Free ADA Compliance Audit
Get an instant WCAG 2.1 Level AA audit of your website. The same violations plaintiff law firms check for, with prioritized fixes. No signup.
How it works
We crawl the page and test it against the 50 WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria that courts reference in ADA Title III cases.
Every violation comes with severity, WCAG rule citation, the specific HTML element, and a developer-ready fix prompt.
Fix the highest-severity issues first. Paid plans re-audit your whole site weekly so regressions don't turn into demand letters.
What an ADA compliance audit actually checks
An ADA compliance audit is a structured assessment of your website against the Americans with Disabilities Act and the WCAG 2.1 Level AA standard that courts use to interpret it. It is the single most effective tool for identifying legal exposure before a plaintiff attorney does.
Audits fall into three categories. Automated audits use scanning tools to flag machine-detectable violations. Manual audits have an accessibility specialist test the site with keyboard, screen reader, and zoom. Hybrid audits combine both, plus user testing with people who have disabilities. Which one you need depends on your risk profile, site complexity, and budget.
The 50 criteria an audit covers
WCAG 2.1 Level AA has 50 testable success criteria organized under four principles. A complete ADA compliance audit touches every one of them.
- Perceivable (14 criteria). Alt text on images, captions on videos, sufficient color contrast, resizable text, content that works with screen magnifiers, and no reliance on color alone to convey meaning.
- Operable (21 criteria). Keyboard access to all features, no keyboard traps, skip navigation links, visible focus indicators, sufficient time to complete tasks, no flashing content, and clear page titles.
- Understandable (11 criteria). Language declaration, labels on every form field, clear error messages, consistent navigation across pages, and predictable behavior when controls receive focus.
- Robust (4 criteria). Valid, semantic HTML. Proper ARIA when needed. Status messages announced to assistive tech. Compatibility with current and future assistive technologies.
Automated vs manual ADA audits
The honest truth about automated ADA compliance audits is that they catch about 30 to 40% of WCAG issues. That number sounds low until you look at what they actually catch.
The violations automated audits find, missing alt text, unlabeled form fields, insufficient contrast, empty links, missing document language, broken heading hierarchy, are the exact issues most commonly cited in ADA demand letters. Plaintiff firms use automated scanning because it scales. They can evaluate hundreds of websites per day and send demand letters to anyone whose site lights up the scanner.
If your website passes automated audits, you have removed the easiest targets. You won't be the low-hanging fruit in a plaintiff firm's pipeline. That alone cuts your lawsuit risk substantially.
Where manual audits add value
Manual ADA audits catch what automation misses. A trained accessibility specialist will find issues like:
- Illogical tab order. Keyboard users reach elements in an order that does not match the visual layout, making the page disorienting.
- Custom widgets with broken semantics. A dropdown that looks right but does not announce state changes to screen readers.
- Alt text that is technically present but unhelpful. Images with alt="image" or alt="photo" pass automated checks but fail their purpose.
- Inaccessible modal dialogs. Focus that does not trap inside the modal, or that does not return to the trigger when the modal closes.
- Error messages that do not announce. A form that turns fields red on validation but never tells a screen reader user anything went wrong.
What an ADA compliance audit costs
Audit pricing varies by scope. Here's what the market looks like in 2026.
- Free automated audit. Run one right now. Covers a single page or can crawl full sites on paid plans. Delivers a prioritized violation list with fixes.
- Professional manual audit, small site. $1,500 to $5,000 for a 5 to 20 page site. Includes written conformance report, keyboard testing, screen reader testing, and a remediation roadmap.
- Professional manual audit, medium site. $5,000 to $15,000 for 20 to 100 pages. Typically samples representative templates rather than every page.
- Enterprise audit with user testing. $15,000 to $50,000+. Includes testing sessions with people with disabilities, documentation reviews, and in-depth reporting suitable for large organizations and DOJ-level scrutiny.
- Ongoing audit subscription. $29 to $299 per month. Continuous automated crawling of your full site, alerts on regressions, and historical tracking. This is how you stay compliant after the one-time audit.
Why ongoing audits matter more than one-time audits
A one-time audit is a snapshot. The day after the auditor delivers the report, someone on your team uploads an image without alt text, and now your site is out of compliance again. Over six months that drift compounds. By the time the next annual audit happens, there could be hundreds of new violations.
