An accessibility audit examines your website against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, commonly called WCAG, to identify barriers that prevent people with disabilities from using it effectively. Audits range from automated scans that run your site through a tool and flag common issues to manual expert reviews that simulate the experience of users with different disabilities, including screen reader users, keyboard-only users, and users with cognitive or motor disabilities. The depth and cost of the audit reflects the depth and reliability of the findings.
Automated tools like WAVE at wave.webaim.org and Google's Lighthouse catch approximately thirty to forty percent of WCAG failures. They reliably identify missing alt text, insufficient color contrast, missing form labels, and certain structural issues. They do not catch problems that require human judgment: whether alt text is meaningful in context, whether error messages are understandable when read aloud, whether the reading order makes logical sense, or whether a custom interactive component follows expected keyboard patterns. An automated scan is a starting point, not a complete audit.
A manual accessibility audit from a qualified consultant or accessibility firm is appropriate for businesses with meaningful legal exposure: healthcare, financial services, education, retail with significant revenue, and any business that has received an ADA demand letter. A manual audit typically costs two thousand to eight thousand dollars depending on the scope of the site and the thoroughness of the evaluation. It produces a prioritized list of issues with specific remediation guidance and a baseline record of compliance effort that is relevant to any subsequent legal review.
For year-one businesses without specific regulatory pressure, the right starting point is a free automated scan followed by manual fixes for the issues identified, a keyboard navigation test you perform yourself, and an annual check to ensure new content meets the same standards. This approach addresses the most common and highest-impact accessibility barriers at minimal cost and creates the operational habit of checking accessibility as content is added rather than treating it as a one-time remediation project.
An accessibility audit creates a documented record of compliance effort that matters in the context of ADA litigation. A business that can demonstrate it conducted an audit, implemented the findings, and has an ongoing accessibility maintenance practice is in a substantially different legal position than one that has never examined its accessibility. The audit is not a legal shield, but it is evidence of good-faith effort that affects how accessibility claims are evaluated.
Whether you commission a formal audit or use free tools to self-assess, the most important thing is to take action on what you find rather than treating the audit as a documentation exercise. Accessibility improvements that reach your users are more valuable than compliance reports that sit in a folder.