Website audit
Website Accessibility Audit: The WCAG Checklist Your Site Should Pass
July 14, 20267 min readUpdated August 17, 2026
Accessibility isn't a compliance box — it's the difference between a site a fifth of your visitors can use and one they can't. WCAG 2.2 organizes everything under four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (POUR). Here's the audit checklist we run, split into what a machine can check and what only a human can.
Why this is a business issue, not just a legal one
Roughly one in six people lives with a disability, and most of those visitors are on mobile, where accessibility problems multiply. Sites that ignore it lose those visitors, risk legal exposure (ADA lawsuits are rising every year), and — because search engines increasingly weigh usability — rank worse. A barrier to one user is a barrier to Google's crawler too.
Automated checks you can run right now
- Color contrast: body text at least 4.5:1 against its background; large text 3:1.
- Alt text: meaningful images have descriptive alt, decorative images have empty alt.
- Form labels: every input, select, and textarea has an associated label.
- Document language: the <html> lang attribute matches the page's language.
- Link text: no 'click here' or bare URLs — link text describes the destination.
- Heading order: H1 → H2 → H3 in sequence, no skipped levels.
- Name, role, value: interactive elements expose their name, role, and state to assistive tech.
Manual checks machines always miss
- Keyboard walkthrough: tab through the whole page — can you reach and operate everything, in a logical order, with a visible focus ring?
- Screen reader pass: listen to the page top to bottom — does the content order make sense, and are headings announced as headings?
- Zoom to 200%: does the layout reflow without horizontal scrolling or overlapping text?
- Motion: with prefers-reduced-motion on, are carousels, parallax, and animations toned down?
- Time limits: can a user pause, extend, or disable auto-advancing content?
- Error recovery: do form errors identify the field, explain the problem, and offer a fix?
The fixes that matter most
If you only fix five things, fix these: keyboard operability (no interactive element should be mouse-only), contrast (the most common automated failure by far), form labels (screen reader users can't guess), focus visibility (keyboard users need to know where they are), and captions on video. Together they cover the majority of real-world barriers and the majority of WCAG A/AA failures.
Keep it accessible, not just 'audited'
Accessibility decays the moment new code ships without it. Add automated checks to CI, run a manual keyboard pass on every release, and make accessibility a review criterion for new components rather than a cleanup project. An accessibility audit is a snapshot; an accessible culture is the actual product.
The automated half of an accessibility audit — contrast, alt text, labels, structure — is part of what a free website audit scores, so you can see where you stand before the manual pass.
Frequently asked questions
What is a website accessibility audit?+
A review of whether everyone — keyboard users, screen reader users, low-vision visitors — can use your site, organized under WCAG's four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. It splits into automated checks (contrast, alt text, labels) and manual ones (a keyboard walkthrough, a screen reader pass).
What is WCAG?+
WCAG 2.2 is the accessibility standard behind most legal requirements, organized into levels A, AA, and AAA. The checklist in this guide covers the automated and manual checks that catch the majority of A/AA failures.
What are the most important accessibility fixes?+
Fix five things first: keyboard operability, color contrast, form labels, visible focus states, and captions on video. Together they cover most real-world barriers and most WCAG A/AA failures.