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An accessibility audit identifies barriers, reduces legal risk and improves user experience. Why every organisation should audit, and what a good one involves.
An accessibility audit is a structured evaluation of a digital product against recognised standards — usually WCAG 2.2 — to identify the barriers that prevent people with disability from using it. It answers a specific question: given the people who use this product and the tasks they need to complete, what is stopping them, and how should those problems be fixed?
That question matters at scale. The ABS 2022 SDAC found that 5.5 million Australians — 21.4% of the population — live with disability. For any organisation delivering digital services, an audit is the mechanism for understanding how well those services actually work for that audience.
The case for an accessibility audit rests on three things: evidence, risk and usability.
Evidence. Most organisations do not know the true state of their accessibility. Automated scans catch some issues but miss the majority. Informal review is unreliable. A proper audit gives you an accurate, prioritised picture of where your product stands — the specific barriers that affect real users, ranked by their severity and frequency.
Risk. The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 applies to digital services, as confirmed by Maguire v SOCOG 2000 and Innes v State of Queensland (Queensland Health) 2018. An audit identifies your legal exposure before it becomes a complaint. It also provides documented evidence of your accessibility programme — evidence that matters if a complaint is ever made.
Usability. Accessibility barriers are, by definition, usability failures. The improvements an audit recommends almost always improve the experience for a broader group of users than those with disability alone. Better contrast, clearer forms, logical heading structure and keyboard-operable controls make products easier to use for everyone.
There is a significant difference between an automated accessibility scan and a genuine accessibility audit. A scan runs tools against a site and produces a list of machine-detected issues. A full audit does considerably more:
The output of a good audit is not a compliance certificate. It is a practical roadmap for improving your product, ranked by impact, with the evidence to back it up.
The value of an audit is in what happens next. The most thorough report in the world delivers no benefit unless its findings are addressed. IncluD’s accessibility reviews are designed with this in mind — findings are mapped to your specific product, prioritised by impact and effort, and presented in a format your delivery team can act on. Where clients want ongoing support implementing the findings, IncluD CoLab provides embedded advisory support at the point where decisions are being made.
For organisations with no previous accessibility assessment, the answer is: now. For organisations with existing programmes, auditing should be a regular part of the product lifecycle — certainly after significant redesigns or major feature releases, and at least annually for products in continuous development. Digital products change constantly, and accessibility barriers can be introduced by any update.
Q: What is an accessibility audit?
A structured evaluation of a digital product against standards such as WCAG 2.2, combining automated testing, expert manual review and lived-experience testing to identify and prioritise the barriers affecting users with disability.
Q: How is an audit different from an automated scan?
An automated scan identifies machine-detectable issues and covers only a portion of WCAG criteria. A full audit adds expert manual review and lived-experience testing, which are needed to assess the majority of WCAG criteria that require human judgement.
Q: How often should we audit?
At least after significant redesigns or major releases, and at least annually for products in active development. For high-traffic or legally significant products, more frequent review is appropriate.