Key takeaways
- An accessibility audit pairs automated scanning with manual testing. Scanners catch only part of the problems, so keyboard and screen reader checks are required.
- Most sites have work to do: the 2026 WebAIM Million report found detectable WCAG 2 failures on 95.9% of the top one million home pages, averaging 56.1 errors per page.
- Audit against WCAG 2.1 Level AA at a minimum, and include the WCAG 2.2 additions if you want to stay ahead of the standard.
- Sample your templates and top tasks (home page, navigation, forms, checkout, search) instead of trying to test every URL by hand.
- An audit only reduces risk when findings are ranked, fixed, retested and backed by a public accessibility statement.
An accessibility audit checks your website against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to find barriers that stop people with disabilities from using it. A good audit combines automated scanning tools with hands-on testing by keyboard and screen reader. This Emulent guide walks through what the audit should cover, how to run it, what to do with the results and why the work pays off in search and conversions. It is general guidance, not legal advice.
What should an accessibility audit actually check?
An audit should test your site against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the version courts and regulators cite most often, and ideally the newer WCAG 2.2 criteria too. The checklist covers four areas: whether people can perceive the content, operate the interface, understand it and use it with assistive technology.
- Images: informative images carry meaningful alt text and decorative images use empty alt text.
- Color contrast: at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text and interface components.
- Keyboard access: every menu, button, form, modal and carousel works without a mouse, with a visible focus indicator and no keyboard traps.
- Structure: one H1, a logical heading order, landmarks and real lists, so screen reader users can scan the page.
- Forms: visible labels tied to each field, clear required-field cues and error messages that explain the fix.
- Media: captions on prerecorded video and transcripts for audio.
- Zoom and reflow: content usable at 200% zoom and on a 320-pixel-wide screen without horizontal scrolling.
- WCAG 2.2 additions: focus not hidden behind sticky headers, touch targets at least 24 by 24 pixels and no drag-only controls.
The WebAIM data shows where to look first. Low-contrast text appeared on 83.9% of home pages in the 2026 study, followed by missing alt text and missing form labels. Those three issues alone are worth checking on every template.
How do you run automated accessibility scans?
Start with free scanners to find the obvious, code-level errors quickly. Run them on a sample of page templates instead of the whole site: home page, a service or category page, a blog post, a product page, contact and lead forms, search results and checkout.
- WAVE, from WebAIM, overlays icons on the page to show missing alt text, contrast errors and empty links.
- axe DevTools, a browser extension from Deque, lists violations with the code involved and the WCAG criterion each one breaks.
- Google Lighthouse, built into Chrome DevTools, gives an accessibility score and a list of failed checks.
- Site-wide crawlers, including the accessibility reports in many SEO crawl tools, help spot the same error repeated across hundreds of pages.
Treat a passing score with caution. Automated tools cannot judge whether alt text describes the image, whether focus order makes sense or whether a custom widget announces itself correctly. A page can score 100 in Lighthouse and still be unusable by keyboard.
How do you test accessibility manually?
Manual testing confirms what real users experience. Work through each sampled template and your most important tasks, such as booking a call, completing a purchase or submitting a quote request.
| Test | How to run it |
|---|---|
| Keyboard only | unplug the mouse and use Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, Space and the arrow keys to reach and operate everything. Note anything you cannot reach, cannot see focus on or cannot escape. |
| Screen readers | test with NVDA on Windows, VoiceOver on Mac and iPhone and TalkBack on Android. Listen for unlabeled buttons, images read as file names and form errors that are never announced. |
| Zoom | set the browser to 200% and 400% and check that text reflows and nothing overlaps or disappears. |
| Content review | check link text (“Read more” repeated ten times tells a screen reader user nothing), heading order, captions and plain-language instructions. |
| Real users | if budget allows, pay people who rely on assistive technology to complete your core tasks. They find problems no checklist predicts. |
Record each issue with the page, the WCAG criterion, a screenshot or recording, who it affects and the steps to reproduce it. That log becomes your remediation backlog.
What should you do with the audit results?
Rank the findings by impact, fix the template-level problems first and retest. One broken header menu or form component can repeat on every page, so fixing shared components gives the biggest return.
- Fix first: anything that blocks a core task, such as a checkout button keyboard users cannot reach or a form with no labels.
- Fix next: issues that slow people down or confuse them, such as poor contrast, missing skip links and vague link text.
- Build in: add accessibility checks to design reviews, content publishing and development so new pages do not reintroduce old errors.
- Publish an accessibility statement that names the standard you target, known limitations and a way for visitors to report problems.
- Re-audit after redesigns and at least yearly, since content and plugins change constantly.
Skip the shortcut of an overlay widget. UsableNet’s 2025 year-end report counted more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits, including more than 1,400 against companies that had accessibility widgets installed. Fixing the underlying code is the only reliable path.
The payoff goes beyond legal risk. The CDC reports that more than one in four US adults has some type of disability, so barriers on your site turn away a large share of potential customers. Many fixes also help SEO: descriptive alt text, a clean heading structure and readable link text give search engines and AI answer engines stronger signals about your content. On WordPress sites built with a page builder, most fixes happen at the template and component level, so one change can correct an issue across the whole site.
How the Emulent team can help
Emulent runs accessibility audits that combine automated scans with manual keyboard and screen reader testing, then turns the findings into a ranked fix list your developers can act on. Our website design team can handle the remediation, from color and contrast updates to rebuilt forms and menus, and set up checks so new content stays compliant. To find out where your website stands, contact the Emulent team.