer the most critical question: “Can someone with a disability successfully use my website to achieve their goal?” The feedback is direct, practical, and incredibly powerful.
• Cons: This is the most expensive option but delivers the most value and a clear, human-centred path to improvement.

Your First Pass: A Practical, DIY Accessibility Audit You Can Do This Afternoon

You don't need a budget of thousands to get started. You can uncover significant, high-impact issues yourself with this simple, five-step check. 

This isn't a replacement for a full audit, but it's a decisive first step that will give you a real sense of your situation.

Step 1: The Keyboard-Only Challenge (5 Minutes)

Unplug your mouse or put it aside. Try to use your website with only your keyboard. Use the Tab key to move between links and form fields, Shift+Tab to move backwards, and Enter to select.

• What to check:
  • Can you see where you are? There should be a visible outline (a “focus indicator”) around the link or button you've tabbed to. If you can't see it, you're lost.
  • Can you reach everything? Can you open your navigation menu, select sub-items, and close it again?
  • Are you trapped? Sometimes, a pop-up or a poorly designed widget will create a “keyboard trap” where you can tab in but can't tab out.
  • Try to complete a core task, like filling out your contact form.

Step 2: The Automated Scan Sanity Check (10 Minutes)

Go to the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool and enter your website's URL. It will show you your page with icons overlaid.

• What to check: Don't get overwhelmed. Look at the summary on the left. Focus on the red icons marked “Errors.” These are definite WCAG failures. Things like missing alt text or empty buttons are happening every day. Ignore the “Alerts” and other low-contrast flags for now. Just focus on the clear-cut errors.

Step 3: Check Your Colour Contrast (5 Minutes)

Poor contrast between text and its background is one of the most common failures. It affects people with low vision, colour blindness, and anyone trying to read a screen in a bright room.

• What to check: Use a tool like the Adobe Colour Contrast Analyser. Use its eyedropper to select your primary text colour and your background colour. The tool will tell you if you pass the WCAG AA standard. Check your body text, button text, and text over images.

Step 4: Review Your Images & Links (10 Minutes)

Look at the images on your homepage. For each photo that conveys information, ask yourself: Is there alternative text (alt text) that describes it? The alt text is what a screen reader announces to a blind user. It should be concise and descriptive. “Man in blue shirt signing a document” is good. “Image-123.jpg” is useless.

Now look at your links. Do they say “Click Here,” “Read More,” or “Learn More”? This is bad practice. Link text should be descriptive on its own.

• Bad: To download our brochure, click here.
• Good: Download our 2025 service brochure.

Step 5: Watch Your Videos (5 Minutes)

If you have videos on your site, play them.

• What to check: Do they have captions? Not the auto-generated, often-inaccurate ones from YouTube. They need to be accurate, synchronised captions so that someone Deaf or hard of hearing can understand the content.

You've Found Problems. Now What? (From Audit to Action)

Okay, your DIY audit revealed some problems. A lot of problems. Don't panic. The goal isn't perfection tomorrow; it's progress today. An audit report is worthless without an action plan.

Don't Panic. Prioritise.

You need to sort the issues you found into a logical order. A good way to think about it is with a simple priority matrix.

• Priority 1 (Critical Blockers): Fix these immediately. These are problems that prevent a user from completing a core task. Examples: a contact form submit button that doesn't work with a keyboard, or a cookie banner that traps keyboard focus.
• Priority 2 (High Impact): These issues create significant barriers on primary user journeys but don't stop them entirely. Examples: the main navigation is complicated, and product filtering is inaccessible.
• Priority 3 (Medium Impact): These annoyances create a frustrating experience but don't prevent task completion—examples: non-descriptive link text, inconsistent heading structure.
• Priority 4 (Low Impact): Minor issues that are good to fix but aren't causing significant problems. Examples: a decorative image having unnecessary alt text.

Create a Simple Remediation Roadmap

You don't need a fancy project management system. Open a spreadsheet. Create four columns: Issue, Priority, Owner, and Deadline. List what you found, assign a priority from the list above, decide who is responsible for fixing it, and set a realistic date. This simple document turns a list of problems into an actionable plan.

When to Call for Help

If your five-step DIY audit revealed just a few simple fixes, great. You can handle those in-house.

But if you found deep, structural problems—like the keyboard trap or fundamental navigation failures—you must be honest with yourself. 

Trying to patch a dozen serious issues on an old, poorly built website is often more expensive and frustrating than doing it right from the start.

A truly accessible website isn't patched together; it's designed that way from the start. If your audit reveals foundational issues, it’s worth asking if your site is fit for purpose. 

Exploring a professional web design service that bakes in accessibility from day one is often the most cost-effective path forward.

Accessibility is Not a Project. It's a Process.

You don't “achieve” accessibility, and then you're done. It's an ongoing practice, like customer service or financial bookkeeping. A one-time audit is a snapshot; you must integrate accessibility into your daily operations.

Write a Public Accessibility Statement

This is a simple page on your website. It doesn't need to be long. It should state your commitment to accessibility, the standard you're aiming for (WCAG 2.1 AA), any known issues you're working on, and—most importantly—provide a way for users to contact you if they encounter a barrier. It shows transparency and demonstrates that you're taking it seriously.

Train Your Team on the Basics

The person who uploads your blog posts or adds new products to your e-commerce site needs basic training. Teach them how to write good alt text. Show them how to use headings correctly (H1 for the main title, H2 for main sections, etc.). This simple content hygiene prevents new problems from being created every day.

Think Accessible First, Not Last

This brings me to my final pet peeve: the idea that accessible design has to be ugly. This is a complete myth, perpetuated by designers who lack imagination.

Great companies like Apple and Microsoft have proven that you can create products that are both stunningly beautiful and profoundly accessible. Accessibility doesn't constrain design; it challenges designers to be more creative and thoughtful. It forces you to make things clear, simple, and functional. An accessible website is simply a well-designed website.

The Bottom Line on Accessibility Audits

An accessibility audit isn't the goal. A usable, inclusive, and more profitable website is the goal. The audit is just the tool you use to get there.

Stop being afraid of the process. Stop seeing it as a cost centre. Start seeing it for what it is: a direct path to a larger market, a stronger brand, and a better product for your customers.

An imperfect start is infinitely better than perfect inaction. Run that keyboard test right now.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

An audit shows you where the problems are. Fixing them is the next step. If your website's foundation is cracked, patching it won't work. Good design is accessible design from the very first sketch.

If you’re ready to build a website that serves every customer, that’s what we do. Look at our web design services or request a quote when you can make it right.