How to Perform an Accessibility Audit for Your Website

Web accessibility audits play an essential role in ensuring that the digital content can be used by everyone, including people with disabilities. Regular audits help organizations improve user experience, reach more people, and meet legal requirements.

This article explores best practices and primary steps for conducting an effective accessibility audit, helping teams build user-friendly and compliant websites and apps.

What is an Accessibility Audit?

An accessibility audit refers to a detailed review of a digital product, such as a website or app, to check how well it meets accessibility standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The main goal is to find and fix issues that might make it hard for people with disabilities to use the content.

During the audit, different elements like text, images, navigation, and interactive features are assessed to ensure they work for everyone, including users who rely on assistive technologies. Audits often combine tools like screen readers, automated testing software, and manual checks to identify barriers and suggest improvements.

BrowserStack Accesibility helps teams run reliable accessibility audits across real devices and browsers. Detect and fix WCAG issues faster with automated and manual testing.

Importance of Accessibility Audit

Conducting an accessibility audit is crucial for several reasons:

• Promotes Inclusivity: Ensures that digital content is accessible to everyone including people with disabilities, allowing them to navigate and interact with online resources effectively.
• Enhances User Experience: Improves the overall usability of applications and websites for all users, not just those with disabilities.
• Expands Audience Reach: Opens access to a broader audience, including millions of users with disabilities.
• Ensures Legal Compliance: Helps organizations meet legal requirements such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and WCAG.
• Reduces Legal Risks: Mitigates the risk of lawsuits and legal penalties resulting from non-compliance with accessibility laws.
• Protects and Strengthens Brand Reputation: Demonstrates a commitment to diversity, inclusion, and social responsibility, which fosters greater brand loyalty and trust.
• Boosts SEO Performance: Accessible websites often perform better in search engine rankings, improving visibility and driving more traffic.
• Provides a Competitive Edge: Accessibility can differentiate a brand in crowded markets by showcasing ethical practices and customer-centric values.

Who Should Perform an Accessibility Audit?

Accessibility audits are best carried out by people who have strong knowledge of accessibility standards and best practices. This includes certified accessibility specialists, usability experts, and web developers trained in guidelines like WCAG.

Many organizations also bring in third-party consultants to get an objective view and benefit from their wider industry experience. Involving people with disabilities during the audit can offer valuable real-world feedback.

While internal teams can manage regular checks, having external experts review accessibility from time to time helps ensure full compliance and ongoing improvement. Using automated testing tools and running regular training programs can also help to maintain high accessibility standards.

What to Do Before an Audit?

Good preparation is essential to running a successful accessibility audit. Setting up the right foundation keeps the process focused, efficient, and thorough. Before starting the audit, it’s important to understand the accessibility guidelines, set clear goals, define the scope, choose the right tools, and create a detailed checklist.

Taking these steps ensures the audit stays aligned with business needs and user expectations, leading to more useful and effective results.

1. Understand Accessibility Guidelines

Before starting an accessibility audit, it is important to have a good understanding of accessibility standards. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the main set of rules for making digital content easy to perceive, operate, understand, and use.

Depending on the audience, regional laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) may also need to be followed. It’s also important to use the right version of WCAG, as newer updates like WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 add new requirements for mobile accessibility and cognitive needs.

2. Define Your Accessibility Goals

Setting specific accessibility goals ensures that the audit stays focused and measurable. Some common goals include achieving compliance with a specific version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), improving user experience for individuals with disabilities, enhancing mobile accessibility, or preparing for an external certification.

Clear goals help prioritize issues during the remediation phase and guide improvement efforts effectively.

3. Determine the Scope of Your Audit

A defined scope keeps the audit organized and achievable. The scope may include specific pages, user flows, document types, or interactive elements like forms and multimedia content.

Organizations may choose to audit their entire website or focus on high-priority areas such as homepages, login pages, and checkout processes. Focusing on key areas ensures that resources are used efficiently and that major user journeys are fully accessible.

4. Finalize Your Audit Tools

Selecting the right set of tools strengthens the audit process. A strong toolkit often includes a mix of automated testing platforms, manual testing, and assistive technology simulations. Automated tools help quickly detect common accessibility issues, while manual reviews ensure that more complex or contextual problems are addressed.

Solutions like BrowserStack Accessibility Testing provide a reliable platform for conducting automated scans across real browsers and devices, helping teams identify and fix issues early in development. It helps identify accessibility barriers across different environments, supports integration into development workflows, and ensures broad coverage for desktop, table,t and mobile accessibility.

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5. Create an Accessibility Checklist

An accessibility checklist serves as a structured guide to ensure that no critical area is overlooked during the audit. It typically includes checkpoints based on recognized standards like WCAG, covering essential areas such as text alternatives for images, keyboard navigation, color contrast, form labeling, and multimedia accessibility.

A clear checklist also helps development, design, and QA teams work together efficiently during the audit and remediation phases.

How to Perform an Accessibility Audit

Conducting an accessibility audit involves systematically reviewing web content and functionality to ensure it is usable for everyone, including individuals with disabilities. A complete audit examines text content, multimedia, interactive elements, and technical foundations.

