WCAG Audit Report: What's In One, and How to Spot a Bad One

Someone has told you your website needs a WCAG audit report — a lawyer, a client’s procurement team, or a demand letter that landed in your inbox. The awkward part is that “WCAG audit report” is not a regulated term. Two documents can carry that title and be completely different things: one is thirty pages of hand-verified findings written by a person who used your site with a screen reader, the other is a Lighthouse export with a cover page. They cost different amounts and are worth different amounts, and from the outside they look about the same.

This guide is about telling them apart. It walks through what belongs in a real report section by section, what an auditor actually does to produce each one, and the specific warning signs that mean you are looking at a scan dressed up as an audit. If you are about to pay for a report, or about to accept one as a deliverable, read this first — the difference usually shows up in three places: whether findings are mapped to individual WCAG success criteria, whether anything was tested by hand, and whether the fixes are specific to your code.

What Is a WCAG Audit Report?

A WCAG audit report is a document that evaluates a website against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The current standard is WCAG 2.2, published by the W3C. The report identifies accessibility barriers that prevent people with disabilities from using the site and provides recommendations for fixing them.

Think of it like a building inspection report, but for your website. Instead of checking fire exits and electrical wiring, the auditor checks whether screen readers can navigate your pages, whether keyboard users can complete forms, and whether color contrast meets minimum thresholds.

Why You Need a WCAG Audit Report

There are several reasons businesses invest in professional audit reports.

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) became enforceable in June 2025. If your business serves customers in the EU, your website must meet accessibility standards. The penalty ceilings written into national law reach into the hundreds of thousands of euros in several member states, though no EAA fine has been publicly reported against anyone yet — see our breakdown of the statutory maximums by country for what is actually on the books versus what has actually happened. In the United States, the ADA has been applied to websites since landmark court rulings in 2017 and 2018, and web accessibility lawsuits have run in the thousands per year for several years running.

If you are a US state or local government entity, your situation is different again: the DOJ Title II web rule sets a hard conformance date of April 26, 2027 or April 26, 2028 depending on your size, and a documented audit is a large part of what a good-faith remediation record looks like.

A professional audit report demonstrates due diligence. If you receive a legal complaint, having a documented audit and remediation plan shows that you are taking accessibility seriously. (Nothing here is legal advice.)

Client Requirements

For agencies, audit reports are increasingly a deliverable that clients expect. Large enterprises and government organizations often require WCAG conformance documentation as part of procurement processes. If you build websites for others, offering audit reports is both a revenue stream and a competitive advantage.

Understanding Your Current State

Before you can fix accessibility issues, you need to know what they are. An audit report gives you a clear picture of your current compliance status, which issues are most severe, and where to start.

What a Professional WCAG Audit Report Contains

Not all audit reports are created equal. A thorough, professional report typically includes the following sections.

Executive Summary

This is a plain-language overview designed for non-technical stakeholders such as executives, project managers, or clients. It summarizes the overall compliance status, highlights the most critical issues, and provides a high-level risk assessment. A good executive summary can be understood by someone who has never heard of WCAG.

Methodology

This section explains how the audit was conducted. It should describe the tools used (such as axe-core, WAVE, or Lighthouse), the WCAG version and conformance level tested against (typically WCAG 2.2 Level AA), the pages or user flows tested, and whether manual testing was performed in addition to automated scanning.

Automated testing alone can catch roughly 30 to 40 percent of WCAG issues. A quality audit report will note this limitation and explain what additional manual checks were performed.

Detailed Findings

This is the core of the report. Each accessibility issue is documented with the following information:

  • WCAG success criterion: The specific rule being violated (e.g., 1.4.3 Contrast Minimum)
  • Severity level: Critical, serious, moderate, or minor
  • Description: What the issue is and why it matters
  • Location: Where on the page the issue was found, often with a screenshot or code snippet
  • Affected users: Which disability groups are impacted (screen reader users, keyboard users, low vision users, etc.)
  • Recommendation: How to fix the issue, ideally with a code example

Issues are typically organized by severity so that development teams can prioritize the most impactful fixes first.

