What a website accessibility audit actually is
An ADA compliance audit is a complete, evidence-based evaluation of your website against WCAG 2.1 Level AA — the conformance standard U.S. courts, the DOJ, and federal procurement under Section 508 all rely on. It tells you, in plain language, exactly which barriers block people with disabilities from using your site, how serious each one is, and what it takes to fix it.
A real audit is not a button you press. It pairs automated scanning with manual testing by a human using assistive technology — the only way to catch the issues that put small businesses in legal crosshairs. Curbcut runs this audit so you start remediation with a precise map instead of a guess.
What we test (and how)
We evaluate your site against all four POUR principles — Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust — across conformance levels A and AA. The work happens in two layers, and the second is where audits earn their keep.
Automated testing
Automated tools catch the machine-detectable errors fast and at scale. We run industry-standard engines including:
- axe-core for rule-based WCAG violations
- WAVE for visual structure and contrast issues
- Lighthouse for an accessibility baseline and performance context
Automated scans are valuable, and they have a hard ceiling: they only reliably detect roughly 30–40% of WCAG success criteria. The W3C’s guidance on selecting evaluation tools puts it plainly: “Tools cannot check all accessibility aspects automatically. Human judgement is required. Sometimes evaluation tools can produce false or misleading results. Web accessibility evaluation tools can not determine accessibility, they can only assist in doing so.” A green scanner score does not mean a compliant site — and it never means a defensible one.
Manual testing
Manual accessibility testing is the practice of working through the site by hand with the same assistive technology your visitors use. A scanner can tell you an image is missing alt text. It cannot tell you whether existing alt text is accurate, whether alt="image123.jpg" is meaningless, or whether a chart needs a longer description. That gap runs through the whole standard:
| What a scanner catches | What only a human catches |
|---|---|
| Missing form labels | Whether the label describes the field correctly |
| Missing alt attribute | Whether the alt text is meaningful in context |
| Low color contrast values | Whether content is understandable without color |
| Empty links and buttons | Whether focus order matches the visual flow |
| Missing page language | Whether a custom dropdown is operable at all |
Automation gives breadth and speed across thousands of pages; manual testing gives the judgment conformance actually requires. For the full reasoning behind that split, see automated vs manual accessibility testing.
What manual testing covers
Our testers work through your key user journeys — homepage, navigation, search, forms, checkout — the way a person with a disability would.
Screen reader testing
We run your site through the screen readers real users depend on, because each interprets HTML and ARIA differently:
- NVDA (free, Windows) — the most widely used screen reader worldwide.
- JAWS (Windows) — long the enterprise standard, still common in workplaces.
- VoiceOver (built into macOS and iOS) — essential for the mobile and Apple experience.
A fix that sounds perfect in NVDA can break in VoiceOver, so we verify across more than one. We listen for whether headings, landmarks, links, and form errors are announced clearly — and whether ARIA is helping or actively getting in the way. Overused or incorrect ARIA is one of the most common problems we hear, and a scanner will never catch it.
Keyboard navigation
Many people can’t use a mouse. We unplug ours and operate the entire site with the keyboard alone — Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, Space, and arrow keys — confirming that every interactive element is reachable and operable, that the focus indicator stays visible, that focus order follows the reading sequence, that nothing becomes a keyboard trap, and that modals, menus, and custom widgets behave.
Zoom and magnification
We zoom the page to 200% and 400% and reflow it to a narrow viewport. Content shouldn’t clip, overlap, or force horizontal scrolling. Low-vision users rely on this every day, and broken layouts at zoom are a frequent finding.
Cognitive and content review
Finally, a human reviews what resists automation entirely: plain-language clarity, consistent navigation, helpful error messages, predictable behavior, and content that doesn’t depend on timing or motion. These understandability barriers matter enormously and are invisible to any tool.
What you get: the deliverables
You walk away with documentation you can act on, hand to a developer, or show an attorney.
| Deliverable | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Findings report | Every issue mapped to its WCAG 2.1 success criterion, with severity, location, screenshots, and code references |
| Remediation roadmap | Prioritized fix list — critical legal-exposure items first, quick wins flagged |
| VPAT / Conformance Report | An optional VPAT documenting your conformance status for procurement or legal use |
| Live walkthrough | A call where we explain the findings in plain English and answer questions |
The report is written for business owners, not just developers — so you understand why each barrier matters and what the risk is.
Audit once, or test continuously?
People use “audit” and “testing” loosely, so here is the distinction we work to. An audit is a documented snapshot of your site’s accessibility at a single point in time — the right place to start, and what this page sells. Testing is the repeatable practice of checking pages, templates, and new features as your site evolves.
A site that passed an audit in January can fail by June after a theme update, a new checkout flow, or a few hundred blog posts with bad alt text. That is what accessibility monitoring is for: it holds the conformance you paid for instead of letting it drift. Most small businesses audit first, remediate, then monitor.
Audit vs. overlay scan: don’t confuse the two
Overlay vendors offer a “free scan” that produces an automated error count and then sells you a JavaScript widget. That widget does not remediate your code. UsableNet’s 2024 lawsuit report found that “in 2024, over 1,000 businesses were sued despite having accessibility widgets on their websites, accounting for more than 25% of cases” — and no court has held that installing an overlay, by itself, satisfies the ADA. A scanner alone misses keyboard traps, illogical screen-reader order, mislabeled forms, and broken custom widgets — the exact issues serial plaintiffs cite.
A genuine audit finds those issues so they can actually be fixed. Compare the two approaches directly in overlay vs. manual remediation.
Our audit process and timeline
- Scope & kickoff — we identify representative page templates and key user flows (checkout, contact, login).
- Automated pass — axe, WAVE, and Lighthouse across the selected pages.
- Manual pass — screen-reader, keyboard, zoom, and assistive-technology testing by hand.
- Report & roadmap — prioritized findings delivered, with a walkthrough call. Teams that would rather own the fixes in-house can take that roadmap and work through it with a web accessibility consultant instead of handing the build over.
- Optional remediation — we fix the findings in your real code; an audit alone is a diagnosis, not a cure.
Most small-business sites move from kickoff to report in one to two weeks. Larger or e-commerce sites take longer. You get a firm timeline before any work begins.
Why this matters legally
The ADA Title III duty to be accessible extends to the websites of businesses open to the public, and UsableNet counted over 4,000 ADA lawsuits against digital properties in 2024 alone — overwhelmingly against small and mid-sized companies. Most hinge on barriers a scanner would have passed: an unlabeled custom control, a broken reading order, a form a screen reader can’t complete. Hand-tested evidence, paired with active remediation, is what stands up when someone challenges your accessibility.
To be clear: an audit is a technical and risk-management tool, not legal advice. If you’ve received a demand letter or are facing a lawsuit, consult a qualified attorney about your specific situation.
What an audit costs
Pricing depends on the number of unique page templates, the complexity of your interactions, and whether you need a VPAT. A focused small-business audit is far cheaper than a single lawsuit defense. See the full breakdown on our ADA compliance cost page.
Start with a free scan
Not ready for a full audit yet? Begin with a free accessibility scan to see where you stand at a high level. When you’re ready to find — and fix — every barrier for good, a complete ADA compliance audit is the right first step. Authoritative standards from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative and guidance from WebAIM underpin everything we test.