Digital Accessibility Services FAQ

Experience in auditing is important to ensure you are receiving accurate results and actionable advice. Auditors and teams with experience will provide top-notch audits, reporting, advice, and help you understand how your audit fits into the context of your organization’s accessibility efforts. They will also understand how the results can inform a more efficient and effective ongoing strategy.

The founder of Inclusion Impact Accessibility, Mark Miller, has been working in digital accessibility since 2013, helping organizations with accessibility audits, VPATs, Tooling, and strategic approaches to ongoing accessibility and conformance. Given our high standards and commitment to accessibility, we ensure our teams are all experienced and create the highest quality outputs.

With 13 years of experience, we cover most industries and technologies.

Yes. Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs) in the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) format are informed by a technical conformance audit that covers the appropriate standard for an organization’s specific needs.

ACRs in the VPAT format describe the level of conformance a website or application has to the relevant guidelines and are critical for many things related to the US federal government. They are required under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and have also been adopted by many state and global regulations, such as the EAA. ACRs in the VPAT format are often used as evidence of accessibility efforts and are requested business-to-business.

It’s very important that the audits are scoped properly to inform the VPAT. Many of the large accessibility vendors have commoditized audits and do not scope up front, but rather offer set page or component amounts in a packaged format. This can be very risky and lead to under- (or over-) scoping and poorly informed ARCs that introduce risk.

Accessibility audits have a large range of costs. Cost is determined by the size of the representative scope and overall complexity of the asset.

The pricing of a technical conformance accessibility audit is determined by two major factors:

• The size of the audit scope, which needs to be large enough to inform the tool, techniques, and content types in the target website or application, and small enough so that redundancies are limited. Further, the critical user flow needs to be considered. When only a portion of a website or application is in scope, the above applies to that portion.
• The overall complexity of the target website or application. For example, the time on page/screen to audit a brochure-style website is very different from a complex SaaS application.

We provide custom quotes. Fixed packages introduce risk, including the risk of under- or over-scoping, audits that are inadequate for the need, misalignment of expectations, and inaccurate representation of the true state of the website or application’s accessibility, including the inaccuracy of documents like ACRs in the VPAT format and other accessibility statements.

An automated scan for WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) uses specialized software tools to quickly evaluate a website or application for common accessibility issues that can be detected through automation. Automation can catch around 30% to 40% of the failures to the WCAG guidelines, which can often be as high as 70% of the issues on the site, but in many cases, may be much fewer. Automated crawlers evaluate most of the pages on the site unless programmed to do otherwise.

Manual technical conformance audits are a complete solution and are performed on a carefully selected scope of representative pages designed to fully inform the site. Variances to the guidelines (accessibility issues) are discovered through manually interacting with the pages using assistive technology used by people with disabilities and alternative means of access.

Yes, we can use people with disabilities in both UX studies and audits.

We provide several metrics to inform priorities when planning for remediation:

• Issue severity rating
• Remediation difficulty rating
• User groups affected
• Mapping to WCAG levels

We also provide a prioritization guide that outlines the strategy for combining internal metrics and stakeholder interests with the metrics above to craft a properly prioritized remediation plan that takes your unique situation and interests into account.

Various regulations require different versions of WCAG, but most refer to the AA level, and AA is considered the market benchmark for organizations to target in general. For example, section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act maps to WCAG 2.0 level AA, while Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act maps to WCAG 2.1 level AA, as does the European Accessibility Act.

However, the WCAG guidelines are designed to be backward-compatible and additive, not replacements. New versions are meant to extend coverage. Therefore, unless an organization has settled on a version as its current standard, best practice is to audit and remediate to the latest version, which is WCAG 2.2.

Yes, the audit is often the first step in a complete solution to mitigate the risk associated with ADA and Section 508 requirements. Other factors include:

• Remediating the issues uncovered in the audit
• Benchmarking and monitoring with automation
• Maturing the organization’s capabilities to deliver accessible digital assets like websites, applications, and digital documents (PDFs). This can be done using the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model (W3C AMM).

