The factors
What actually moves the price
Six things decide the cost of an audit. If you can answer these for your own site you will already know whether you are at the small end or the large end of any quote you receive.
Number of templates
Not pages. A shop with ten thousand products has one product template. What counts is how many distinct layouts exist: home, category, product, cart, checkout, account, article, contact, search.
Transactional journeys
A site that takes money, bookings or applications costs more to audit than one that only publishes, because each step of the flow has to be driven end to end with assistive technology.
Logged-in areas
Member portals, dashboards and account areas roughly double the surface, and they usually contain the most complex components: tables, filters, uploads and multi-step forms.
Languages and regions
Each additional language is another pass, because translated content changes reading order, text length, and sometimes direction.
Custom components
Date pickers, maps, charts, configurators, video players and anything built from divs rather than native elements take far longer to test and to write up than standard markup.
What you need at the end
A developer-facing issue list is the baseline. A VPAT or an accessibility conformance report for procurement is additional work, because it is written against every criterion, including the ones you pass.
The market
What the different price levels actually buy
Accessibility testing is sold at wildly different prices, and the difference is not margin, it is method. Here is what each level really delivers.
Free and very low cost: an automated scan
A tool crawls your pages and reports what it can measure: contrast ratios, missing alternative text, empty links, missing form labels, duplicate IDs.
What you get: a fast, useful starting point that costs almost nothing.
What it misses: roughly two thirds of real WCAG failures. No tool can tell you whether your cart drawer traps focus, whether your error message makes sense, whether your reading order is logical, whether alternative text is accurate rather than merely present, or whether a screen reader announces your filters. A clean automated report on an unusable site is common.
Low cost: a scan with a written summary
The same automated output, reformatted by a person into a document with some commentary.
What you get: something more readable to show a manager.
What it misses: everything the tool missed, which is the majority. If a quote seems surprisingly cheap, ask one question: which screen readers were used, and on which templates. If the answer is vague, it was a scan.
Mid cost: a manual audit of key templates
A person drives your main templates and journeys with JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack and keyboard alone, at 200 and 400 percent zoom and in forced colours, and writes up each barrier with the criterion it fails and how to fix it.
What you get: a report your developers can act on and your lawyer can use. This is the level most businesses need.
What it does not include: a formal conformance report against every criterion, and remediation itself.
High cost: full conformance and VPAT
Every criterion evaluated across the whole product, including the ones you pass, with a formal accessibility conformance report written against Section 508 and EN 301 549.
What you get: the document procurement asks for, and the strongest possible position in a legal matter.
When you need it: selling to government or enterprise, or responding to a formal complaint. Most businesses do not need this on day one.
The comparison
Audit cost against the alternative
The useful comparison is not audit versus nothing. It is audit versus what happens when a letter arrives first.
- Plan first. An audit, remediation and a re-test, done on your own timetable, with your own developers, in normal working hours. You end with a compliant site and a document proving it.
- React later. The same audit and the same remediation, but compressed into a legal deadline, plus a settlement, plus legal fees, plus whatever the rush costs your team. The technical work does not shrink; only the time to do it does.
How I quote
Written, within one working day
You send the address
Just the website address, and anything you already know: a demand letter, a procurement deadline, a redesign coming, a particular journey you are worried about.
I look at it myself
Not a tool report. I open the site, run the main journeys with a keyboard and a screen reader, and see what state it is actually in.
You get a written reply
Within one working day: the barriers I can already see, which templates and journeys I would put in scope, how long it takes, and what it costs. In writing, so you can forward it.
You decide, with no pressure
If the scope is too large for now, I will say which part to do first. If your deadline is not achievable, I will say that rather than take the work.
Ways to spend less
How to keep the cost down honestly
Narrow the scope, not the method
It is far better to audit five templates properly than twenty superficially. Start with the journey that carries money or risk, fix it, then extend. A partial manual audit beats a complete automated one every time.
Do the remediation in house
The report names the file, the criterion and the fix for each barrier. If your developers apply them, you pay only for the audit and the re-test. Many clients work this way.
Start from an accessible theme if you are rebuilding
If a redesign is coming anyway, building on an accessible theme removes most of the structural barriers before they exist, and cuts remediation to content work.
Fix content rules, not just content
Alternative text and heading structure will keep breaking unless somebody writes down how new content is published. A short internal rule costs nothing and stops you paying twice.
FAQ
Accessibility audit cost – frequently asked questions
Why will you not publish a fixed price?
Because an honest price depends on scope, and scope varies enormously. A five-template brochure site and a multi-language store with a member portal are different pieces of work. Anyone quoting a flat figure before seeing your site is either guessing or selling an automated scan. Send your address and you get a written figure within one working day.
What is the cheapest useful thing I can buy?
A focused audit of your highest-risk journey, usually checkout or your main enquiry form, plus your home and one content template. It will not make you compliant, but it finds the barriers most likely to block a customer or attract a letter, and it tells you how big the full job is.
Why is a manual audit more expensive than a scanning tool?
Because a person drives your site with a screen reader and a keyboard. Automated tools reliably catch about a third of WCAG failures, mostly contrast and missing alternative text. They cannot tell you whether your cart drawer traps focus, whether your error messages make sense, or whether your variant picker announces anything. That judgement is what you are paying for.
Does remediation cost more than the audit?
Usually yes, often two to four times more, because fixing takes longer than finding. The exception is a site built on an accessible theme, where most of the structural work is already done and remediation is mostly content.
Can we do the fixes ourselves to save money?
Yes, and many clients do. The report is written so your own developers can act on it: each barrier names the file, the criterion and the fix. You then pay only for the audit and the re-test.
Is there an ongoing cost after remediation?
There is if you keep publishing. Every new page, plugin, app or theme update can introduce a barrier. Most clients take a periodic re-test rather than continuous monitoring, which keeps the cost small and predictable.
Do you charge for the initial assessment?
No. Send your website address and you get a written reply naming the barriers I can already see and what a full audit would cover, at no cost and with no call required.
One working day
Get a real figure for your site
Send your website address and I will reply in writing with the barriers I can already see and a price for the full audit. No cost for the assessment, and no call required.