A11y Audit

How it works in practice

A team audits its checkout flow against WCAG 2.2 Level AA. The work runs in three passes. An automated scanner catches the cheap, mechanical failures (missing form labels, a low-contrast button) in minutes. Manual keyboard-and-screen-reader testing then catches what tools cannot judge, such as a focus order that jumps illogically across a modal. Finally a screen-reader user works the flow end to end on assistive technology. The audit closes with twenty-three discovered issues, each tagged to the guideline it breaks and a severity. That document is what the team hands a buyer who asks for proof of conformance.

Accessibility audit vs. its neighbours

• Accessibility issue: the audit is the investigation🔍InvestigationEngineeringAn investigation into an issue or incidentView reference →; an issue is one finding inside it. A single audit discovers many issues, and an empty issue list is itself a meaningful audit result.
• Accessibility standard: the standard is the fixed yardstick; the audit is the measurement taken against it. The audit verifies the standard rather than defining anything.
• Quality assurance: general QA checks whether the product works as specified; an accessibility audit checks whether it works for people using assistive technology, judged against an external standard. Accessibility audit is a specialised member of the QA family with its own test methods.

In the graph

In the Unified Product Graph, an accessibility audit connects a product to its conformance evidence. The product is examined through product_audited_by_a11y_auditProductaudited byA11y Audithierarchy, and the audit proves the target via a11y_standard_verified_by_a11y_auditA11y Standardverified byA11y Audithierarchy. Each finding hangs off the audit through a11y_audit_discovers_a11y_issueA11y AuditdiscoversA11y Issuehierarchy, and the scope of what was tested is recorded with a11y_audit_covers_featureA11y AuditcoversFeaturecross-domain. That structure makes a conformance claim auditable in the literal sense: the assertion, the standard it targets, the features⭐FeatureProduct SpecificationA product capability or featureView reference → in scope, and every open issue all sit on one connected path.