The service, part one
Initial Website Accessibility Assessment
The written baseline every compliance effort starts from: an inventory of your web properties, automated WCAG 2.1 AA testing across pages and documents, a person verifying every finding, and a prioritized report your board and your web vendor can both read.
Sources
Key takeaways
- What it is: a one-time baseline measurement of every web property you have against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the standard the ADA Title II web rule names.
- What you get: a property inventory, human-verified findings tied to URL and WCAG criterion, remediation priorities, and a written report.
- What it is not: a certificate. Nobody can honestly certify ADA compliance, and we never claim to.
- What it costs: quoted in writing after a short scoping call, priced from your inventory. See pricing.
What does the initial website accessibility assessment measure?
Every testable WCAG 2.1 Level A and Level AA success criterion, across the web properties in your inventory: 50 checkpoints, from text alternatives and color contrast to keyboard operation and form labeling. The full list is on our WCAG 2.1 AA checklist, and the standard itself is published by the W3C.
In detail
The assessment starts with the inventory, because you cannot measure what you have not listed. Most entities are surprised by their own list: the main site, departmental sites, a permitting portal from one vendor, a payments portal from another, a jobs board, and years of PDFs behind all of it. Each property is then scanned against the standard's testable criteria, with every result recorded with its date, URL and test version, so the baseline is a document rather than an impression.
Why does a person verify every finding?
Because scanner output is a draft, not a report. Automated tools flag things that are not real barriers and miss things that are. A person checks every finding before it reaches your report, so your staff never spend an afternoon chasing a false positive.
In detail
Verifying the scanner's findings is not the same as manually testing every WCAG criterion. The verification included in every assessment confirms that each reported defect is real, reproducible and tied to the right criterion. The deeper pass, where a person works through your highest-traffic pages with a keyboard and a screen reader and tests the judgment calls no scanner can reach, is the optional human review add-on, quoted separately because it is hands-on hours. The difference between the two is explained in our guide to automated scans versus human review.
What arrives in the report?
Six deliverables, each of them written to be acted on rather than filed and forgotten.
Property inventory
Every site, portal and document library you are responsible for, listed in one place with ownership noted.
Baseline test results
WCAG 2.1 AA results per property, recorded with date, URL and test version, so progress is measured against something real.
Verified findings
Each defect confirmed by a person and tied to the exact page or document and the success criterion it fails.
Plain-language guidance
What each finding means for a real visitor and what the fix looks like, written for the people who will do the fixing.
Remediation priorities
Ordered by user impact and exposure: the fixes that remove real barriers first, cosmetic ones later.
Scope for manual testing
An honest statement of which checks automation could not cover and where the optional human review would earn its fee.
The findings go to your IT staff or web vendor. They make the fixes; we re-test and verify each one on the next scan. We never do the fixing ourselves, because the monitor should not grade its own work.
How long does the assessment take?
It depends on the size of the inventory, and we will give you the timeline in the same written quote as the price. A single small site with few documents is a different job from a county with a dozen departmental sites and three vendor portals. What we commit to in every case: the scope, price and delivery date are in writing before the work starts.
What happens after the baseline?
The baseline is the start, not the finish. Websites change weekly, and a site that measures clean today can drift out of conformance with one redesign or plugin update. Monthly monitoring keeps the baseline current: every scan compares against it, catches regressions and new content, and adds to the timestamped found-and-verified record that documents your continuing effort. The deadlines and what to do with the time left are covered in the deadline guide.