# What Is an Accessibility Audit? WCAG 2.2 Explained | Gr8r > An accessibility audit checks a site or app against WCAG using automated scans, manual checks and assistive tech. How it works and why scans aren't enough. Source: https://gr8rstudio.com/glossary/accessibility-audit Glossary 路 Product # Accessibility audit (WCAG audit) An accessibility audit is a structured evaluation of a website or app against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It combines automated scans, manual checks by a person and testing with assistive technology to find the barriers disabled people meet, and it maps each failure to the WCAG success criterion it breaks. [Get a UX audit](https://gr8rstudio.com/services/ux-audit)[All terms](https://gr8rstudio.com/glossary) In one line An accessibility audit checks a site or app against WCAG, by tool and by hand, and lists each barrier with the rule it breaks. Related - [UX audit](https://gr8rstudio.com/glossary/ux-audit) - [Heuristic evaluation](https://gr8rstudio.com/glossary/heuristic-evaluation) - [Design system](https://gr8rstudio.com/glossary/design-system) - $115M+ Client Funding - [ 1.8K+ GitHub Stars ](https://github.com/gr8rstudio/gr8r-studio) - 50+ Projects Shipped AI helps us move faster. Our team makes the decisions and stands behind the work. - hyperAI On this page 1. [Why an accessibility audit matters](#s-0) 2. [What WCAG 2.2 adds](#s-1) 3. [How an accessibility audit works](#s-2) 4. [Accessibility audit vs automated scan](#s-3) 5. [What each kind of accessibility check finds](#s-4) 6. [What an accessibility audit report should contain](#s-5) 7. [When you need a formal accessibility audit](#s-6) 8. [How Gr8r handles accessibility in audits](#s-7) ## Why an accessibility audit matters If a screen reader user can't get past your signup form, they can't become a customer. Accessibility problems often hide in the places teams test least: custom dropdowns, modals, date pickers and drag-and-drop. There's a commercial and legal side too. UK public sector services must meet WCAG 2.2 level AA as a minimum, and GOV.UK warns that falling short may break the law. W3C notes that conformance reviews are also used to give information to buyers, which matters if you sell software to large organisations. ## What WCAG 2.2 adds WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023 and adds nine success criteria to WCAG 2.1\. One older criterion, 4.1.1 Parsing, was removed as obsolete. Several of the new criteria hit SaaS products directly. Focused items must not be fully hidden behind sticky headers or cookie banners. Pointer targets should be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels or have enough space around them. Login shouldn't depend on memorising or retyping things, so password managers and paste need to work. ## How an accessibility audit works W3C's evaluation methodology, WCAG-EM, sets out five steps. Define the scope and target level, explore the product, select a representative sample, evaluate it and report the findings. Sampling is what keeps a large app manageable. In practice, the auditor runs automated tools first. Then they work through each sample by hand: keyboard only, with a screen reader and zoomed in. They check contrast, labels, headings and error messages, and log each failure against the WCAG success criterion it breaks. ## Accessibility audit vs automated scan An automated scan is a tool such as Axe or WAVE checking your code against rules it can test by machine. It's fast and worth running on every build. But W3C is blunt: no tool alone can determine whether a site meets accessibility standards, and knowledgeable human evaluation is required. A scanner can tell you an image has no alt text. It can't tell you whether existing alt text makes sense, or whether the tab order through your pricing table is logical. GOV.UK's guidance is to do both, because you'll miss issues with automated testing alone. ## What each kind of accessibility check finds Three kinds of check are often confused. They find different things, and a full picture needs all three. | Check | Who does it | What it finds | What it misses | | ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Automated scan | A tool such as Axe or WAVE | Rules a machine can test: missing labels, missing alt text, some contrast failures | Whether the label or alt text makes sense, and whether a task can be completed | | Expert audit | A trained person, by keyboard, screen reader and zoom | Failures against each WCAG success criterion across a sample of pages and states | How disabled people actually use the product day to day | | Testing with disabled people | Participants who use assistive technology | Usability problems that a conformance review does not surface | Full coverage: a few sessions cannot check every criterion | W3C is direct about the first row: "Web accessibility evaluation tools can not determine accessibility, they can only assist in doing so." It says the same about the third. Testing with users finds issues a conformance evaluation misses, "yet that alone cannot determine if a website is accessible". ## What an accessibility audit report should contain A report you can act on has the same parts, whoever writes it: - **Scope.** Which pages, templates, states and user journeys were reviewed, and which were not. - **Target.** The WCAG version and level you are aiming for, usually 2.2 at level AA. - **Sample.** How the pages were chosen, so the result can be repeated later. - **Findings.** Each failure with a screenshot, where it happens and the success criterion it breaks. - **Fixes.