Summary
A digital accessibility audit shows how well your product works for people with disabilities and anyone using accessibility tools. It reveals where people get stuck, why those barriers matter, and what to fix first. The audit follows real user journeys, not just pages, so the findings reflect how your product works in practice. You get clear issues, practical guidance, and documentation you can use for legal, procurement, and internal needs. Most importantly, an audit gives your team a starting point for meaningful improvements that make your digital experience work for more people.
If your organization builds, buys, or maintains any digital technology, accessibility is already on your plate. Whether you work in product, engineering, design, compliance, or procurement, you will have to address it. The only question is when.
Most teams don’t request an accessibility audit until something forces the issue. That could be a demand letter, a customer who can’t use a key feature, a stalled procurement deal, or a request for an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR), sometimes called a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). Whatever the trigger, the underlying problem is the same: You need a formal way to know how well your product works for people with disabilities, and you need that answer quickly.
Accessibility issues often hide in everyday interactions, such as the checkout flow, a login screen, or an interactive calendar. Teams usually don’t see these barriers until someone tries to complete a task with assistive technology and gets stuck. That uncertainty creates risk, slows delivery, and makes it hard to communicate what’s improving.
If you’ve never evaluated your product for accessibility before, an audit gives you a clear picture of what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs attention first. At Equal Entry, every project follows the same six-step accessibility auditing process. It’s a single, straightforward approach that works for any website, app, or digital product.
Years of audits across diverse digital products have shaped our six‑step process. It evolves as standards and tools change.
What do you learn from an accessibility audit?
An accessibility audit tells you whether people with disabilities can do the tasks your product is designed to support. It shows you where they get stuck, how serious the barriers are, and what to address first. It also gives you documentation you can use to show what’s improving, meet legal requirements, and guide your effort.
A strong audit gives you a clear foundation. It makes the immediate fixes obvious and highlights what to keep in mind as you build new features. Over time, the findings help your team plan, design, and develop with accessibility in mind. They prevent accessibility from becoming something you check at the end.
Why organizations do digital accessibility audits
Most organizations don’t request an accessibility audit until they have a specific reason. Something in their workflow, customer experience, or compliance process has stopped working the way it should.
Some teams come to us after receiving an ADA demand letter stating their technology does not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Others run into the issue during procurement, when a corporation or government agency turns down their product because they don’t have documentation that shows how it supports accessibility. Or they’ve heard directly from users with disabilities who cannot complete basic tasks like logging in, submitting a form, making a purchase, or finding the information they need.
And some organizations are not reacting to a problem at all. They simply want their product to work for as many people as possible. They know that accessibility affects real customers, and they want to be confident that their digital experience works for everyone, including people who rely on assistive technology.
What makes an effective accessibility audit?
A digital accessibility audit gives you a clear, honest picture of how well your website, app, documents, or other digital experiences work for people with disabilities and anyone who uses accessibility tools. The goal is simple: Determine whether people can complete the tasks your product was designed to support. It’s not about passing a checklist. It’s about understanding usability for users.
A strong audit starts with understanding your product as a whole. That means looking at the full landscape of your digital content and the ways people interact with it. Instead of testing isolated screens, the audit follows the same user journeys your customers take. This ensures the findings reflect how your product works in practice, not just how it looks in the code.
From there, manual testing becomes the core of the work. Automated scans catch only code-level issues. Manual testing reveals the barriers that stop users from completing their tasks. These include unclear focus order, missing context, inaccessible controls, or interactions that behave differently with assistive technology. Our certified professionals evaluate your product against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), specifically WCAG 2.1 and 2.2, while staying grounded in real‑world usability.
A good audit gives your team results they can act on right away.
Each finding includes:
- Clear descriptions of the issues
- Screenshots with annotations
- Practical guidance that fits into how your team already works
You should be able to take your audit results, create tickets, and start fixing issues without anything getting in the way. That means no proprietary tools or locked formats stand between your team and the work.
We deliver accessible documentation that works wherever you need it. This could be your ticketing system, your design process, a VPAT/ACR, or an internal report. Your audit results belong to you. They stay portable, practical, and completely independent of any single vendor. That kind of openness gives your organization a real advantage.
Equally important, an audit gives you the documentation you need for legal, procurement, and internal reporting. Whether you need an ACR/VPAT or a clear summary for leadership, the audit should provide a credible record of your current state and what needs to happen next.
Finally, an effective audit sets the stage for fixing issues. It shows where barriers appear, why they matter, and how to address them. It’s not a one‑time scan or a static list. The issues list becomes the foundation for meaningful remediation and long‑term accessibility improvements.
Standards and certifications guiding the accessibility audit
While accessibility is more than a compliance exercise, a credible audit must be grounded in established standards. These standards define what accessible digital experiences must include and give organizations a shared framework for measuring progress and demonstrating compliance.
