Free Website Accessibility Audit — Instant Results

A website accessibility audit is the first step toward making your site usable by everyone — including the 1.3 billion people worldwide living with some form of disability. It's also increasingly a legal requirement. In the US alone, over 4,000 ADA website accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2024, with average settlements ranging from $5,000 to $75,000.

Traditional accessibility audits cost $3,000 to $30,000 and take weeks. AccessScore gives you an instant, automated baseline audit for free — covering the 16 most impactful WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA criteria that courts reference in ADA lawsuits.

What Does the Free Audit Include?

Our free accessibility audit scans your website's HTML and checks 16 criteria across four categories:

For each check, we test your page against the WCAG 2.1 success criteria and calculate a weighted score from 0 to 100. You also get a letter grade (A through F) and a legal risk tier based on the type and severity of violations found.

Free Audit vs. Pro Report

Why Automated Accessibility Audits Matter

Manual accessibility audits are thorough but expensive ($3,000–$30,000) and slow (2–6 weeks). Automated audits can't catch everything — studies show they detect roughly 30–50% of WCAG violations — but they catch the most common and most legally actionable issues immediately.

The most frequently cited violations in ADA lawsuits are precisely the kind automated tools excel at detecting:

• Missing alt text — cited in 68% of ADA website lawsuits
• Missing form labels — cited in 54% of lawsuits
• Empty links/buttons — cited in 42% of lawsuits
• Missing document language — cited in 29% of lawsuits
• Empty headings — cited in 28% of lawsuits

AccessScore checks for all of these and 11 more criteria. Our free audit gives you a solid baseline of where your site stands — and whether you're at risk.

How to Run Your Free Audit

1. Enter your URL on the AccessScore homepage.
2. Wait 10–30 seconds while we fetch and analyze your page.
3. Review your results: overall score, grade, legal risk tier, and top issues.
4. Fix the top issues using the provided code examples.
5. Optionally upgrade to the Pro Report ($1.99) for the complete fix plan with every issue and affected element.

Command Line Alternative

Prefer the terminal? Run AccessScore from the command line without installing anything:

npx accessscore https://your-website.com

This runs the same 16 checks and outputs your score, grade, and issues right in your terminal. Perfect for CI/CD pipelines, pre-commit checks, or quick assessments.

Who Needs an Accessibility Audit?

If your website serves customers in the United States, you are almost certainly subject to ADA requirements. This includes:

• E-commerce stores — online retailers are the #1 target for ADA lawsuits (78% of filings)
• SaaS applications — B2B software must be accessible for enterprise procurement
• Restaurant and hospitality sites — online ordering and reservation systems
• Healthcare providers — HIPAA and ADA both require accessible patient portals
• Educational institutions — Section 508 and ADA apply to online learning
• Government contractors — Section 508 requires WCAG 2.1 AA compliance

What Happens After the Audit?

The audit is just the starting point. Here's the recommended workflow:

1. Triage: Focus on HIGH severity issues first — these carry the most legal risk
2. Fix: Use the provided before/after code examples to resolve each issue
3. Re-scan: Run the audit again to verify fixes worked
4. Monitor: Accessibility degrades with every code deploy — scan regularly
5. Document: Keep audit records as evidence of good-faith compliance efforts

Good-faith compliance efforts are your strongest legal defense. Courts are more lenient with businesses that demonstrate ongoing accessibility improvement, even if the site isn't perfect. Regular audits and documented fixes show intent.

How AccessScore Compares

AccessScore is the only free tool that combines WCAG violation detection with legal risk quantification. While tools like WAVE and Lighthouse identify issues, they don't tell you how those issues translate to lawsuit risk.