Website Accessibility Audit: Step-by-Step Process

An accessibility audit is a systematic evaluation of your website against WCAG standards. Unlike ad-hoc testing, an audit provides a comprehensive view of your accessibility status and a roadmap for improvement.

A well-conducted audit does more than find problems – it prioritizes them, explains their impact, and guides your team toward solutions.

This guide walks you through a complete audit process, from initial planning to tracking remediation progress.

Phase 1: Planning

Good audits start with good planning.

Define scope:

Select representative pages:

You can't test every page. Select representatives of each template/component:

Gather resources:

Estimate time:

For a medium website, expect 2-5 days of testing plus reporting time.

Phase 2: Automated testing

Start with automated scans to establish a baseline.

Run comprehensive scans:

Use Xrayd or similar to scan all pages in scope. This catches approximately 30-40% of WCAG violations.

What automated tools catch:

Organize findings:

Don't stop here:

Automated tools are essential but insufficient. They miss context-dependent issues, screen reader problems, and cognitive accessibility concerns. Manual testing is required.

Phase 3: Manual testing

Manual testing catches what automation misses.

Keyboard testing:

Navigate all pages using only keyboard. Check:

Screen reader testing:

Test key user journeys with NVDA or VoiceOver:

Visual testing:

Content review:

Phase 4: Reporting

A good report enables action.

Executive summary:

Issue documentation:

For each issue, include:

Prioritization guidance:

Help the team know where to start:

Actionable recommendations:

Don't just describe problems – suggest solutions. Include code examples where helpful.

Phase 5: Remediation tracking

An audit without follow-up is wasted effort.

Create tickets:

Convert audit findings to tickets in your issue tracker (Jira, GitHub, etc.). Include all relevant details from the report.

Assign ownership:

Each issue needs an owner. For design issues, assign to design team. For code issues, assign to relevant developers.

Set deadlines:

Critical issues: Fix immediately

High issues: Fix within current sprint

Medium issues: Plan for next 1-2 sprints

Low issues: Add to backlog

Track progress:

Regular check-ins on remediation progress. Use dashboards to visualize status.

Verify fixes:

Re-test fixed issues to confirm they're actually resolved. Sometimes fixes introduce new problems.

Document:

Maintain an accessibility statement documenting known issues and remediation timeline.