Most people asking for an accessibility audit have been told they need one and don't know what they're buying.
Here's what's in one, what separates a real audit from a scan, and what drives the price.
What is an accessibility audit?
It's a structured review of your website against a standard. Usually WCAG 2.1 Level AA, increasingly WCAG 2.2.
The output is a list of specific failures, each mapped to a success criterion, with where it happens and what to do about it. Not a score. Not a grade. A list of things that are broken and how to fix them.
What's actually in it
Automated scanning. The first pass. Catches missing alt text, colour contrast failures, empty links, missing form labels. Fast, cheap, and finds a real subset of problems.
Keyboard testing. Every interactive element, using only a keyboard. Can you reach it? Can you see where you are? Can you get out of a menu? Keyboard traps are common and completely invisible to scanners.
Screen reader testing. NVDA, JAWS, or VoiceOver. Does the page structure make sense read aloud? Do links have meaningful names? Are form errors announced? This is where most sites fall apart.
Focus order and visible focus. Does tab order follow visual order? Can you see what's focused? Templates frequently suppress focus outlines because designers find them ugly.
Zoom and reflow. At 200% zoom, does content overlap, disappear, or force horizontal scrolling?
Task completion. The one that matters. Can someone using assistive technology actually donate, register, or sign up? Not read the homepage. Complete the thing you need them to do.
Why a scan isn't an audit
Automated tools find failures detectable in code. That's genuinely useful and it's where any audit starts.
What they can't do is judgement. A tool can tell you an image has alt text. It can't tell you the alt text says "image1.jpg". It can tell you a link exists. It can't tell you nineteen links all say "Read more" and a screen reader user has no way to tell them apart.
If someone quotes you an accessibility audit and the deliverable is a scanner report, you're buying a PDF you could have generated for free.
What drives cost
Not page count. Template count.
A 500-page site built from twelve templates audits like twelve pages, plus the journeys stringing them together. A 20-page site where every page is bespoke is more work than it looks.
The other driver is depth. A focused audit covering key templates and primary journeys is a different scope than a full conformance review producing a formal report. Both are legitimate. They cost different amounts and answer different questions.
What accessible website design means
Design that works for people using screen readers, keyboards, magnification, or voice control, and for people with low vision, colour blindness, cognitive differences, or motor impairments.
Concretely:
- Heading structure that describes the document, not the font size
- Real, visible form labels. Placeholders aren't labels
- Visible focus states on everything interactive
- Colour contrast that meets AA, and never colour alone to convey meaning
- Link text that makes sense out of context
- Everything operable by keyboard
- Content that survives 200% zoom
- Motion that respects a reduced-motion preference
Most of this is cheaper to do during design than to retrofit after launch. That's the actual argument for doing it early, not the legal one.
When to get one
Before a launch, if you're redesigning. Before a compliance deadline. After a complaint. Or when you genuinely don't know and would rather find out from a consultant than from a user.
Pragmatica has been building websites for Canadian non-profits, charities, and associations since 2004. If you want to know where your site stands, get in touch.
