Helping Missouri businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies understand where their websites stand — and what to do next.
Web Accessibility Auditing Services
Why a Professional Audit Matters
Automated scanning tools can identify roughly 30–40% of accessibility issues on a website. The rest require professional judgment, keyboard testing, and screen reader evaluation — the kind of review that holds up under legal scrutiny and provides a genuine roadmap for improvement.
Our audits are built on a professional-grade tool stack, a documented methodology, and plain-language reporting that any developer or content manager can act on. You don't need to be a WCAG expert to use what we deliver.
Start Here: The Accessibility Statement
Before we walk through the audit process, it's worth starting with what the entire engagement is working toward — because that context shapes everything that follows.
A Web Accessibility Statement is the most visible and consequential outcome of any serious accessibility engagement. It's a public declaration that your organization has taken deliberate, documented steps to evaluate and improve your website's accessibility. It tells users with disabilities that their experience matters, identifies the standard you're working toward (currently WCAG 2.1 AA), and provides a genuine channel for users to report barriers they encounter.
You may have already come across tools that generate an Accessibility Statement automatically — no audit required. A generated statement that isn't grounded in an actual evaluation of your website doesn't reflect the real status of your site. It's a public document that makes claims about your accessibility that aren't verified and may be inaccurate. In a legal context, that's not a neutral position.
The Accessibility Statement drafted at the conclusion of every audit engagement we conduct is specific to your website — not a canned document. It reflects what was actually tested, what was found, what has been addressed, and what remains in progress. It's accurate, it's specific to your organization, and it's defensible — because it's backed by documented professional evaluation, not a form submission.
A strong Accessibility Statement, supported by a website that scores well across multiple professional testing tools, is one of the most practical deterrents against opportunistic legal action. It demonstrates good-faith effort, establishes a documented baseline, and provides a clear roadmap for ongoing improvement. That's what we're building toward from the first day of an engagement to the last.
The Audit Process
Phase 1 — Technical Audit
The Technical Audit is a comprehensive automated evaluation of a representative sample of your website using professional testing tools:
- Screaming Frog
- Axe DevTools Pro (with Intelligent Guided Testing)
- Pope Tech
- WAVE
- Google Lighthouse.
You receive:
- A complete written report with all findings organized by severity
- WCAG 2.1 AA criterion references for every issue identified
- Plain-language remediation recommendations written clearly enough for any developer to act on
- A draft Web Accessibility Statement — a documented, public-facing record of where your site currently stands and your commitment to continued improvement
The Technical Audit is the starting point for every engagement. It establishes your baseline, identifies the highest-priority issues, and informs the scope of any further testing or remediation work.
Manual testing is quoted separately. See Phase 2 below.
The Audit Process
Phase 2 — Manual Audit
Automated tools cannot replicate the experience of a real user navigating your site with a keyboard or screen reader. The Manual Audit addresses that gap.
Rather than testing every page on your site, we target the pages and interaction types that matter most: your home page, contact forms, embedded video, accordion or expandable content, navigation patterns, staff directories, blog or news listings, donation or checkout flows, and map embeds. This approach — auditing page templates and interaction patterns rather than every URL — delivers professional-grade coverage efficiently.
Pages Tested Per Engagement
Manual testing includes keyboard-only navigation, screen reader evaluation using NVDA (with VoiceOver as a secondary tool), and judgment-based review of items automated tools cannot assess — including image alternative text quality, link text clarity in context, form error message adequacy, and interactive element behavior.
The Manual Audit is priced per page based on complexity and quoted individually based on your site's size and content. It may be completed as part of the initial audit engagement or scheduled as a follow-on phase.
| Site Size | Pages Manually Audited |
|---|---|
| Fewer than 10 pages | All pages |
| 10–30 pages | 8–12 representative pages |
| 30–75 pages | 10–15 representative pages |
| 75+ pages | 12–18 representative pages |
The Audit Process
Phase 3 — Post-Remediation Verification
Once your developer has addressed the audit findings, Post-Remediation Verification confirms that the work was completed correctly and documents the results.
You receive an updated findings summary indicating the resolution status of each prior issue, along with notes on any items that were partially addressed or require additional attention. This gives you — and your developer — a clear, documented record of where things stand, and provides the basis for updating your Web Accessibility Statement from in progress to conformant.
For websites originally designed and built by 54 Design Group, we offer direct remediation work as an optional add-on to any audit engagement. Remediation is scoped and estimated on a case-by-case basis at an hourly rate, based on the findings from your audit report.
If your site was built by another developer or agency, your audit report is written to be fully actionable by any qualified developer — no additional support from us is required to put it to use.
Ongoing Monitoring
Accessibility isn't a one-time checkbox. Websites change — new pages are added, content is updated, plugins are modified — and each change can introduce new issues. Ongoing monitoring keeps your site on track and your accessibility statement current.
| Plan | Best For | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Annual Monitoring | Small businesses, nonprofits | $400–$500/year |
| Semi-Annual Monitoring | Government agencies, higher-risk sites | $750–$900/year |
Each monitoring cycle includes a re-scan of your site, a findings update, and a revised status summary suitable for updating your accessibility statement.
Summary
| Service | Starting Rate |
|---|---|
| Technical Audit — New Clients | $1,095 |
| Technical Audit — Existing 54 Design Group Clients | Contact us for preferred pricing |
| Manual Audit | Per page, based on complexity and site size |
| Post-Remediation Verification | $465 |
| Remediation Work (54 Design Group sites only) | $95/hour |
| Annual Monitoring | $400–$500/year |
| Semi-Annual Monitoring | $750–$900/year |
Ready to Get Started?
An accessibility audit begins with understanding your site and your goals. Contact us to discuss your website, your timeline, and which services make sense for where you are right now.