** A recommended change for each finding, specific enough for an engineer to build. Ask for the findings in a form your team can track, not only as a PDF. A failure that has no owner tends to survive the next release. ## When you need a formal accessibility audit Not every team needs a formal conformance audit, and it helps to know which situation you are in. You need one when someone outside the team will rely on the result: a buyer who asks for evidence of conformance during procurement, a public sector contract with accessibility requirements, or a legal duty in the markets you sell to. In those cases the method, the sample and the report format matter, and the audit should be done by a specialist. You can start smaller when the goal is to remove barriers from the flows that matter most. An expert review of sign-up, checkout and the main task, by keyboard and with a screen reader, finds a large share of the problems people actually hit. Fix those, add automated checks to your build, and commission the formal audit when you can pass it. ## How Gr8r handles accessibility in audits Our UX audit flags accessibility problems we find in the flows we review. Typical ones are low contrast, unlabelled form fields and controls you can't reach by keyboard. They're ranked by severity alongside the other findings. That isn't the same as a formal WCAG conformance audit. If you need one for procurement or a legal requirement, we'll tell you plainly. Our [UX audit](https://gr8rstudio.com/services/ux-audit) is free for the first 5 companies that ask. You can [request the free UX audit](https://gr8rstudio.com/free-audit). For how we walk a site screen by screen, see [how to do a website UX audit](https://gr8rstudio.com/blog/how-to-do-a-website-ux-audit), and for the wider method see [UX audit](https://gr8rstudio.com/glossary/ux-audit) in this glossary. From our own audits Two audits of products we built show what this looks like in practice. In the [Veluno UX audit](https://gr8rstudio.com/work/veluno-ux-audit) we found 13 issues. One of the three high ones was supplier rows that the Tab key skips, so a keyboard user cannot reach them. In the [Cendara UX audit](https://gr8rstudio.com/work/cendara-ux-audit) we ran scripted accessibility checks with axe-core on eight screens as part of the review, and wrote up 12 findings. Built by Gr8r for its own portfolio. Not client work. Both are expert reviews with automated checks, not formal WCAG conformance audits. ## Go deeper on Accessibility audit - [ The Startup Website Launch Checklist, Page by Page A startup website launch checklist, page by page: sitewide checks, homepage, pricing, demo and sign up, blog, legal, AI crawlers and the first week. ](https://gr8rstudio.com/blog/startup-website-launch-checklist) - [ How to Do a Website UX Audit, Screen by Screen How to do a UX audit screen by screen: what to check on the home page, pricing, sign up, onboarding, checkout and settings, with a checklist for each. ](https://gr8rstudio.com/blog/how-to-do-a-website-ux-audit) Reviewed by [Tanjim Islam](https://gr8rstudio.com/about/tanjim-islam), Founder & CEO 路 Updated 12 November 2026 Sources - [W3C WAI: What's New in WCAG 2.2](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/new-in-22/) - [W3C WAI: WCAG-EM Overview](https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/conformance/wcag-em/) - [GOV.UK Service Manual: Testing for accessibility](https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/helping-people-to-use-your-service/testing-for-accessibility) - [W3C WAI: Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools](https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/tools/selecting/) - [W3C WAI: Involving Users in Evaluating Web Accessibility](https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/involving-users/) FAQ ## Accessibility audit questions answered Ask anything else - Can an automated tool make my site WCAG compliant? No. W3C says tools can assist evaluation but can't determine accessibility on their own, and some checks can't be automated at all. Use scanners for quick, regular checks and humans for the judgement calls. - What is the difference between WCAG A, AA and AAA? They're conformance levels, with A the most basic and AAA the strictest. AA is the level most organisations aim for, and it's the minimum the UK government requires for its services. - How long does an accessibility audit take? It depends on how many distinct templates, views and flows are in scope. WCAG-EM uses a representative sample rather than every page. A product built on consistent components is quicker to audit than one full of one-off screens. - Do you need disabled people to test your product? It's strongly recommended. WCAG-EM recommends involving real users with disabilities during evaluation, and GOV.UK's Service Standard expects services to be tested with disabled and older users. - How often should you run an accessibility audit? Run automated and manual checks continuously during development, then a formal audit before major releases. GOV.UK, for example, requires an audit before a service enters public beta and testing every time a new feature is added after that. ## Terms related to Accessibility audit - [ 01 UX auditA UX audit is a structured expert review of a website or app's main flows. It finds usability problems, ranks them by severity and recommends a specific fix for each, drawing on established heuristics and guidelines rather than new research with users. It ends with a prioritised report and a walkthrough. Explore ](https://gr8rstudio.com/glossary/ux-audit) - [ 02 Heuristic evaluationHeuristic evaluation is a usability inspection method in which a small group of evaluators independently judge an interface against established guidelines, usually Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics. It finds likely design problems quickly and without testing with users, and works on live products and on designs that are not built yet. Explore ](https://gr8rstudio.com/glossary/heuristic-evaluation) - [ 03 Design systemA design system is a shared library of reusable components, visual styles and usage rules, kept in both design tools and code, together with the people who keep it current. It helps teams build consistent, accessible products faster as the product and the team grow. Explore ](https://gr8rstudio.com/glossary/design-system) ## Book a call with our CEO. Pick a time that suits you. 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