What Drives the Cost
When planning for digital accessibility, organizations often ask what an audit costs. It depends on the size of the application, the complexity of the UI, and the method used.
Weigh that cost against the risk of a lawsuit and the customers who cannot use an inaccessible site.
1. Automated Testing Tools ($0 to $5,000/year)
Automated scanners are the cheapest option.
- Free Tools: Browser extensions like WAVE or axe DevTools are free but have to be run page by page.
- SaaS Platforms: Subscription services offer automated crawling across your entire site, scheduled reporting, and dashboards. Prices range from $50 to hundreds of dollars per month depending on page volume.
- Pros: Fast, inexpensive, great for catching basic errors (contrast, missing alt text).
- Cons: Finds only part of what a manual audit finds. Does not guarantee compliance.
2. Manual Expert Audits ($3,000 to $30,000+ per project)
A manual audit involves accessibility experts navigating your site using assistive technologies (screen readers, keyboard-only) and evaluating it against all WCAG criteria.
- Small Sites (1-10 templates): $3,000 to $8,000.
- Medium/Large Apps: $10,000 to $30,000+.
- Pros: Thorough, accurate, identifies complex usability barriers automated tools miss, and gives the most reliable picture of conformance.
- Cons: Expensive, slow, represents a "point-in-time" snapshot that becomes outdated as soon as code changes.
3. Hybrid Platforms
Platforms like AccessiSight (ours) sit in between: automated scanning on every change, plus a manual checklist for the criteria a tool can't decide. That lowers the cost of an audit by fixing the easy failures first; it doesn't replace one.
- Pros: Continuous monitoring, CI/CD integration, code-level fix advice for developers.
Don't Forget Remediation Costs
An audit only identifies the problems; it doesn't fix them. When budgeting for accessibility, you must allocate resources for your engineering and design teams to remediate the issues identified in the audit. Tools that give code-level fix advice (AccessiSight is one) can cut that work down.