Compliance Checklist

A criterion-by-criterion breakdown of WCAG 2.2 Level AA showing pass, fail, or not applicable for each success criterion. This gives you a comprehensive view of where you stand and is useful for tracking progress over time.

Prioritized Fix List

A practical action plan that groups issues by effort and impact. High-impact, low-effort fixes go first. This section is what your development team will actually work from.

Code Examples

For each issue, a professional report should include before-and-after code examples showing exactly what needs to change. This eliminates ambiguity and accelerates the fix process. For example, if an image is missing alt text, the report should show the current HTML and the corrected HTML with an appropriate alt attribute.

Automated vs. Manual Audits

Understanding the difference is important when evaluating audit services.

Automated audits use tools like axe-core, WAVE, or Lighthouse to scan your pages programmatically. They are fast, affordable, and can cover many pages at once. However, they can only detect about 30 to 40 percent of WCAG issues. They cannot evaluate whether alt text is meaningful (only whether it exists), whether content is logically ordered, or whether custom interactive components are usable with a keyboard.

Manual audits involve a human tester navigating your site with assistive technologies such as screen readers (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver) and keyboard-only navigation. Manual testing catches the issues that automation misses, including logical reading order, meaningful link text, and correct ARIA usage.

The best audit reports combine both approaches. Automated scanning provides broad coverage, while manual testing provides depth on critical user flows.

How to Choose an Auditor

When selecting an accessibility audit provider, consider the following.

Methodology transparency: Do they explain what tools and manual checks they use? Be wary of providers who only run automated scans and call it a full audit.

WCAG version: Ask which version they test against, and be clear that 2.1 and 2.2 are not interchangeable. The legal instruments currently point at WCAG 2.1 Level AA — that is what the harmonised European standard EN 301 549 maps to, and it is what the DOJ Title II web rule names. WCAG 2.2 is the current W3C recommendation and adds nine success criteria on top of 2.1, so an audit against 2.2 covers everything 2.1 requires and some things it does not. Testing against 2.2 is the safer choice; testing against 2.0 is not enough for either regime. What you should not accept is an auditor who cannot tell you which version they used.

Report format: Ask for a sample report. Is it well-organized? Does it include code examples? Is the executive summary understandable by non-technical readers?

Turnaround time: Most professional audits take one to five business days depending on the number of pages.

Price: Single-page audits typically range from $100 to $300. Multi-page audits for five to ten pages range from $300 to $600. Full-site audits for larger sites can range from $500 to several thousand dollars.

Follow-up support: Some providers offer a follow-up scan after you have implemented fixes to verify compliance. This is valuable for closing the loop.

How Often Should You Audit?

Accessibility is not a one-time task. Websites change constantly as new content is published, features are added, and designs are updated. Best practice is to run an automated scan after every deployment (using CI/CD integration) and commission a full professional audit at least once per year or whenever significant design changes are made.

Getting Started

If you have never had your site audited, start with a free scan to understand the scope of the problem. You can run one instantly at a11yfix.dev/audit. It takes seconds and requires no signup.

When you are ready for a comprehensive, compliance-ready report with prioritized fixes, code examples, and an executive summary, you can order a professional WCAG 2.2 audit report at a11yfix.dev/report. Reports start at $349 and are delivered as a professionally formatted PDF within 24 hours.

If you would rather commission the work from a consultant than order a report, how to hire an accessibility consultant covers what to ask on the first call and which red flags mean the “audit” is an automated scan in disguise.

Whatever the audit finds that you cannot fix immediately belongs in the “known limitations” section of a published accessibility statement — an audit report tells you what is broken, and the statement is how you say so publicly while you work through it.

If you sell software or services to government agencies, universities, or enterprise procurement teams, the audit has a second job: it is the evidence base behind the VPAT those buyers will ask you for. Filling out that template without an audit underneath it is guessing in a document you have to sign.

Accessibility obligations are live on both sides of the Atlantic: the EAA has applied since June 2025, even though no fine has been publicly reported under it yet, and US web accessibility lawsuits have run in the thousands per year for several years. The sooner you know your actual status, the sooner you can act on it. Start with an audit report.