Continuous automated audits catch regressions the week they happen. When a developer ships a theme update that breaks contrast, you know Monday morning, not when a demand letter arrives. This is the difference between an audit as a project and accessibility as a practice.
Reading an ADA audit report
A good audit report gives you more than a list of failures. You should see four things for every finding.
- WCAG citation. The specific success criterion violated (for example, "1.1.1 Non-text Content" or "4.1.2 Name, Role, Value").
- Severity. Critical violations block users from completing tasks. Serious ones create significant barriers. Moderate ones are annoyances. Fix critical first.
- Location. The URL, the specific element (CSS selector or XPath), and surrounding HTML so your developer can find it in seconds.
- Remediation. A concrete fix, ideally as a code diff or copy-paste suggestion. If the audit just says "add alt text," it is not helping enough.
Our free ADA compliance audit delivers all four for every finding. Paste your URL above and you'll get your report in about 30 seconds.
After the audit: prioritizing fixes
A typical first audit for an unmaintained small business site turns up 50 to 300 violations. That can feel overwhelming. The trick is prioritizing by two dimensions: severity and frequency.
Fix global issues first
Some violations appear on every page because they live in the template. Missing skip navigation link? Every page. Missing document language? Every page. Header logo without an accessible name? Every page. Fixing one line in your template closes hundreds of individual findings. These are always the highest-leverage fixes.
Then fix demand-letter favorites
After template fixes, prioritize the violations plaintiff firms cite most often: missing image alt text, unlabeled form inputs, insufficient contrast, empty buttons, keyboard traps, and inaccessible checkout flows. These are the issues that end up in demand letters. Closing them moves you out of the high-risk bucket.
Finally, address edge cases
Once globals and demand-letter issues are cleared, work through the long tail: individual pages with unique problems, custom widgets that need manual remediation, third-party embeds with limited control. These require more engineering time but have smaller legal impact.
Get your free ADA compliance audit now. WCAG 2.1 AA. Prioritized findings. No signup.
Run ADA auditFrequently asked questions
What does a professional ADA compliance audit include?
A professional audit combines automated scanning with manual testing. You get a written WCAG 2.1 AA conformance report, keyboard navigation testing, screen reader testing, zoom and magnification testing, a severity-ranked violation list, and a remediation roadmap. Good auditors also provide a kickoff call, mid-project check-in, and a remediation review after you fix the findings.
Can I do an ADA compliance audit myself?
Yes for the automated portion. Run our free scan on your key pages. For the manual portion, you can do a useful first pass in an hour: unplug your mouse and navigate with keyboard alone, then turn on your system screen reader and listen to a couple of pages. That will surface the worst issues. For a full professional audit suitable for legal documentation, hire a specialist.
How long does an ADA compliance audit take?
Our free automated audit takes about 30 seconds per page. A professional manual audit for a small site takes 1 to 3 weeks. A full enterprise audit with user testing takes 4 to 8 weeks. Ongoing automated audits run in the background on your full site, usually weekly.
Do I need a new audit after every website change?
Yes, or close to it. Every content change, theme update, plugin install, and new page can introduce violations. That's why continuous automated auditing matters. It runs after every deploy so you catch regressions immediately. A full manual re-audit once a year or after major redesigns is usually enough on top of that.
Is an ADA audit the same as a Section 508 audit?
They overlap heavily. Section 508 applies to federal agencies and federal contractors. It uses WCAG 2.0 Level AA as its technical standard (Revised 508 standards, in force since 2018). ADA audits typically use WCAG 2.1 AA, which is a superset of WCAG 2.0 AA. If your site passes a WCAG 2.1 AA audit, it almost certainly passes Section 508 too. See our Section 508 page for specifics.
What's the difference between an audit and a checker?
They're the same thing. A compliance checker, an accessibility scanner, and an automated audit all refer to tools that scan your site for WCAG violations. "Audit" is the more formal term used when you need documentation. The output is essentially identical when powered by the same underlying engine.
Will an audit report protect me in a lawsuit?
A recent audit combined with a documented remediation plan is evidence of good faith. Courts and plaintiff firms generally treat businesses actively working on compliance differently from those ignoring their obligations. It does not grant immunity, but it often reduces settlement amounts and can strengthen procedural defenses.
Related: ADA compliance checker · Accessibility audit · WCAG 2.1 checker · What is ADA compliance · ADA compliance consultant · Section 508 checker · Lawsuit risk checker
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