How to Conduct an Accessibility Audit: A Plain-English Guide for Business Leaders
Not sure where to start with digital accessibility? This plain-English guide explains what a WCAG audit involves, who should do it, and what the report should include.
You've decided to take digital accessibility seriously. You need to know where you stand. An accessibility audit is the starting point — a systematic assessment of your digital properties against a recognised standard, producing documented findings and a remediation roadmap. Here's what the process looks like, who does it, and what you should expect at the end.
What Is an Accessibility Audit?
An accessibility audit is a structured evaluation of your website, web application, or mobile app against WCAG — typically WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 at Level AA. The output is an audit report that documents: which success criteria pass, which fail, the severity of each failure, affected user groups, and recommended remediation.
A VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) or ACR (Accessibility Conformance Report) is the formal document format used to communicate conformance — particularly in enterprise procurement and regulatory contexts.
Automated vs. Manual Testing
Automated accessibility testing tools — axe-core, WAVE, Lighthouse — can scan your site and catch a significant portion of failures quickly. But automation has a ceiling: it can reliably detect roughly 30–40% of WCAG success criteria failures. Issues that require human judgment — whether alt text is meaningful, whether reading order makes sense, whether a form error message is useful — cannot be caught by automated tools.
A rigorous audit combines both: automated scanning for breadth and speed, manual expert review for depth and accuracy. Screen reader testing with actual assistive technology is essential.
An audit without manual testing and screen reader validation is not an audit. It's an automated scan with a different name.
Who Should Conduct Your Audit
In India, the DEPwD publishes an official list of empanelled web accessibility auditors. For STQC's GIGW certification, an IAAP-certified auditor is now mandatory. IAAP certifications include the CPACC (Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies) and WAS (Web Accessibility Specialist).
Look for an auditor who can demonstrate: IAAP certification, experience with your product type and sector, the ability to conduct testing with real assistive technology, and experience producing VPATs or ACRs.
After the Audit: Remediation and Ongoing Compliance
An audit is not the finish line. It's the start of a compliance programme. Use the findings to brief your development team, assign ownership of fixes, and set remediation sprints. Schedule a re-audit after major remediation work. Establish an accessibility statement on your website that documents your conformance level, audit date, and a contact path for users to report issues.
Accessibility is not a project. It's a practice — one that, done well, improves the experience for every user of your product.
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