A digital accessibility audit tells you, page by page, where people with disabilities can’t use your website — and exactly what to change. For Ontario organisations it is also the most reliable way to show that a site meets the accessibility rules under the AODA. This guide walks through the whole process: who needs an accessibility audit, the eight steps of a proper one, what the report should contain, and what it costs.
The audience is not small. According to Statistics Canada’s 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability, 27% of Canadians aged 15 and over — about 8 million people — have at least one disability. Many more are temporarily injured, ageing into lower vision, or using a phone in bright sunlight. Accessible sites work better for all of them.
What a Digital Accessibility Audit Covers
An accessibility audit is a structured evaluation of your website against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the international standard published by the W3C. The current version, WCAG 2.2, became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023. Its success criteria are grouped under four principles, often shortened to POUR:
- Perceivable: information can be perceived in more than one way — text alternatives for images, captions for video, enough contrast, layouts that adapt.
- Operable: everything works with a keyboard and other inputs, people have enough time, and nothing flashes in a way that can trigger seizures.
- Understandable: text is readable, pages behave predictably, and forms help people avoid and correct mistakes.
- Robust: the code is clean enough that browsers and assistive technologies, such as screen readers, interpret it correctly.
What an audit is not: a badge from an automated scanner or an “accessibility overlay” widget. Overlays change how a page looks after it loads, but they don’t fix the underlying code, and they can’t make a site conform on their own. A real accessibility audit finds the barriers themselves, so they can be fixed at the source.
Who Needs an Accessibility Audit in Ontario?
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) sets the rules through its Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation. For websites, the key requirement is this: designated public-sector organisations and private or non-profit organisations with 50 or more employees in Ontario must make their public websites and web content conform to WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Two criteria are exempt — live captions and pre-recorded audio description — and the deadline for full conformance was January 1, 2021.
A few points are often misunderstood:
- The legal baseline is WCAG 2.0, not 2.2. Testing against WCAG 2.2 Level AA is still the sensible target: it includes everything in 2.0, reflects how people actually use the web on phones today, and future-proofs the site as standards are updated.
- Smaller businesses aren’t off the hook. Organisations with fewer than 50 employees aren’t bound by the website section, but the Ontario Human Rights Code still requires services — including online ones — to be accessible, and many public-sector and enterprise buyers now ask suppliers for accessibility evidence.
- Reporting is separate from conformance. Organisations with 20 or more employees must file an accessibility compliance report with the province every three years.
Enforcement sits with the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario. On conviction, fines can reach $100,000 for each day an offence continues for a corporation, and directors and officers can be held personally liable. In practice, most organisations first hear about problems through a complaint or a customer who can’t complete a task — which is exactly what an accessibility audit is meant to catch first.
The 8-Step Accessibility Audit Process
1. Scope and sample
A useful audit starts by deciding what to test. Most sites are built from a handful of templates — home, service page, article, product, checkout — so testing every template plus the journeys that matter most (contacting you, buying, booking, signing up) covers the site without testing hundreds of near-identical pages. The scope also fixes the standard (we test against WCAG 2.2 Level AA) and the browsers and assistive technologies to use.
2. Automated scan
Tools such as axe DevTools, WAVE and Lighthouse scan each page in seconds. They are excellent at finding problems a machine can measure: missing alt attributes, unlabelled form fields, contrast ratios, empty links and buttons, missing page language. What they can’t do is judge meaning — whether alt text describes the image, whether an error message helps, whether the focus order makes sense. Treat the scan as a fast first pass, never as the accessibility audit itself.
3. Keyboard testing
Put the mouse away and use the site with Tab, Shift + Tab, Enter, Space and the arrow keys. Every link, button, menu, form field and dialog must be reachable and usable, in a logical order, with a clearly visible focus indicator. Keyboard traps — places you can tab into but not out of, such as some carousels, embedded maps and chat widgets — are among the most serious failures because they stop people completely.
4. Screen reader testing
Next, listen to the site with NVDA (free, Windows) and VoiceOver (built into macOS and iOS). Are headings announced in a sensible hierarchy? Do buttons say what they do? Are form fields, errors and status messages announced? Do custom components such as tabs, accordions and menus expose their state (“expanded”, “selected”)? This step finds problems that look fine on screen but are confusing or invisible to people who don’t see the page.
5. Visual checks: contrast, zoom and reflow
Contrast is one of the most common findings, often because brand colours were chosen before anyone measured them. WCAG asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text, icons and the edges of controls. The page must also stay usable when text is enlarged to 200%, and reflow into a single column at a width of 320 pixels — the equivalent of 400% zoom on a laptop — without content being cut off or needing sideways scrolling.
