The importance and benefit of website accessibility audits

• What an accessibility audit is (and why you need one)
• Types of website audits
• Maintaining web accessibility is an ongoing process

An accessibility audit evaluates how accessible a website, mobile app, or digital experience is. 

Using established accessibility standards as a guide, an audit determines if disabled customers are able to understand, navigate, and interact with every part of your website.

If an audit identifies existing accessibility issues, it provides guidance on how to address them. The goal is to remove barriers and create digital inclusion for all.

Digital inclusion refers to the ability for everyone to access and use digital technologies and services.

In today’s tech-based world, people use digital services to access healthcare, further their education, complete civic duties, and perform other essential functions. Without digital inclusion and accessible websites, people with disabilities don’t have equitable access to these opportunities.

>>> Debunk these three common myths about building accessible products.

The primary goal of web accessibility is to improve the online experience for people with disabilities. But it’s also a legal requirement for all organizations, and a website audit can ensure you stay compliant.

Businesses in the US that are open to the public and state and local governments need to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The ADA prohibits discrimination against disabled people. For this reason, the ADA generally requires organizations to make sure any “programs, services, and goods they provide online are accessible to people with disabilities.”

>>> Help your teams gain the skills they need to develop accessible websites.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the international standards for website accessibility. These guidelines explain how to make your website content more accessible for disabled people. 

WCAG outlines three levels of compliance: A (the lowest), AA, and AAA (the highest). The level you receive depends on the number of accessibility requirements your website meets. 

Organizations are generally recommended to achieve AA compliance. Courses like Gerard K. Cohen’s Meeting Web Accessibility Guidelines can help your tech teams build with WCAG in mind.

It’s important to test existing websites and final products, but web audits should also be built into the software development process, product design, and overall culture. As early as you can start testing, the better.

Too often, accessibility is an afterthought in the development process. By the time someone brings it up, retroactively making adjustments can contribute to scope creep, stress, and, ultimately, poorer accessibility.

In 2023, a project by Utah State University tested the accessibility of the top one million home pages. Their findings? 96.3% weren’t compliant with WCAG, and each contained an average of 50 accessibility issues.

Whether you know it or not, your website likely contains accessibility issues. Here are some website audit options to help you identify barriers and stay compliant.

Automated accessibility testing uses software to assess your website and identify common accessibility issues. Some elements they can check include:

• Font size

• Alt text

• Internal and external links

• PDFs

• Buttons

Automated accessibility testing provides a solid first step in improving your web accessibility. 

Here are some of the pros of automated testing:

• It can identify common accessibility issues quickly.

• It saves time by checking multiple website pages at the same time.

• You don’t need specialist knowledge to understand the results of the website audit.

Automated tools can’t catch every accessibility issue, so it’s best to combine them with some form of manual testing. Other cons of automated audits include:

• You might need multiple tools to test different pages or products.

• Tools may detect false positives (issues where there are none).

Automated accessibility testing tools can check for a wide variety of issues or hone in on one specific aspect of a website like color contrast.

Here are some examples of free automated tools you can leverage:

• WAVE Accessibility Evaluation Tool

• Siteimprove website accessibility checker

• axe DevTools

• PAC PDF Accessibility Tester

• WebAIM Contrast Checker

Manual website testing involves working with specialists to identify accessibility issues by hand. These experts evaluate websites and applications to determine if someone can navigate them using keyboard commands, screen readers, and other assistive technologies.

A manual accessibility audit is more time consuming than an automated one. It may also be difficult to repeat at scale.

Despite the cons, a manual website audit catches issues that automated tools can’t. You can also customize the audit if you want to test specific features and functions.

Accessibility issues span software development, product design, and copywriting, among others. Hybrid accessibility audits combine automated and manual testing to provide a fuller picture of your web accessibility across all of these areas. 

A hybrid approach allows you to take advantage of the benefits of automated and manual methods while supplementing their respective weaknesses. Because of this, hybrid audits provide the most robust evaluation of your website.

Technology changes every day, which means accessibility best practices do, too. A website audit isn’t a one-and-done checklist; it’s an iterative process. Build it into your culture so accessibility is a priority, not an afterthought.