Yes, a free accessibility audit is worth running, as long as you know exactly what it is: a fast, automated scan that flags the machine-detectable problems on your site. A good free scan catches missing image descriptions, low-contrast text, and unlabeled form fields in minutes, giving you a real starting picture and a clear sense of where you stand. What it cannot do is confirm your site actually works for people using screen readers, keyboards, or voice control, because that takes trained human testing. Treat the free scan as triage, not a clean bill of health.
That distinction matters more than ever. In 2025, more than 5,000 digital-accessibility lawsuits were filed against businesses, up roughly 20% over the prior year, and the WebAIM Million report found detectable WCAG failures on 94.8% of the top one million homepages. The odds your site has real problems are high. The question is how thoroughly you want to find them.
What can a free accessibility audit actually detect?
Automated tools are pattern-matchers. They parse your page's code and compare it against rules they can evaluate mechanically. That covers a meaningful slice of the standard, but only a slice: automated scanning can detect roughly a third of the WCAG 2.2 success criteria. The rest depend on human judgment.
Within that third, scanners are fast and reliable. They excel at the highest-volume, most common failures, which happen to be exactly the ones plaintiffs' firms look for first.
The problems a scanner catches every time
- Low-contrast text that falls below the 4.5:1 ratio required for normal text (see our guide to WCAG color contrast requirements).
- Missing alternative text on images, so screen-reader users get nothing where a description should be.
- Missing form labels, which leave fields unannounced and unusable without sight.
- Empty links and buttons that announce as nothing, or as a raw URL, to assistive technology.
These four categories are the WebAIM Million's most common failure types, and a free scan will surface them in seconds. If your site is riddled with them, you don't need to spend a dollar to know you have work to do. The output is a legitimate, useful punch list.
What can't an automated scan tell you?
The other two-thirds of WCAG 2.2 require a human to actually use the site. No scanner can judge whether your content makes sense in the order a screen reader reads it, whether your alt text is meaningful rather than merely present, or whether a keyboard user can complete a checkout without a mouse.
A scan will tell you an image has alt text. It cannot tell you the alt text says "image123.jpg" instead of describing the product. A scan will confirm a button has a label. It cannot confirm the focus outline is visible when you tab to it, that the tab order is logical, or that a custom dropdown traps keyboard focus. These are the failures that break real tasks for real users, and they are invisible to automation.
This is why a passing scan is dangerous if you misread it. "Zero automated-scan violations" means your code cleared the machine-checkable rules. It does not mean your site is accessible, and it does not mean you are protected from a lawsuit. Many sites that pass a scan still fail a person trying to use them, and over 1 in 4 U.S. adults lives with a disability. To understand where the standard itself draws these lines, our explainer on what WCAG Level AA means is a good next read.
How is a paid audit different from a free scan?
A paid audit is expert human testing layered on top of the automated pass, not instead of it. At ADA Fail, an audit against WCAG 2.2 AA, the level courts, the DOJ rule, and the EU all reference, means a trained tester drives your site the way disabled users do: with a screen reader, by keyboard only, checking focus order, target sizes, error handling, and reading logic. Only that combined process supports a real statement about conformance.
The practical payoff is a prioritized remediation plan you can hand to developers, ranked by legal and user-impact risk, with the exact code changes each fix requires. A raw scan gives you symptoms. A human audit gives you a diagnosis and a treatment order. If you want to see how the fix side is scoped and priced, our breakdown of website remediation cost walks through it.
You don't have to start with the paid version. Run the free accessibility audit first, use it to gauge severity, and escalate to human testing once you know the free scan has hit its ceiling. Most businesses that received a demand letter or settled a claim did not lack a scan; they lacked the human review that a scan can never replace.
Do accessibility overlays or widgets change the answer?
No, and this is where a lot of money gets wasted. A surface-layer "compliance" overlay is a third-party script that promises to make a broken site accessible automatically. It doesn't work. WebAIM's analysis found that sites using overlays averaged roughly as many detectable errors as sites without them, and UsableNet's reports repeatedly find that hundreds of companies sued each year already had a widget installed. The National Federation of the Blind formally opposes these products, calling them "not only ineffective but harmful."
Regulators agree. In a January 2025 action, the FTC ordered overlay vendor accessiBe to pay $1 million over deceptive claims that its widget could make any website compliant, and barred those unsubstantiated claims going forward. Our post on why overlay widgets fail covers the mechanics.
Be precise about what's being criticized, though. A user-facing preference widget, a button that lets a visitor adjust contrast or text size on a site that is already accessible at the code level and makes no compliance claims, is a genuine convenience. ADA Fail runs one on its own site. The problem is never the preference button; it's the compliance claim bolted onto a script that can't deliver it. If that distinction is fuzzy, read accessibility widget vs. overlay.
So what should a business owner do next?
- Run a free scan today. It costs nothing and tells you within minutes whether you're facing minor cleanup or a serious rebuild.
- Fix the obvious code-level errors the scan surfaces: contrast, alt text, form labels, empty controls.
- Commission a human audit against WCAG 2.2 AA to catch the two-thirds a scanner can't see.
- Remediate, then monitor. Accessibility isn't a one-time project; every new page and plugin can reintroduce failures.
If a demand letter has already arrived, don't start with a scan, start with what to do about an ADA website demand letter. Otherwise, the free scan is the right first move for almost everyone.
Frequently asked questions
Does passing a free accessibility scan protect me from a lawsuit?
No. Passing an automated scan means your code cleared the machine-checkable rules, which is only about a third of WCAG 2.2. Plaintiffs and their testers use screen readers and keyboards to find the human-detectable failures a scan never sees, and many sued businesses had a clean scan or an installed widget at the time. A passing automated-scan grade is a good sign, not a legal shield.
How long does a free accessibility audit take?
An automated scan of a single page returns results in seconds to a couple of minutes. A meaningful human audit of a full site, with screen-reader and keyboard testing across key user journeys, typically takes days, because a person has to actually complete real tasks the way disabled users do. The free scan is instant triage; the human audit is the thorough diagnosis.
Can automated tools fix accessibility problems, not just find them?
Be skeptical of anything that claims to. Scanners are diagnostic tools; they find issues, they don't repair your code. Products that promise automatic "fixes" via an overlay are exactly what the FTC penalized accessiBe for in 2025. Durable fixes come from correcting the underlying HTML, and confirming those fixes work requires human testing, not another script layered on top.
Ready to see where you stand? Start with a no-cost, no-obligation free accessibility audit, get your automated punch list in minutes, and we'll show you exactly which problems need human testing before you can claim real WCAG 2.2 AA conformance.