Accessibility Audits are Always 100% Manual
Sometimes clients ask us if our audits are manual and I always let them know that all legitimate accessibility audits are 100% manual.
An accessibility audit is a formal, manual evaluation of a digital asset conducted entirely by a (human) technical accessibility expert using manual evaluation methodologies. Anything automated is a scan, not an audit.
The marketplace is filled with companies selling “automated audits” or “automated testing” — but this is simply marketing language. If it’s automated, it’s a scan. If it’s an audit, it’s manual.
Experts may use a scan or another tool as a review or to make the audit process more efficient, but the expert always determines the issues that go in the audit report.
Manual Evaluation
During a manual audit, these experts systematically grade your website or other digital asset against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), looking for any instances of non-conformance.
When we say manual, we mean human expertise and real work are being used to thoroughly and meticulously evaluate your digital asset. Manual audits employ multiple evaluation methodologies including:
- screen reader testing
- keyboard testing
- visual inspection
- audible inspections
- code inspection
And automated scans used only as a secondary check.
Why Scans Cannot Replace Audits
Scans can only flag or partially flag approximately 25% of WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria. Because there are false negatives and false positives, scans should only be used as a review.
Get Kris Rivenburgh, Founder Accessible.org’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Scans use rule sets to analyze code and look for known accessibility issues resulting from code.
And even when we see AI super scans appear in the marketplace in 2026, they will still have the same broad limitations. Yes, intelligent scans will provide more insight and find issues, but they will still miss many critical issues and won’t be close to accounting for full WCAG conformance.
Common Misconceptions About Hybrid Approaches
Some companies promote “hybrid” approaches claim to combine “automated testing” with manual testing. This is a subtle marketing play that implies that we can combine scan results and human evaluation.
We are not combining anything with an audit. The idea of using scan results for 30–50% of an audit and manual evaluation for the rest is asinine in practice because we already know how limited scans are and we know we can’t rely upon them — we must review because scans result false positives and, more importantly, false negatives.
So we are not combining scan results and manual evaluation, but rather using scans to make manual evaluation more efficient. The human evaluation completely supersedes the scan in importance. We actually don’t need the scan to audit, but it is a best practice to use a scan because then we ensure that all issues correctly flagged by a scan are included in the audit report.
Accessibility Market Trivia
Did you know most accessibility platforms are scan-based?
This means that organizations who use these platforms are working from completely skewed data. Their progress reports and analytics are for 100% on a scan score, not WCAG conformance.
To track full conformance, you need an audit-based platform.
Did you know that many accessibility companies bundle audits with scan-based platforms and scan tools to inflate the audit price?
Many accessibility companies use bundles as a way to saddle organizations with unnecessary extras along with their audit.
Did you know the best auditors are the ones who genuinely care about accessibility?
When hiring auditors to work for Accessible.org, over and over I’ve found that the best auditors are the one who really care about accessibility. Because they care so much, they’re meticulous and obsessive about finding accessibility issues.