A high‑quality digital accessibility audit evaluates your product against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 or 2.2. WCAG provides the technical criteria used worldwide to assess digital accessibility. The criteria make your audit findings legally defensible, technically accurate, and aligned with global expectations.
While the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 don’t contain specific digital accessibility standards, they are often the basis for demand letters, lawsuits, and procurement requirements. Organizations rely on WCAG to demonstrate how well their digital products support these laws and to show the steps they’re taking to reduce risk.
The people performing the audit matter just as much as the standards. Our audits are led by IAAP‑certified accessibility professionals with deep technical expertise and lived experience using assistive technologies. Their training ensures they can interpret requirements correctly, identify barriers automated tools miss, and evaluate how those barriers affect real user journeys. This reduces the risk of incorrect findings, incomplete guidance, or recommendations that don’t hold up under scrutiny.
Using recognized standards and certified experts also strengthens your legal and operational footing. It ensures your audit results can support procurement conversations, respond to legal inquiries, and guide long‑term accessibility planning.
Scoping an accessibility audit: Reviewing your digital content
Scoping an accessibility audit begins with understanding the full shape of your digital product. Before testing happens, we look at what you have, how much of it there is, and how people interact with it. This includes identifying the websites, mobile apps, documents, videos, kiosks, or software interfaces that make up your digital ecosystem. Different surfaces introduce different interaction patterns. Those patterns determine what needs to be evaluated.
Once we understand the landscape, the focus shifts to how people use your technology. We work with you to identify the most common and most important tasks. These flows represent customer behavior. Those user journeys become the backbone of the audit. They ensure the evaluation reflects practical use rather than a disconnected list of screens.
Scoping also includes determining which assistive technologies, browsers, and operating systems will provide the strongest coverage for your audience. Screen readers, magnifiers, voice input, and keyboard navigation each reveal different types of barriers. Selecting the right combinations keeps the audit focused, efficient, and relevant to your users.
The result is a clearly defined audit scope that concentrates on high‑value flows, high‑traffic areas, and the technologies your customers rely on. This foundation ensures the rest of the audit, including manual testing, issue identification, and documentation, is grounded in how your product works in the real world.
Identifying common user journeys
Once we understand what your product includes, the next step is focusing on how people use it. We look at your most important features, the tasks your customers need to complete, and the places where things typically break down. From there, we identify the key goals. These might include signing in, paying a bill, booking an appointment, or submitting a form. Then, we outline the steps a typical user would take from start to finish.
Those goals become user scenarios and flows. Instead of testing pages in isolation, we define journeys such as “a new customer finds support information and submits a request” or “a returning user logs in and checks their account details.” These flows anchor the audit in real tasks, ensuring we evaluate the experience the way your customers encounter it.
This approach differs from other auditors who may ask for a list of URLs. A page-by-page review can’t show whether someone can complete what they came to do. By building the audit around actual user journeys, the findings reveal how well your product supports people in practice and where barriers interrupt those everyday tasks.
Performing a manual audit
Once the key user journeys are defined, the audit shifts into practical evaluation. Manual testing is when accessibility issues become visible because it shows how your product behaves when someone navigates it with assistive technologies or without a mouse. Automated tools can flag patterns, but they can’t tell you whether a person can complete a task. Manual testing can.
During this phase, we move through each user journey step by step using screen readers, magnifiers, voice input, keyboard navigation, and other assistive technologies. This reveals barriers that only appear in real interactions. These barriers range from missing context and inaccessible controls to unexpected focus changes and components that behave differently depending on the device or input method.
The goal is to understand whether someone can complete the task or where progress breaks down and why. Because the audit is anchored in user journeys, the results reflect both technical conformance and practical usability. Auditors check each issue against WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 to ensure the findings align with recognized standards.
A manual audit provides the depth and accuracy needed to identify meaningful issues. These issues affect people trying to accomplish tasks. It’s the part of the process that turns abstract requirements into concrete, actionable insights your team can use.
Accessibility audit report: Producing a list of issues
A strong audit report makes it easy for your team to understand what’s happening, why it matters, and what to do next. We don’t hand you a static list of issues and call it done. We guide you through the findings with annotated screenshots, explain how each barrier affects users, and answer your team’s questions so you can move forward with confidence.
Each key issue includes the context your team needs to act, including:
- A clear description of the barrier
- How it affects people using assistive technologies
- Where it appears in the user journey
- Relevant annotated w2screenshots
Findings are grouped by severity and user impact, so you’re never guessing which problems to fix first or how to sequence the work. High‑impact barriers rise to the top, and lower‑impact items remain visible without overwhelming your team. This structure helps when multiple teams share responsibility or when resources are limited.
The report also includes practical remediation guidance. Instead of vague recommendations like “improve labeling,” you get specific, actionable steps your designers, developers, and content authors can use immediately. If automated tools surface anything relevant, those results appear in the report to keep everything together.
