WCAG compliance audit

Description

A working WCAG audit covers each AA success criterion against the actual product (not a representative subset), produces a finding-by-finding remediation list keyed to component and page, and feeds back into the development workflow so new shipping does not regress what the audit just fixed. The components are the manual audit pass against the WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 AA criteria, automated test coverage (axe-core, Lighthouse, Pa11y) wired into CI as a regression net, a remediation tracker that closes each finding against a code change, and assistive-technology testing (screen-reader, keyboard-only navigation, voice-control) against the user flows the product actually depends on. WCAG is the de facto global standard for digital accessibility. The EU Web Accessibility Directive, the US ADA Title III as interpreted by DOJ in the Robles v. Domino's line of cases, the European Accessibility Act effective June 2025, Section 508 for US federal procurement, the UK Equality Act 2010 reasonable-adjustments duty, Australia's Disability Discrimination Act 1992, and the Accessible Canada Act all reference WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 at AA conformance level as the operative bar. The European Accessibility Act technical reference is EN 301 549, which maps directly to WCAG 2.1 AA. The four POUR principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) decompose into more than fifty success criteria across A, AA, and AAA tiers; AA is the universally cited compliance level and AAA is best-effort rather than required. WCAG is genuinely engineering work, not a documentation exercise. Criteria like keyboard navigation, ARIA semantics, focus management, and color contrast either pass or fail at the implementation level, and a clean audit one quarter does not survive six months of feature shipping without continuous-accessibility tooling baked into CI. The CI piece is what separates programs that hold up from those that do not: a one-time remediation followed by no automated regression gate produces an accessibility re-debt curve that catches the platform up to its starting point within a release cycle. Litigation exposure is the operationally relevant pressure on the US side. ADA-based class actions against inaccessible commercial sites have been a steady plaintiff-bar revenue stream for the past decade, and they tend to settle quickly when the audit shows known criteria failures (the failures themselves become the evidence). Evidence formats that hold up include the WCAG audit report keyed to criterion and component, the remediation tracker showing per-finding closure with the related commit or PR, and the automated-test reports (axe, Lighthouse) committed alongside the build.

Required by (7 regulations)

• ACA

  Accessible Canada Act, S.C. 2019, c. 10; AODA, S.O. 2005, c. 11

• ADA

  42 U.S.C. §§12101–12213

• DDA

  Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)

• EAA

  European Accessibility Act technical reference (EN 301 549) maps WCAG 2.1 AA.

  Directive (EU) 2019/882

• EN 301 549

  Direct mapping.

  ETSI EN 301 549 V3.2.1 (2021-03)

• Equality Act

  UK reasonable-adjustments duty.

  Equality Act 2010, c. 15

• Section 508

  US federal procurement accessibility standard.

  29 U.S.C. §794d; 36 CFR Part 1194

Fulfilled by (3)

• level-access · full · medium effort · $$$
• deque · full · medium effort · $$
• In-house build · high effort

Magist does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.

Evidence formats

• WCAG audit report
• remediation tracker
• automated-test reports (axe / Lighthouse)