Accessibility
Accessibility Audit
A practical UX method for assessing accessibility barriers across interfaces, content, and interactions against recognised standards.
How to run an accessibility audit to identify barriers, prioritise fixes, and improve usability and compliance.
What it is
An serviceAccessibilityFind accessibility issues early, improve usability, and build products that are more inclusive, usable, and compliant.Open service audit is a UX method used to evaluate how well a product meets glossaryAccessibilityAccessibility is the practice of designing products so they can be used by people with a wide range of abilities, including those with disabilities. It ensures that content and functionality are available to as many users as possible.Open glossary term standards and supports users with a wide range of needs.
It involves reviewing glossaryInterfaceAn interface is the point of interaction between a user and a system, where inputs are made and outputs are received. It can be visual, physical, or conversational.Open glossary term, glossaryInteractionInteraction refers to any action a user takes within a product and how the system responds. It includes clicks, taps, gestures, and inputs that drive the user experience.Open glossary term, and content against recognised guidelines such as glossaryWCAGWCAG is a set of guidelines for making digital content accessible to people with disabilities.Open glossary term.
The audit looks at areas like keyboard glossaryNavigationNavigation is the system of menus, links, and cues that lets people move through a product and reach what they need. It exposes the underlying structure, and is how most users experience that structure.Open glossary term, glossaryScreen ReaderA screen reader is software that reads digital content aloud for users who cannot see the screen.Open glossary term compatibility, colour contrast, structure, and glossaryClarityClarity is how easily users can understand what is happening and what they need to do.Open glossary term.
It combines automated tools with manual review to identify issues that affect glossaryUsabilityUsability is how easy and efficient it is for users to complete tasks within a product. It focuses on clarity, simplicity, and reducing effort so users can achieve their goals without confusion or friction.Open glossary term and compliance.
The focus is on making the product usable for everyone, not just meeting minimum standards.
The goal is to identify barriers and define what needs to be fixed.
Accessibility audits are most valuable when they improve real user outcomes, not just compliance checklists.
When to use it
Use this method when inclusivity and compliance matter.
It is most useful when:
It is less useful when:
Accessibility audits are often used before release and during optimisation.
Key takeaway
Run accessibility audits when delivery decisions can still be changed and fixed.
How to run it
Set up properly
Decide three things before you open the product: what is in scope, which standard and level you are measuring against, and how findings will be recorded. Scope decided halfway through is what turns a two-week audit into a two-month one.
Cover real user scenarios rather than a list of pages. A page can pass every check in isolation and still leave someone unable to finish a task that crosses three of them.
Run the method
serviceAccessibilityFind accessibility issues early, improve usability, and build products that are more inclusive, usable, and compliant.Open service audits are systematic and detailed. The structure is what makes the findings defensible when somebody disputes them.
- Review against the guidelines criterion by criterion, not screen by screen. Working screen-first turns an audit into a list of things that caught your eye.
- Test keyboard glossaryNavigationNavigation is the system of menus, links, and cues that lets people move through a product and reach what they need. It exposes the underlying structure, and is how most users experience that structure.Open glossary term and focus states with the mouse put away entirely. Reaching a control but not being able to see where you are is still a failure.
- Check glossaryScreen ReaderA screen reader is software that reads digital content aloud for users who cannot see the screen.Open glossary term glossaryBehaviourBehaviour refers to how users interact with a system, including actions, patterns, and responses.Open glossary term on the journeys that matter, not on a sample page. Announcements break most often around forms, modals, and content that updates without a page load.
- Assess colour contrast and glossaryReadabilityReadability is how easily written content can be read and decoded, shaped by sentence length, vocabulary, structure, and typography. It measures the effort the text demands, not whether the meaning actually landed.Open glossary term in the states people actually meet: hover, focus, disabled, error, and text sitting over images.
- Sweep with automated tools, then manually validate every finding. Tools return false positives, and more dangerously they return silence where a person would object.
Focus on real glossaryUsabilityUsability is how easy and efficient it is for users to complete tasks within a product. It focuses on clarity, simplicity, and reducing effort so users can achieve their goals without confusion or friction.Open glossary term, not just compliance. A product can satisfy every success criterion and still be exhausting to use with assistive technology.
Capture and make sense of it
The value comes from clear, actionable glossaryInsightAn insight is a meaningful understanding that explains why something is happening and what it means.Open glossary term. After the audit, document:
- Each issue with its severity and the criterion it breaks
- The impact in plain terms: what a person cannot do, not what the code does
- A prioritised order of fixes, weighted by how many people hit it and how hard
- Recommendations specific enough to hand straight to a glossaryDeveloperA developer builds and maintains the technical implementation of a product, writing code, integrating systems, and making a design work in practice. Much of the role is judgement about details no specification covered.Open glossary term
Use this to improve serviceAccessibilityFind accessibility issues early, improve usability, and build products that are more inclusive, usable, and compliant.Open service and compliance, in that order. Fixing for compliance alone produces products that pass and still exclude people.
What to look for
Focus on:
Where it goes wrong
Most issues come from:
If it’s only about compliance, you miss the point.
What you get from it
Done properly, this method gives you:
Key takeaway
It helps you create a product everyone can use.
Get in touch
If this sounds like something you need, we can run a full accessibility audit and help you fix the issues that are holding users back.
No guesswork. No assumptions. Just inclusive design that works for everyone.
FAQ
Common questions
A few practical answers to the questions that usually come up around this method.
What is an accessibility audit in UX?
It is a method for evaluating how accessible a product is for all users.
When should you run an accessibility audit?
Before launch, so there is still time to fix what it finds, and periodically afterwards as the product changes. Running one late turns findings into a backlog nobody clears; running one early enough makes them design decisions instead.
What standards are used?
WCAG (the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is what almost every audit works to, with level AA the usual target and 2.2 the current version.
UK public sector sites are also covered by the 2018 accessibility regulations, which point at EN 301 549, a standard built on WCAG, so meeting AA does most of the work either way.
Are automated tools enough?
No. Automated checks catch the mechanical failures (missing alt text, insufficient contrast, unlabelled fields), but they cannot tell you whether a label is meaningful, whether focus order makes sense, or whether someone can actually complete the task with a screen reader.
Does an accessibility audit improve UX?
Yes. It removes barriers and improves usability for everyone.
Quick take
If some users can’t use your product, it’s broken. An accessibility audit shows you where and why.
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