What is the point of an accessibility audit?

At CDS we’re often asked about Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) accessibility audits. It’s a big part of our work. We perform full audits on existing sites and encourage clients we’ve built services for to have them audited after go-live. Often this means us recommending they engage third party auditors to avoid the idea that we’re “marking our own homework”.

An audit is an important part of an accessibility strategy, feeding into the continuous improvement cycle, reinforcing the fact that accessibility is never “done” and helping to meet legislative requirements. As such, there’s usually little value in an audit if the issues it identifies aren’t then prioritised and addressed as part of an ongoing accessibility programme.

Do you need an audit?

We hear a lot about compliance, but accessibility is so much more than that. It's about recognising it’s not a case of “niche audiences” or “edge cases”, and that a very large number people experience some form of disability, whether permanent, temporary, or situational. Research shows that nearly three-quarters of disabled online consumers will abandon websites that present accessibility barrier and simply go elsewhere. An audit can form an important part of how you prioritise accessibility, recognising that you're making your digital presence available to a much broader and more diverse audience.

But compliance is important too. For UK public sector organisations, complying with the WCAG 2.2 Level AA standard is part of meeting the GOV.UK accessibility requirements. Similarly, private sector organisations that provide products and services within the EU will also need to provide evidence of how they meet the requirements of the European Accessibility Act (EAA) since it came into effect on 28 June 2025. A WCAG audit is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate a commitment to meeting these obligations.

Even if you’ve spent a lot of time and money on developing a new site that you’re fairly confident has a high standard of accessibility, it’s a good idea to commission an audit. You may have built and tested your templates to meet WCAG Level AA or even AAA but once editors start adding content to these templates you can’t be sure they’re applying the same rigorous accessibility standards.

You may already have had an audit several years ago and addressed all the issues it raised. That’s great, but there’s a good chance you’ve further developed parts of the site since then. And you’ll definitely have changed the content, so an audit is a good way to make sure you haven’t introduced any new accessibility issues.

WCAG itself also had an update from version 2.1 to 2.2 in October 2023. So, if you’ve only audited your site to 2.1 Level AA, there are some important new success criteria in 2.2 that won’t have been included in that audit. For example, if you have any floating content, such as Back to Top buttons or Chat widgets, there’s a good chance you may not meet the new Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) success criterion. And are all your links, buttons and form fields have a width and height of at least 24 pixels to meet WCAG 2.2’s Target Size (Minimum)?

In short, if you haven’t had an audit for 2 or 3 years and you have the resources to commission one, it’s a smart idea.

What can you expect from an audit?

There’s a standard methodology for WCAG audits, known as WCAG-EM. Rather than attempt to test all pages, auditors will evaluate an agreed representative sample of web pages, based on different template types and page elements. They will then test these pages rigorously against the relevant WCAG Standard, usually WCAG 2.2 Level AA, and produce a written report.

Depending on the complexity of a website or app, a full accessibility audit will typically require several weeks’ work, using a mixture of automated and manual testing methods. Automated test tools are invaluable for initial code assessment but will only identify a fraction of issues. There’s still little that can assess accessibility as well as the sort of in-depth manual testing that will take place during an accessibility audit. This will be carried out on real devices, using popular system adaptations and assistive technologies such as screen readers, screen magnifiers and speech recognition software.

At CDS we create our audit reports to be actionable documents, structured to include:

• A non-technical summary of the general level of a site’s WCAG compliance, aimed at all stakeholders.
• Detailed breakdowns of each non-compliance, designed to guide and educate the people responsible for fixing the issues.

We use clear language to explain what sort of impact each non-compliance has on people using your site or app, along with detailed technical information on how to fix it. All of this will help you prioritise the order you decide to address the issues in.

We believe it’s important to build in an element of education, signposting resources to help upskill and raise awareness. If the developers implementing the fixes know why certain code patterns work better than others, they’re more likely to write accessible code in the future.

At CDS we use also Excel to log each issue we find. Not only do we export the content to form the basis of much of our audit report, but we also supply this spreadsheet as a deliverable to our customers, who have often found it a useful tool to monitor metrics and post-audit fixes.

What happens after an audit?

We always offer a consultation session to present the results of the audit report. This is a useful opportunity to explain the report to a range of stakeholders, including product owners and developers, and suggest ways to prioritise any fixes.

Often the solution will be simple – a line of CSS or some small tweaks to the HTML can make the difference between exclusion and an accessible experience. Of course, sometimes there are no quick fixes and some issues will be better addressed by completely redesigning or redeveloping large elements of a site.

We also recommend summarising the results of an audit in an accessibility statement. Publishing an accessibility statement is a legal requirement for UK public sector organisations, but it’s something all organisations should consider. Not only does it demonstrate a commitment to improving accessibility but it can be an important first stop for people with disabilities who want to know if there are areas of a site that may present issues, and whether there are any workarounds they can use while you fix the issues.

Maximising the impact of an audit

An accessibility audit should act as both a diagnostic tool and a roadmap for improvement. What transforms an audit from a compliance exercise into a catalyst for meaningful change is how easily organisations can act on its findings.

We believe it's crucial that the deliverables from an audit are actionable and directly help improve accessibility. The report needs to be clearly written, grounded in real life experiences and talk about practical and pragmatic solutions, including code snippets that are easy to implement to have an immediate direct impact.

An audit will provide invaluable insights into accessibility and technical compliance, it should empower organisations and form an important part of their ongoing accessibility programme.

Need an audit?

Our team of accessibility experts can help! Click here to get in touch with our team.