Contrast
The commonest failure on the web, and invisible to whoever wrote the text because they already know what it says.
WCAG 2.1 AA
Website Accessibility Audit
Most accessibility reports are a tool's output with a cover page: hundreds of items, no order, and no sense of which ones actually stop somebody buying. This measures the same standard and then does the part software cannot — deciding what matters and saying why.
- Price up front
- Dated written record
- Keyboard-tested by hand
- MSc Psychology
- No certificate theatre
WCAG 2.1AA standard
7Working days
$499Fixed price
$0For the first check
What is measured
The failures that actually stop people
Images without descriptions
Every meaningful image needs one. Decorative ones need to be marked as decorative, which is the half everybody forgets.
Keyboard-only completion
Your entire checkout, done without a mouse. This is tested by hand because no tool can tell you it felt impossible.
Heading structure
A screen reader navigates by headings. A page whose headings jump levels is a page somebody cannot move through.
Form labels
Placeholder text is not a label. It disappears the moment somebody starts typing, which is exactly when they need it.
Things that change silently
Carts, filters, error messages and modals that update with no announcement. Common on modern sites and routinely missed.
Scope and honesty
What this is, and what it is not
Why accessibility work pays for itself
Compliance is the reason people buy this and it is rarely the best reason. Nearly every accessibility failure is also a usability failure that costs money from people who are not disabled at all.
Text at low contrast is unreadable outdoors on a phone at forty per cent brightness — which is most mobile traffic. A form that cannot be completed by keyboard is also a form that fights anybody in a hurry. An error message that appears silently is missed by everybody, not only by screen reader users. Fix these and the conversion improvement usually arrives before the compliance benefit does.
This is why a psychologist is doing it
An auditor checks the page against a standard. The question of whether a technically compliant page is actually usable is a behavioural question, and it is the one that decides whether the work was worth anything.
What comes back
- Every failure found, with the specific element and what it breaks
- Ranked by how many people it affects and how badly, not by how easy it is to fix
- A keyboard-only walkthrough of your most important journey, done by hand
- How to fix each item, specifically enough for a developer to act on
- A dated record of what was measured, which is what you want on file
- An explicit list of what was not covered
What this is not
Not legal advice
I measure your site against a technical standard and tell you what fails. Whether that satisfies a particular regulator in a particular country is a legal question and I am not a lawyer. For real exposure you want both, and the audit makes the lawyer's job much cheaper.
Not a certificate
There is no accessibility certification scheme that means anything. Vendors selling badges are selling their own paperwork. What exists is a site that meets the standard and evidence of how you know.
Not an overlay widget
The plug-in that promises instant compliance from one line of JavaScript does not deliver it, is widely criticised by disabled users, and has featured in litigation rather than preventing it. If you have one, the audit will tell you what it is actually doing.
Start with the free version
Three of the commonest failures — contrast, missing image descriptions and broken heading structure — are measured by the free tool on this site, on any public page, in about thirty seconds, with no email required.
If it comes back clean on those three you are in better shape than most sites, and you should spend the money only if you need the keyboard testing, the ranking, or the written record. I would rather tell you that than take a fee for confirming it.
The first pass you can do yourself, today
Four tests, no software beyond the browser you already have, and between them they find most of what fails on most sites:
- Unplug the mouse. Complete your own checkout using only Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter and the arrow keys. If you cannot finish it, neither can a substantial number of your customers, and you have found your most expensive failure in ten minutes.
- Take the page outside. Read it on a phone at about forty per cent brightness in daylight. Whatever disappears is a contrast failure, and it disappears for everybody, not only for people with impaired vision.
- Turn the images off in your browser settings and reload. Whatever becomes incomprehensible has no text alternative.
- Tab through the page and watch where the outline goes. If the highlight vanishes, or jumps somewhere unexpected, a keyboard user has just lost their place with no way to find it again.
None of that requires a specialist, and a business that does those four things honestly usually arrives at an audit with a much shorter list and a much clearer question.
Who needs this now
| Situation | Urgency |
|---|---|
| Selling online to EU consumers | High — the European Accessibility Act has applied since June 2025 |
| Public sector, or supplying it, in the UK or EU | High — separate rules already applied |
| US business with meaningful web sales | High. 3,117 website accessibility suits were filed in US federal court in 2025, up 27% on 2024, and about 70% targeted e-commerce. There is a page on this specifically |
| Planning a redesign | Best possible timing. Building it in costs a fraction of retrofitting |
| Small local business, no EU customers | Worth doing, not urgent. Start with the free checks |
Three of the commonest accessibility failures — contrast, missing image descriptions and a broken heading structure — are in the free tool on this site. Run it on your own page before you talk to anybody.
Run the free audit toolPricing
Accessibility options
Fixed price and a fixed date, agreed before anything starts.
Accessibility check
$499 /site
Where you stand, in writing
- Key pages against WCAG 2.1 AA
- Failures ranked by who they affect
- Keyboard-only walkthrough by hand
- Dated written record
- 7 working days
With dark patterns
$999 /site
Accessibility and the DSA together
- Everything in the accessibility check
- Consent and choice architecture reviewed
- Anything near the line, named
- Conversion cost of each fix as well
- 10 working days
Audit and fix
$1,999 /project
Measured, repaired, re-measured
- Everything above
- Fixes written into your site
- Re-measured with the evidence attached
- 30 days of follow-up questions
FAQs
Accessibility Questions
Do accessibility overlay widgets work?
No, not as advertised. A single line of JavaScript cannot fix labels, structure or keyboard order, disabled users overwhelmingly report that overlays make things worse, and sites using them have still faced litigation. If you have one installed the audit will tell you what it is actually doing.
Is this legal compliance?
It is measurement against the technical standard the law points at, plus a dated record. Whether that satisfies a specific regulator is a legal question and I am not a lawyer. Having the measurement makes the legal advice much cheaper.
How many pages do you check?
The pages that matter: what traffic lands on, what money passes through, and one example of each repeated template. Checking forty near-identical product pages finds the same three failures forty times.
Will this slow my site down?
No. Almost everything here is markup and CSS. If anything, removing an overlay widget makes the site faster.
Can I do it myself?
Much of it, yes, and you should start there. The free tool covers three of the commonest failures. What is hard to do yourself is the keyboard testing and deciding which failures actually matter.
Find out where you actually stand
Measured against the standard, ranked by who it affects, and written down with a date on it.