What the accessibility audit examines
Automated tools reliably catch a subset of accessibility problems — contrast ratios, missing labels, absent alt attributes — and a static read of the markup misses the rest. So the keyboard and screen-reader checks are run with real browser automation against the live page, and every finding is reviewed by the auditor before it reaches the report.
- Text contrast meets WCAG AA — Text and interface elements measured against WCAG 2.1 AA ratios, including hover, focus and disabled states, and text sitting over images or gradients.
- Every image has appropriate alt text — Images, icons and media checked for meaningful alt text, and decorative images checked for correctly empty alt attributes.
- Every form field has a real label — Every input associated with a visible, programmatic label; error messages announced rather than only coloured; required fields marked in more than one way.
- The whole site is keyboard operable — Tab order, visible focus indicators, keyboard traps, skip links, and whether every interactive control can be reached and operated without a mouse. Validated with browser automation on the live page.
- Key journeys work with a screen reader — Primary journeys walked through with a screen reader to check names, roles, states and dynamic announcements. Validated with browser automation on the live page.
- Layout holds at 320px and 400% zoom — Layout across breakpoints, touch target sizes, zoom and orientation support, and content that becomes unreachable on a narrow viewport.
How findings are produced and rated
Each finding names the WCAG success criterion it relates to, the pages or components affected, and what a user experiences as a result. Severity is driven by consequence rather than by count: a single unlabelled field in a checkout flow is critical, because it blocks a task outright, while low contrast on a footer caption is medium.
Component-level problems are reported once, at the component, with a list of the pages that render it. Fixing a design-system button fixes it everywhere, and the report is ordered to reflect that.
Findings this audit commonly surfaces
- Images missing alt text
- Low colour contrast
- Form fields without labels
- Heading structure problems
- Missing viewport meta tag
What this audit is not
The report references WCAG 2.1 success criteria, but it is an expert assessment — not a legal conformance statement, VPAT, or certification, and it is not testing with a panel of disabled users. Where full conformance evidence is required, an audit like this is the step that tells you how far away you are and what to fix first.
Related categories
Accessibility overlaps with two other parts of the audit. Alt text also appears in the SEO audit, because the same attribute serves both purposes; layout shift and slow-loading content are handled in the performance audit, since instability affects anyone using a magnifier or a slow connection most of all. The scoring rules for all categories are on the methodology page.