Many digital accessibility companies (or hybrid SaaS types) have posited the idea of “automated audits” or “automated testing” in the minds of many buyers.
Lucrative Push
And for a very lucrative reason: selling software “solutions” for accessibility is very profitable.
So this notion is pushed heavily in the marketplace. You’ll even see some articles ridiculously titled, “How to Run an Accessibility Audit.”
This push leads some prospective clients to ask us: are your audits manual or automated?
100% Manual
The answer is all genuine audits are 100% manual. The word manual is implicit with an accessibility audit (or an ADA website compliance audit, as it is sometimes referred to). Use of a scan during an audit should be merely as a secondary check – not as the primary evaluation method.
Any suggestion of an automated audit is simply marketing. Referencing “automated testing” is just trying to make a scan a scan, that is ubiquitous and free, sound fancy.
Scans are Everywhere
There are literally dozens of scans in the marketplace that are more or less the same thing. Some may flag / partially flag a few more accessibility issues, but no matter much hype they have (e.g., #1 ADA compliance checker), they’re essentially the same thing.
WAVE and AXE scans are our two favorites. WAVE is more beginner friendly and educational and AXE is made by Deque and more developer oriented. Both are fine scans and both are 100% free for single pages.
Paid Scans
Are premium scans worth it?
No. Unless you know exactly how you will get a return on value from a scan, there’s no reason to buy one.
You might say, well we can scan our entire website with the paid version.
And our reply would be, well how many pages can your team work on at once?
Scan Softening
Anyway, the point is that no reputable seller will insinuate an audit is automated. But what you also have to look out for is the softening of the harsh reality of automation.
Some vendors will admit that some manual work is necessary. They might tell you that they combine automated testing with screen reader testing and that 1+1 formula is what you need.
Not at all. You never rely on automated results for an audit.
What is an Audit?
An audit is a formal evaluation of a digital asset (in this case a website) where one or more technical accessibility experts grade the asset against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or another standard by meticulously and systematically evaluating the asset using multiple methodologies.
It’s always great to include a scan as a part of the review process to ensure any issues that can be correctly flagged by a scan are included in the audit, but you never copy and paste the audit results into the final audit report.
Final Words
This is a source of confusion for many buyers (understandably so) so we wanted to provide a definitive answer for those researching audit services.
If you need an accessibility audit for your website (or another digital asset) we’re happy to help. Just send us a message and we’ll reply back immediately.