6. Content and media
Review the content itself: alt text that describes the purpose of each image (and empty alt text for decorative ones), link text that makes sense out of context, headings that describe their sections, plain language, captions and transcripts for video and audio, and documents. PDFs deserve special attention — scanned documents without a text layer, or files without tags and reading order, are often completely unusable with a screen reader.
7. The report
Every issue is written up so a developer can find it, a manager can prioritise it, and anyone can verify the fix later — see the next section for what a good finding looks like.
8. Fix and retest
Remediation usually starts with the critical barriers on the most important journeys, then works through the templates — one template fix often repairs hundreds of pages. Each fix is retested against the original finding, and the accessibility audit closes with an updated report showing what was resolved. Building those checks into future design and development work is what keeps the site accessible after launch.
What the Accessibility Audit Report Should Include
The report is the part of a digital accessibility audit you keep. A good one is not a list of tool warnings; every finding should be specific enough to act on:
- The WCAG success criterion it fails, with its level (A, AA).
- Where it happens — the page, template or step in a journey — and how to reproduce it.
- Severity, based on impact: does it block a task, make it difficult, or cause friction?
- Who it affects, in plain terms, so non-technical stakeholders understand why it matters.
- A recommended fix — in design and code terms, not just “make this accessible”.
- A summary for decision-makers: overall conformance, the most important risks, and a prioritised plan.
Common Accessibility Failures on Toronto Business Websites
These are the issues that come up most often in audits of small and mid-sized business sites:
- Missing or meaningless alt text — images with no alt attribute, or alt text such as “image1.jpg”.
- Low colour contrast — light grey text, or brand colours that fall short of 4.5:1.
- Inaccessible forms — placeholders instead of labels, errors shown only in red, or messages that don’t explain the fix.
- Keyboard traps and invisible focus — especially in menus, pop-ups, carousels and third-party widgets.
- Broken heading structure — skipped levels, or headings used only for their size.
- Auto-playing media — video or audio that starts without a way to pause it.
- Inaccessible PDFs — scanned or untagged documents with no reading order.
How Much a Digital Accessibility Audit Costs
For a typical Toronto business website of 10–50 pages, a professional manual audit generally costs $2,000 to $8,000. The main drivers are the number of distinct templates, interactive features (checkouts, booking flows, dashboards, maps), documents such as PDFs, and whether retesting after the fixes is included. Expect one to two weeks for a small or medium site; large or complex platforms take longer.
Automated-only scans are cheaper — some are free — but they cover only part of WCAG and can’t tell you whether a site is actually usable. They are a good way to start, not a substitute for testing by a person.
A Quick Self-Check Before You Book an Accessibility Audit
You can’t audit a site in ten minutes, but you can spot the warning signs:
- Tab through your home page and contact form. Can you always see where you are, and reach everything?
- Submit the contact form empty. Are the errors described in words, not just colour?
- Zoom the browser to 200%. Does anything overlap, disappear or need sideways scrolling?
- Run a free scan with WAVE or Lighthouse on your three most important pages.
- Turn on VoiceOver or NVDA and try to find your phone number. How long does it take?
- Check that videos have captions and that key documents are real text, not scans.
If any of these fail, a full accessibility audit will find more — and tell you exactly what to fix first.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does an accessibility audit take?
A thorough audit of a small to medium business website typically takes one to two weeks, including automated scanning, manual and assistive-technology testing, and the written report. Retesting after the fixes is usually a shorter, separate step.
Can an accessibility overlay or plugin make my site compliant?
No. Overlays can adjust how a page looks, but they don’t repair missing labels, keyboard traps, broken structure or inaccessible documents in the underlying site, and they can interfere with the assistive technology people already use. Conformance comes from fixing the site itself.
What happens if my website doesn’t meet AODA requirements?
The Accessibility Directorate of Ontario can require organisations to correct non-compliance, and penalties apply for organisations that don’t. Complaints can also be raised under the Ontario Human Rights Code. A documented audit and remediation plan shows that you know where the gaps are and are fixing them.
Can I do an accessibility audit myself?
You can start yourself with free tools and the self-check above. A complete WCAG audit, though, depends on experience with screen readers, keyboard patterns and WCAG’s finer points — and a professional report gives you documentation you can stand behind.
Next Steps
Start with a digital accessibility audit that tells you where your site stands, then fix the critical barriers on the journeys that matter most. At PerfectPixels, we design and build websites with accessibility as a baseline, and we audit and remediate existing sites against WCAG 2.2 Level AA — from the first scan to the final retest.
Want to know where your website stands? Contact us about an accessibility audit and we’ll help you reach every customer.
Further reading: Evaluating web accessibility — W3C WAI.