At times, a website accessibility audit can feel like The Odyssey — a long journey where you run into all kinds of unexpected risks along the way.
You stumble across broken forms, missing alt text, and images with poor color contrast that somehow got overlooked.
Fixing them quickly can help you avoid litigation of regulators’ fees, but only until more errors start creeping into new content.
This is hard to avoid because it’s now clear who’s responsible for accessibility. Automated tools can help, but they don’t catch everything.
Making accessibility a priority is more important than ever because it contributes to AI readiness, avoids disappointing site visitors and reduces legal exposure.
Getting to a point of organizational maturity in this area depends on:
1. Understanding the full spectrum of accessibility standards
Organizations are accountable for allowing anyone, regardless of ability, to access their website without limitations.
Governments and regulatory bodies have spelled this out in a number of different laws.
Some rules pertain to the U.S. at the federal, state or local level. Others are global in scope.
Save yourself time by using this guide to the key requirements that could affect your site.
2. Establishing the right policies and ownership
Improved accessibility and strong governance go hand-in-hand.
This is admittedly challenging in large enterprises with many different people involved in updating websites, but there are models that work.
We’ve outlined what accessibility governance looks like in practice, including the impact on everyday workflows, monitoring and measuring approaches, and why choosing the right platform matters.
3. Choosing the ideal accessibility tools
Identifying and fixing errors doesn’t have to be a manual chore. There are solutions that work at the design phase as well as tools for testing, reporting, and beyond.
If you’re not sure how to evaluate what’s out there and operationalize it, this primer is for you.
4. Planning a more effective accessibility audit
Checking for accessibility issues can take weeks or longer.
There are specific stakeholders you should be tapping for help.
You also need to think through how you’ll address an audit’s findings based on the severity and complexity of the issues to remediate.
This post gives you a walk-through to get everything in order.