Get an accessibility audit for my website

This page says what an audit actually is, what bernard’s one contains, and what it deliberately does not say.

What an accessibility audit is

Every accessibility audit on the market is the same three things:

1. An automated test. A tool opens your pages in a real browser and checks them against the standard. bernard uses axe, made by Deque. It is the same open-source engine Chrome’s own Lighthouse report scores accessibility with. It tests WCAG 2.2 at levels A and AA, and every finding names the rule it fails rather than giving you an opinion.
2. A set of questions a machine cannot answer. Whether a photo’s description is truthful. Whether the page reads in a sensible order. Whether somebody using a keyboard alone can get through your menu. No tool knows these. A person has to look.
3. A record of what has been put right, with dates.

The automated half is the half people expect to be the whole thing, and it is not. In the engine maker’s own published audits, automated tests found about 57% of the problems those audits contained, and by the older measure of the standard itself they can judge fewer than half of the success criteria at all. Those are their own published figures, not ours. The rest is the second part, and it is why an audit takes a conversation rather than a button.

Why that matters to you is the subject of what an accessibility audit really is, which is about audits in general rather than about bernard.

The eight questions

bernard gathers the evidence for each one before it asks, so you are looking at your own site rather than at a checklist. It asks one at a time.

• Can you get around with the keyboard alone? bernard tabs through the page and shows you the order it went in, and whether the focus outline was visible at each stop.
• Does the page read in the right order? You see the page as a screen reader meets it: text in order, headings marked.
• Do the pictures say what they are for? Every image with the description it currently carries, so you can say whether it is right, or that the picture is decoration.
• Do the links say where they go? The ones whose own words do not, with a suggested replacement each.
• Do your videos have captions? Every video and audio lesson, with and without.
• Does anything move or play by itself? What moves, what autoplays, and whether it can be stopped.
• Do your forms say what went wrong? bernard submits each form empty and shows you what it said back.
• Does each page declare its language and carry a real title? Read from the page itself, shown to you for a yes.

Your answers are kept with your name and the date against them. When you later change a page one of those answers was about, bernard marks that answer as needing a fresh look rather than carrying it forward as though nothing had happened. That is the difference between an audit and a PDF.

What you get

A dated report, downloadable from the accessibility page of your site: the method, the automated results rule by rule and page by page, your answers with who gave them and when, what has been fixed since, and the caveats below.

A statement page on your own site at /accessibility/, in the shape the EU and UK model statements use: where you stand, what is outstanding, how and when it was assessed, and how somebody tells you about a problem. Two blocks on that page are bernard’s and rewrite themselves on every publish; everything you write around them is yours and stays exactly as you left it. Ask for it and read it before you approve it, like any other page (How do I approve or undo changes?).

What it says, and what it will not say

Your audit ends in one of four words: conforms, partially conforms, does not conform, or not yet assessed. That word never travels on its own. It comes with the list of what is outstanding that produced it.

You will not see the word “compliant”, and there is no badge and no score. There is no certificate for WCAG. The W3C, who write the standard, issue none, and neither does bernard: every conformance claim on the web is the site owner’s own, including the expensive ones. What bernard gives you is a good assessment with the evidence attached, which is what the person asking almost always wants.

Four things are printed on every report and every statement:

• Self-assessed, as every WCAG conformance claim is.
• Automated checks cover only part of the standard. The rest was reviewed by hand, and the report names who answered each question.
• Not an independent audit, and not legal advice.
• The scope and the date are explicit: these pages, as at this date.

How to get one

Open your site, go to Edit with AI, and pick the starter card Accessibility standards check. Or go to the Accessibility page of your site and press Walk me through the questions (it reads Check the questions again once they are all settled), which starts the same conversation with the evidence already loaded.

The automated half runs first and fixes what it can on a preview. Then bernard offers you the eight questions, and the statement page at the end. You can stop after any of them.

How it stays true

• The automated test runs every night, on your home page, the pages you have changed since the last run, and a sample of the rest, at phone and desktop widths.
• An answer you gave about a page you have since changed is marked as needing a fresh look. bernard re-asks that one rather than all eight.
• The statement page rewrites its own two blocks on every publish, so it can never claim something that stopped being true a month ago.

The rules people cite

Two laws are usually behind the question. Read them, or ask whoever advises you, before deciding what applies to you. bernard does not give legal advice.

• The European Accessibility Act, Directive (EU) 2019/882: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/882/oj
• The UK Equality Act 2010: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15

The standard itself, from the W3C: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/ , and what the W3C say about conformance claims: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/conformance

Which rules bernard tests, one by one, is in Does my site meet WCAG? What bernard checks against the standard. The everyday version of the same work is Is my site easy for everyone to use?, and the picture descriptions the third question is about are in Write good alt text for my images.