On this page: why conformance decays, what monitoring includes, how it differs from a one-time audit, and who needs it.
Why Conformance Decays
Every accessibility engagement ends with a site in good shape. What happens next is predictable:
- New content arrives. Blog posts, product pages, staff bios, event listings. Each one is written by someone who wasn’t in the accessibility conversation, using a CMS that will happily let them skip alt text.
- Files get uploaded. PDFs are the single most common regression we’d expect to find — menus, reports, forms, price lists, almost none of them tagged for screen readers.
- Media gets embedded. A video without captions, an audio clip without a transcript.
- Plugins and themes update. A component’s markup changes in a minor release and takes keyboard focus behavior with it.
- Design evolves. A new accent color, a lighter placeholder style, a smaller caption size — each one a possible contrast failure introduced with good intentions.
None of these are failures of the original remediation. They’re the normal life of a website. The question is only whether anyone is watching.
What Monitoring Includes
- Recurring automated scans — monthly (weekly on the higher tier) full-site scans against WCAG 2.2 AA using industry-standard automated testing tools, with new issues flagged by severity and by which pages they affect
- Manual spot-testing — one session per quarter on critical paths, because automated scanning catches only a fraction of real issues. Keyboard navigation and screen reader checks on the journeys that matter: navigation, forms, checkout, whatever your site’s actual job is
- Remediation hours — two hours per month included on Monitor + Remediate, so findings get fixed rather than accumulating in a report nobody reads
- New-content review — a check on newly published pages before or shortly after they go live, which is when a violation is cheapest to fix
- PDF and document triage — identifying untagged documents and either remediating them or flagging them for replacement with accessible HTML, which is usually the better answer
- Accessibility statement upkeep — keeping your published statement accurate as the site changes. A statement that describes a site you no longer have is worse than no statement
- A quarterly conformance summary — what was found, what was fixed, what’s outstanding, and what it would take to close it. The document your legal or compliance stakeholder actually wants
How This Differs From a One-Time Audit
| Aspect | Audit & remediation | Ongoing monitoring |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Project | Retainer |
| Question it answers | “Where do we stand, and can you fix it?” | “Are we still standing there?” |
| Output | Findings report, fixed code, conformance documentation | Recurring scans, fixed regressions, current documentation |
| Ends when | The findings are remediated | You stop publishing new content |
Most clients need both, in that order. Monitoring without a remediation baseline just produces a long list of pre-existing problems; remediation without monitoring produces a compliant site with a shelf life.
Who This Is For
- Organizations under a dated federal obligation — state and local government entities (WCAG 2.1 AA by April 2027 or April 2028) and HHS-funded healthcare organizations (by May 2027 or May 2028). For these, conformance has to hold on the deadline date and after it, not just on the day the audit finished. Details on the ADA compliance page.
- Organizations that have already been sued or received a demand letter. Settlements frequently include ongoing conformance obligations, and a lapse after settling is a materially worse position than the original claim.
- Anyone publishing regularly. A site that adds content weekly regenerates accessibility risk weekly.
- Nonprofits with funder accessibility conditions, where the reporting requirement is annual and continuous.
What It Costs
| Plan Feature | Monitor | Monitor + Remediate |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly Investment | $199+ | $549+ |
| Automated scans | Monthly | Weekly |
| New-content review | ✓ | ✓ |
| Manual spot-testing | — | 1 session / quarter |
| Remediation hours included | — | 2 hours / month |
| PDF and document triage | — | ✓ |
| Statement upkeep | ✓ | ✓ |
| Quarterly conformance summary | ✓ | ✓ |
Sites we haven’t audited start with a baseline audit — see ADA website compliance. Annual re-audits are $1,500+ for monitoring clients.
For context on that $199+: the best-known accessibility overlay widget publishes $179/month for a mid-tier site. That buys you a JavaScript layer that sits on top of your code. This buys scanning, human review, and documentation of the code itself — which is what actually determines whether your site is accessible, and what a plaintiff’s expert will look at.
Related Services
- ADA Website Compliance — the audit and remediation this monitoring maintains
- Website Maintenance — broader ongoing care, with accessibility scanning included at higher tiers
- Website Analytics Consulting — for understanding how real users move through the paths being tested