While there is no certification for accessibility per se, in many circumstances, an Accessibility Conformance Statement (ACR) in the Voluntary Accessibility Template (VPAT) format is required. For public-facing websites, a well-crafted accessibility statement vetted by legal counsel helps mitigate risk. We recommend avoiding badges and widgets that appear on your site. These are often associated with solutions not allowed by some regulations, like the EAA, and are suspected of drawing negative attention due to their controversial nature.

Reports resulting from a manual technical conformance audit of a representative sample of screens report all the issues found where the guidelines are not met (Most audits are performed to the WCAG 2.2 level AA guidelines). Along with detailed and actionable remediation guidance, which provides examples down to the code snippet level, metrics are provided to help further understand and prioritize the issues. These include:

• Issue severity rating
• Remediation difficulty rating
• User groups affected
• Mapping to WCAG levels

Yes, all guidance is actionable and detailed, including code snippet examples.

Yes, we often complete the VPAT for our customers, giving them a fully informed ACR. We ensure all our audits are scoped properly to inform the VPAT and are of the highest quality.

The timing of an audit can vary based on the size and complexity of the representative sample of pages/screens in scope. The average audits take between 2 and 4 weeks from the time the audit begins.

The timing of an audit necessary to inform the VPAT can vary based on the size and complexity of the representative sample of pages/screens in scope. The average audits take between 2 and 4 weeks from the time the audit begins. The ACR in the VPAT format can be delivered with the audit results.

We will expedite as capacity and timing allow; however, we will not jeopardize the quality of our output for speed.

We scale the management of compliance and integration of accessibility capabilities into an organization in multiple ways, depending on the specific scale and needs of the organization. Some of the activities that may contribute to the strategy are:

• Ongoing monitoring
• Regular audits and validation audits
• Role-based education
• Integration of automation into the CI/CD pipeline
• QA strategy and tooling
• Policy and procedure development
• Vendor management programs
• ROI Tools and leadership presentations
• W3C Accessibility Maturity Model consulting, tracking, and tooling.

Yes, we have several options for ongoing monitoring depending on scale and need. We perform both validation audits and full regression testing re-audits.

Yes, we provide both instructor-led training and self-paced e-learning.

There is no existing certification in place that guarantees 100% safety from litigation. Any claim otherwise should be considered a red flag. However, reducing accessibility issues on your site and engaging with a reputable third-party vendor, such as Inclusion Impact Accessibility, will help mitigate risk and create defensibility. We ensure that our audits are complete, high-quality, and actionable so that your organization can manage risk to the greatest degree possible. Further, we back our clients and can provide an expert witness as necessary.   

Moreover, we can work with our clients’ counsel to create a definition of substantial conformance on their sites and help manage the process of reaching substantial conformance to increase defensibility.

Yes, we have several forms of documentation that can serve as evidence of good faith compliance. These include:

• Letters of substantial conformance
• ACRs in the VPAT format
• Draft website accessibility statements

Yes, we work closely with our clients and their counsel to create effective strategies and guidance to manage risk.

We have a variety of automated testing tools and use most of the major assistive technologies in our manual testing, as appropriate, including but not limited to:

• Talkback
• NVDA
• JAWS
• VoiceOver

We have a variety of automated testing tools and use most of the major assistive technologies in our manual testing, as appropriate, including but not limited to:

• Talkback
• NVDA
• JAWS
• VoiceOver

Yes, we test both the desktop and mobile experiences and native mobile applications.

We work with developers and designers during remediation, providing help and consultation. This can be done in several ways, including through messaging systems such as Teams and Slack. In addition, we can offer office hours and custom solutions.

We work with developers and designers during remediation, providing help and consultation. This can be done in several ways, including through messaging systems such as Teams and Slack. In addition, we can offer office hours and custom solutions.

We provide expert-level project management and a single point of contact through the process, as well as a technical consulting help desk.