By far our most popular service is accessibility audits and many clients are specifically interested in certification along with the audit. (By the way, good news if you’re in the certification group: we issue certification at no charge – it’s a result of our services.)
The majority of our clients want documentation of their accessibility efforts – whether it’s Accessible.org certification, a conformance statement, and/or a VPAT/ACR. And understandably so, it’s demonstrable evidence of WCAG 2.1 AA conformance, legal compliance, and/or another objective.
Let’s lay out the process and the details that from client request to certification.
Table of Contents
Why an Audit is Necessary for Certification
An accessibility audit is necessary for certification for a few reasons:
- We need to first identify all of the accessibility issues
- We need to validate that issues identified have been fixed
- An audit is necessary to show that identification and validation have taken place
The validation phase of this is basically a re-audit where the auditor is only focused on the issues that have previously been identified.
So the simple answer to how an accessibility audit leads to your website (or other digital asset) being certified is that an audit tells us your website meets all requirements under a given technical standard.
Initial Consultation
When a client contacts us about certification, we assess what they need:
- What is the specific digital asset that needs to be certified (website, web app, mobile app)?
- Which technical standard should be used (typically WCAG 2.1 AA)?
- What is the scope of pages/screens to be included?
- Is there a specific date the client needs the certification by?
During this phase, we help the client understand that certification isn’t something you purchase—it’s earned through full conformance with the technical standard. A very important note on this: there are no exceptions, full conformance for a given technical standard and scope must be met.
Scoping and Proposal
Based on our initial consultation, we create a proposal that includes:
- Scope (which pages/screens will be evaluated)
- Cost breakdown
- Timeline (usually 1-2 weeks for an audit)
- All details, including audit details
Most audit costs range between $2,500 and $7,500 depending on complexity and scope. The more pages/screens, interactive elements, and environments that need to be tested, the higher the investment.
The Comprehensive Audit
Once the proposal is accepted, we conduct a fully manual accessibility audit using multiple diverse methodologies:
- Screen reader testing (NVDA, JAWS, or VoiceOver)
- Keyboard-only navigation testing
- Visual inspection
- Code inspection
- Browser zoom (200% and 400%)
- Color contrast analysis
- AXE automated scan (as a secondary check only)
This thorough approach ensures we identify all instances of non-conformance with the technical standard.
Audit Report Delivery
Following the audit, we deliver a comprehensive report that includes:
- Detailed findings for each identified issue
- Steps to reproduce each issue
- Associated WCAG success criteria
- Recommendations for remediation
- Screenshots or clips illustrating issues
This report serves as the foundation for the remediation phase.
Remediation Phase
With the audit report in hand, clients typically have two options:
- In-house remediation: Your development team implements fixes based on our recommendations
- Assisted remediation: We provide technical support hours to help your team implement fixes correctly
Most clients opt for a hybrid approach—they handle the majority of fixes in-house but purchase 2-5 technical support hours ($195/hour) to help with the more complex issues and validate that fixes are implemented correctly.
Note that even if a client fully takes on remediation without assistance, we still usually need 2 hours for validation.
Tracking Progress with Accessibility Tracker
We’ve been promoting our new Accessibility Tracker as the fisherman’s catch of the day for the last month or so.
Tracker does a lot of things, but what’s relevant here is it makes tracking your team’s remediation progress easier. There’s a column you can check to mark each issue as complete.
But what it also does – and here’s the kicker – is it also enables your auditor to mark issues as validated/fixed correctly. If it’s not fixed correctly, the auditor can leave a note and tell you what else needs to happen.
And you don’t have to be an Accessible.org client to get this mega hours time saving feature.
If you’ve been through an accessibility project where two or more people are collaborating, there’s a lot of back-and-forth which can be highly inefficient for multiple reasons, one being that people aren’t on the same page.
Tracker was deliberately designed by us to be a centralized hub where the focus is solely on the audit and everyone is literally on the same page.
Which, of course, leads to certification faster.
Validation Process
As issues are fixed, we validate each one to ensure it truly resolves the accessibility issue:
- We check each fix using the same testing methodologies from the audit
- Fixed issues are marked as validated
- If issues remain, we provide additional guidance
This validation ensures that remediation is effective and complete.
Certification Issuance
When all issues within the defined scope have been properly fixed and validated, we can issue certification documentation. This certification:
- Confirms full conformance with the specified technical standard
- Defines the exact scope of certification
- Includes the date of issuance
- Explains our evaluation methodologies
- States our qualifications as accessibility experts
Note: Certification is only issued when there is full conformance with the technical standard for the entire defined scope. There are no exceptions to this rule, as it aligns with the W3C’s conformance requirements.
Types of Documentation
Depending on client needs, we can provide:
- Accessible.org Certification: Our formal certification document
- Conformance Statement: This document overlaps with certification and follows all rules for a statement conformance, per the W3C
- VPAT/ACR: For products and services where an ACR is required for purchase
Although ACRs aren’t certification (full conformance isn’t a prerequisite), they’re similar to certification in that they document the state of a digital asset’s accessibility.
Summary
Going from audit to certification involves multiple steps but follows a logical progression:
- Initial consultation and scoping
- Manual audit
- Detailed report delivery
- Remediation of issues
- Validation of fixes
- Certification issuance
The entire process typically takes 4-8 weeks, depending on the scope and how quickly your team can implement fixes.
Ready to start your audit? We’re happy to help – just send us a message and we’ll be right with you.
Visit AccessibilityTracker.com if you’d like to find out more about our audit progress tracking software.