This approach gives you a report that’s accurate, accessible, and usable. It becomes the foundation for planning, prioritizing, and making meaningful accessibility improvements.
Creating a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) and Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR)
Some organizations need formal documentation to share with enterprise or government buyers. That’s the job of the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) and Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR). These documents summarize what was tested, what was found, and how your product measures up against WCAG 2.1 or 2.2. Because the VPAT/ACR is based on actual testing rather than assumptions, it gives buyers and stakeholders an accurate picture of where your product stands.
Procurement teams rely on the VPAT/ACR to evaluate whether a product meets their accessibility expectations. Large corporations and government agencies often require it before they consider a purchase. When an initial audit reveals multiple issues, the VPAT/ACR becomes the document that explains your starting point and shows that you consistently evaluate your product rather than ignoring accessibility altogether.
A strong VPAT/ACR also helps internal teams. Legal, compliance, and security reviewers use it to understand risk. Product managers use it to plan upcoming work. Sales teams use it to respond to client questionnaires without scrambling for answers. Instead of scattered notes or inconsistent explanations, everyone works from the same authoritative source.
Our role is to complete the VPAT/ACR clearly and accurately, using the audit findings to document support levels for each WCAG criterion. This avoids common pitfalls like vague language, overstatements, or templates filled out by people who haven’t tested the product. The result is a document that stands up to scrutiny and gives stakeholders a reliable understanding of your accessibility status.
The VPAT/ACR doesn’t replace the audit. It formalizes it, becomes part of your documentation trail, and supports the conversations that follow: procurement reviews, client questions, legal inquiries, and remediation planning.
Remediation: Fixing issues and retesting
Once the audit is complete and you have your initial ACR, the next step is deciding what to fix first. We help teams start with the issues that have the greatest impact on people with disabilities. These are the barriers that prevent someone from completing a task, accessing information, or moving through a key flow. Fixing these first makes an immediate difference for the people who use your product.
From there, we work with your team to turn the findings into a workable plan. This involves breaking the prioritized issues into clear, manageable steps that align with how your team works. Whether you use Jira, Asana, GitHub, or another system, we help translate the findings into actionable tickets so no one guesses what needs to be done or why it matters. The goal is to make remediation predictable, organized, and realistic for the time and resources you have available.
Prioritization becomes even more important when teams are stretched. Instead of handing you a long list and leaving you to sort it out, we group issues by user impact and effort so your team can make steady, high-value improvements. This keeps the work focused and prevents low‑impact fixes from pulling attention away from the barriers that matter most.
Documenting your progress
Clear prioritization makes it easier to show progress inside and outside your organization. Teams can reference the most critical issues they’ve resolved, demonstrate how user experience has improved, and share updates with leadership, partners, or customers who need visibility into your accessibility work. We work in 30‑day sprints to help your organization make consistent, measurable improvements.
After remediation, we retest the updated areas to confirm that the barriers are resolved and that no new issues have appeared. Fixing one problem can sometimes create another, so this validation step ensures the improvements hold up in actual use.
Your documentation is updated after retesting. It ensures you have an accurate record of your current state and a clear “after” picture that pairs with the original audit. This makes it easier to report on progress to leadership, procurement teams, and anyone who needs visibility into your accessibility work.
Because the updated findings are already mapped to WCAG criteria, our report gives you everything you need to create a revised VPAT/ACR without starting from scratch.
Making accessibility part of how you work
Accessibility doesn’t become sustainable through audits alone. It grows when teams understand why issues happen, how to prevent them, and how to build accessible practices into everyday work. That’s why we offer ongoing support and training. Training helps teams recognize patterns, avoid recurring issues, and make accessibility part of their regular workflow instead of treating it as a one‑off project.
While an accessibility audit gives you a snapshot of the current state, its real value is in what happens next. The findings become a reference point you can build on as your product, content, and processes evolve. When teams focus on user journeys and practical fixes, the improvements ripple outward. Tasks get easier, barriers drop, and more people can complete what they came to do. These changes don’t just help people with disabilities. They improve the experience for everyone.
This is also a moment to look at where you are today and what’s getting in the way. What’s working well? Where are people getting stuck? What’s the next meaningful step your team can take in the day‑to‑day work of building and maintaining your product? Asking those questions now makes it easier to fold accessibility into your regular processes and keep it there.
Training, ongoing support, and iterative improvements turn the audit from a one‑time assessment into a long‑term capability. You can engage with Equal Entry’s accessibility training any time before, during, or after the audit to strengthen your team’s skills and reduce future issues.
When accessibility becomes part of how your team works, you reduce future issues, ship better experiences, and make your product usable by more people. The audit is the foundation for the work ahead. The ongoing work is what turns accessibility into a durable capability.
If you want support evaluating your product or need a formal ACR/VPAT, reach out to us and we’ll help you take the next step.