1. Audit Text Content

Start by reviewing all on-page text to ensure it’s clear, structured, and accessible to all users, including those using screen readers.

• Check content headings and hierarchy: A logical heading structure must be maintained, using headings (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.) appropriately to organize the page content. Proper heading hierarchy helps users of assistive technologies navigate more easily.
• Test usability without stylesheets: Disabling stylesheets should not affect the content’s basic readability and logical flow. Structure and meaning must remain intact without relying on visual presentation.
• Review instruction formatting: Instructions should be clear and must not depend solely on visual references, such as “click the blue button” or “see the box on the right.” Textual guidance should be descriptive and meaningful on its own.
• Verify link text: All links must have meaningful and specific text that clearly describes the destination or action, even when read out of context. Vague phrases like “Click here” or “Read more” should be avoided.
• Check page titles and heading labels: Every page must have a unique, descriptive title. Headings should accurately summarize the sections they introduce, improving both usability and findability.

2. Audit Images, Videos, and Audio

Review the following elements to ensure all media types meet accessibility standards:

• Check alt texts for images: Informative images must include appropriate alternative (alt) text. Decorative images should have empty alt attributes or be hidden from assistive technologies.
• Check descriptions for visual elements: Complex graphics, charts, and diagrams must be supplemented with textual descriptions that convey equivalent information.
• Check text alternatives for multimedia: Videos should have captions, audio content should have transcripts, and descriptive audio should be provided where necessary for users who cannot perceive visual content.

3. Check Interactive Tools and Transactions

Evaluate these components to ensure interactive elements are accessible and usable for all users:

• Review form-field labels: All input fields must have visible and programmatically associated labels. Placeholder text alone is not a sufficient replacement for a formal label.
• Test time-out warnings: When activities are time-sensitive, appropriate warnings should be displayed, and users must be given options to extend sessions where possible.
• Check for helpful error messages: Error notifications must be descriptive, clearly pointing out what went wrong and how to fix it, instead of only marking an error with color or symbols.
• Review the form submission process: Forms must be fully operable using a keyboard alone. Focus indicators must be visible and screen readers must announce status updates or error messages accurately.
• Verify accessibility of all form elements: Elements like radio buttons, dropdown menus, sliders, and checkboxes must be accessible via keyboard and assistive technologies without any functionality loss.

4. Audit Frontend and Technical Aspects

Test the following technical elements to ensure the frontend supports accessibility best practices:

• Check color contrast: Text and visual elements must meet WCAG-required contrast ratios (minimum AA level) to remain readable by users with low vision or color blindness.
• Check pop-ups, flashing or interactive content: Dynamic elements such as pop-ups, modal windows, carousels and flashing content must be properly accessible, dismissible and should not trigger seizures or motion sickness.
• Conduct semantic HTML checks: Semantic HTML elements (<button>, <nav>, <main>, <form>, etc.) must be used correctly to define page structure and functionality. This helps screen readers interpret content correctly.
• Test keyboard navigation: All interactive components, including menus, forms, and dialogs, must be reachable and operable using only keyboard inputs. Logical tab order and visible focus states are essential.

Why Choose BrowserStack for Accessibility Audit

Choosing the right platform for accessibility auditing significantly impacts the accuracy, speed, and reliability of results.

BrowserStack Accessibility Toolkit offers a complete solution for both automated and manual accessibility testing across real browsers and devices, helping organizations deliver inclusive digital experiences with minimal effort.

It enables fast and reliable detection of accessibility barriers through automatic scans and assisted tests. Real-user conditions are accurately simulated through testing on actual desktop and mobile devices, ensuring that content is accessible for users relying on screen readers and assistive technologies.

Key Features of BrowserStack Accessibility Toolkit:

• Automatic Scanning: Detects accessibility issues across web pages and schedules regular audits to maintain continuous compliance.
• Workflow Analyzer: Scans entire websites to identify barriers in navigation, readability and usability, flagging issues such as missing alt texts and poor color contrasts.
• Assisted Tests: Simplifies complex accessibility evaluations by prompting simple, auto-generated questions to identify harder-to-detect issues.
• Screen Reader Testing on Real Devices: Tests websites with popular screen readers like JAWS and NVDA on real mobile and desktop devices.
• Central Reporting Dashboard: Provides a clear summary of issues, easy-to-read visual reports and one-click bug reporting to streamline accessibility fixes.
• Seamless CI/CD Integration: Integrates easily with tools like Jenkins, Travis CI and CircleCI, allowing accessibility checks to be embedded into development pipelines.

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Conclusion

An accessibility audit is not just a technical task; it’s a critical step toward building inclusive, user-friendly digital experiences for all. By carefully evaluating text content, multimedia, interactive elements, and technical aspects, organizations can identify and remove barriers that affect users with disabilities.

Following structured guidelines, using reliable tools, and involving the right teams helps ensure that the audit process is thorough, efficient, and aligned with recognized accessibility standards.

Platforms like BrowserStack make it easier to scale accessibility efforts by offering reliable, real-device testing and actionable tools like automated scanners and checklists. As digital accessibility continues to grow in importance, performing regular audits and taking a proactive approach can help organizations stay compliant, earn user trust, and improve usability for everyone.