Our small business clients are increasingly gravitating towards what we call “mini audits.” Mini audits are website accessibility audits where the scope is reduced to a core set of pages (e.g., 5 pages).
These work out great for clients and provide extra value in ways you might not expect. In this post, we’ll explain how mini audits started trending organically and all of the benefits they provide.
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The Story
All Accessible.org services are available à la carte. We like clients to have options and flexibility which means you can order exactly what accessibility services you need – no packages, no plans, no subscriptions. Our pricing is transparent and straightforward – and for website accessibility audits, the range is $200 to $350 per page. You simply multiply that by the number of pages you want to audit.
When clients request an ADA website audit, we recommend a comprehensive scope and typically include:
- Primary page layouts
- Main user flows
- Most important pages
- Pages with unique or significant content
However, when small business owners contemplate our per page rate, some ask us about just having 5 or 7 pages in scope.
This is where mini audits come in. Instead of auditing 13+ pages, we focus on a core set of essesntial pages. And while this isn’t as comprehensive as a full audit, there’s still tremendous value to be gained.
The Benefits of Mini Audits
Quality Remains Unchanged
Reducing scope doesn’t mean reducing quality. You’re getting the exact same level of expert evaluation and detailed recommendations – just for fewer pages. There’s no sacrifice in service quality whatsoever.
Educational Value
One of the most overlooked benefits is the educational aspect. When digital teams work through audit reports, they learn about accessibility in the most effective way possible – through hands-on experience.
And not only do teams gain accessibility knowledge through experiential learning, they also win in learning changes that they can make on pages not within scope. In the audit report, each issue we identify comes with:
- Precise location information (where exactly it is)
- Recommended fixes (including code suggestions)
- Relevant WCAG success criteria (so the exact requirement can be referenced)
This means your accessibility arc picks up present and future wins.
For now, despite having a reduced scope, if your team extrapolates the results, they can figure out where accessibility issues exist elsewhere on the website. And, in the future, your team can start to implement some of what they learned into their development, design, and content creation processes.
Manageable Scope
Here’s the reality: a 25-page audit can result in literally hundreds of accessibility issues. For smaller teams, this can be overwhelming and might never get fully addressed.
In a way, a five-page audit creates a more manageable project scope where there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Your team can narrow their focus and chip away at 50-70 issues vs. 250 issues.
There’s nothing wrong with taking on a big accessibility project, but sometimes the task becomes too big for digital teams – especially if they’re new to accessibility. A smaller audit makes it easier to sprint to the finishline whereas larger audits can feel like a marathon that developers never wanted to sign up for.
Budget-Friendly Value
For many organizations – and small businesses especially, mini audits offer several practical advantages:
- More affordable entry point: a lower cost enables organizations with lower budgets to make progress on accessibility
- Focus on key pages with the highest impact: there’s more ROI for accessibility with the pages that are trafficked the most
- Ability to work on secondary pages in future phases: just because you start with a smaller audit scope doesn’t mean you can’t expand that scope after the first phase of remediation is completed
- Flexibility to expand when ready: because our services are available individually, you can always pick up with more pages when you’re ready
The Right Approach for Many Organizations
Something we talk about a lot with scanning tools is that there’s limited value in scanning your entire website at once – you can only address so many issues at a time anyway. The same idea applies here, albeit on a smaller scale. It can easily be more effective to focus on doing a thorough job with a smaller scope than to get overwhelmed by trying to fix everything at once.
Of course, there’s still absolutely a place for comprehensive audits, especially when you need:
- Statements of conformance
- Certification
- VPAT completion
- Full mobile app accessibility reviews
But for many organizations, especially small businesses just trying to make their websites ADA compliant so they don’t get sued, mini audits provide a practical, effective approach to improving web accessibility. They allow you to make meaningful progress while working within your resource constraints.
This wasn’t something we initially planned when we set up our à la carte pricing model – it emerged naturally from client conversations and needs. And we expect this trend to continue.
Do you need help with an accessibility audit?
Contact us to discuss your website and which audit option would work best for your organization. Our team is ready to help you with accessibility.
