WCAG Audit Tool

A WCAG accessibility audit is a systematic evaluation of a website or web application against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Unlike a quick spot-check, an audit produces a structured report that documents every violation found, maps each to its specific WCAG success criterion, rates its severity, and provides remediation guidance. Audits serve multiple purposes: establishing a compliance baseline, preparing for legal requirements like the ADA or European Accessibility Act, satisfying procurement requirements (especially government Section 508 contracts), and building a prioritized remediation backlog. A complete audit combines automated scanning (fast, comprehensive for machine-detectable issues) with manual testing (keyboard navigation, screen reader verification, cognitive review).

An automated WCAG audit tool evaluates your site's rendered HTML against accessibility rules derived from WCAG success criteria. Key evaluation areas include:

• Perceivable content: Image alt text, video captions, color contrast ratios, content reflow, text spacing
• Operable interfaces: Keyboard accessibility, focus management, skip navigation, motion and animation controls
• Understandable UI: Form labels, error identification, consistent navigation, language attributes
• Robust markup: Valid HTML, ARIA role/state/property correctness, name-role-value for custom widgets

Each finding is classified by impact level — critical, serious, moderate, or minor — so your team knows what to fix first. Critical issues (like keyboard traps or missing form labels on checkout flows) should be addressed immediately; minor issues (like redundant ARIA on native elements) can be scheduled for a later sprint.

Automated tools and manual testing are complementary, not competing approaches:

• Automated audit tools run in seconds, test consistently, and catch 30-40% of WCAG issues. They are ideal for continuous monitoring, regression testing in CI/CD pipelines, and establishing a quick baseline. They detect objective violations: contrast ratios below threshold, missing alt attributes, duplicate IDs, invalid ARIA
• Manual audits require an accessibility specialist using a keyboard and screen reader (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver). They catch issues automated tools cannot: illogical tab order, meaningless alt text, confusing error flows, poor cognitive structure. Manual audits typically take 40-80 hours for a medium-sized site and cost $5,000-$25,000

The most efficient approach: run an automated audit first to eliminate the low-hanging fruit, then invest in manual testing. CompliScan gives you that automated first pass with prioritized, actionable results.

CompliScan performs a real-browser WCAG audit by loading your page in Chromium via Playwright, waiting for JavaScript to execute, and running the industry-standard axe-core engine against the live DOM. The audit produces:

• Compliance score: An overall percentage based on rules passed vs. failed
• Violation list: Every issue found, mapped to its WCAG criterion (e.g., 1.4.3, 2.1.1, 4.1.2)
• Impact classification: Critical, serious, moderate, or minor
• AI fix suggestions: Claude-generated code changes tailored to each violation
• Trend tracking: Dashboard shows your compliance score over time (paid plans)

Run a free audit on any URL right now. For ongoing monitoring, Shield ($49/mo) runs weekly audits on 3 sites, Shield Pro ($149/mo) adds daily audits with PDF reports, and Agency ($299/mo) covers 50 sites with white-label reporting.