itsual Accessibility Audit
Overview
An accessibility audit combines automated checks, manual expert review, and ideally assistive technology testing to find barriers and guide remediation.
When to Use
- Preparing for formal VPAT/ACR or compliance goals
- Baseline assessment of an existing product
- Post-release regression audits
- Prioritizing accessibility debt
Core Practices
- Define scope, standards (e.g., WCAG 2.2 AA), and target level
- Run automated scans — then go far beyond them
- Manually test keyboard access, focus order, and semantics
- Test with screen readers on key user journeys
- Check contrast, reflow, zoom, and motion preferences
- Rank issues by severity and user impact
- Produce a remediation plan with owners
Principles
- Automation catches only a fraction of issues
- Real assistive technology use reveals what tools miss
- Fix systemic component issues at the source
- Audit is continuous, not one-time
Verification
- Critical user journeys work with keyboard and screen reader
- Issues are severity-rated and tracked
- Component-level fixes are preferred over one-off patches