Audit & certification
The tier that can actually certify
Software produces evidence. A qualified human audit produces a conformance statement — scoped, dated, and backed by someone who put their name to it. This is that.
What it is
A human audit, a real remediation, and a statement someone will accept
An automated finding is evidence, not a certificate. Conformance is certified only by the professional audit — scoped, dated and signed by qualified humans. That sentence appears on every page of this site that asks you for money, and this is the page where the second half of it happens.
Of the 55 WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA success criteria, 16 cannot be tested by any machine — not by ours and not by anyone's. Whether an error message actually helps. Whether the reading order makes sense to someone who cannot see the layout. Whether alternative text is accurate rather than merely present. Whether a drag interaction has a usable single-pointer alternative.
Those are the criteria a person has to sit with your store and judge, using the assistive technology your customers use. That is what this tier buys, and it is why it can end in a certification when automation cannot.
The process
Four stages, in this order
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01 — SCOPE
Agree what is audited
The pages and journeys that carry your business: home, category, product, basket, checkout, account, search, and any page a buyer specifically asks about. The scope is written down before anything starts, because it will appear on the statement.
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02 — AUDIT
Test it as your customers do
Screen reader, keyboard only, magnification, reduced motion, high contrast. Automated checks handle what they handle reliably; every judgement criterion is assessed by a person, with the reasoning recorded.
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03 — REMEDIATE
Fix what automation cannot
Template and component-level repairs, in your theme where they belong, with the reasoning explained so your developers do not reintroduce the same pattern next quarter.
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04 — CERTIFY
Re-test, then state it
The scope is re-tested after remediation, and the conformance statement is issued against what the store does now — WCAG 2.2 Level AA, the scope audited, the date. Plus the VPAT/ACR.
The deliverables
What lands in your inbox
The audit report
Every issue found, with severity, exact location, the criterion it fails, and the remediation applied or recommended. Written to be handed to a developer, not to be admired.
The conformance statement
A statement that the audited scope conforms to WCAG 2.2 Level AA, naming the standard, the scope and the date, and signed. Servable at a public URL so anyone can check it.
The VPAT / ACR
An Accessibility Conformance Report in the standard structure, rendered as branded HTML and as a PDF, stating support level and remarks criterion by criterion — the document procurement teams and tenders ask for by name, and which typically costs more than this whole engagement when bought alone.
An expiry, stated plainly
The statement says when it was issued and when it should be revisited. It does not pretend to be permanent, because it is not, and a buyer who knows what they are reading will trust it more for saying so.
If you sell to organisations
The procurement answer
Public bodies across the EU and the US, and an increasing number of large private buyers, ask suppliers for an accessibility conformance report before they buy. In the EU that expectation runs through EN 301 549; in the US it runs through Section 508 and the VPAT format built for it. If you cannot produce one, you are not in the running, and no amount of automated tooling will substitute for the document.
This tier exists to make you answerable to that question in weeks rather than quarters, at a price well below the European manual-audit market, with the conformance report included rather than quoted separately.
Price
€1,950 one-time, €990 a year to keep it current
The audit, the remediation of what automation cannot fix, the re-test, the conformance statement and the VPAT/ACR are all included in the one-time price. Recertification is an annual re-audit that keeps the statement honest as your store changes.
Larger estates, multi-language stores and unusual scopes are quoted rather than guessed — tell us what you are running and we will tell you what it takes.
FAQ
What buyers ask
What exactly do I receive?
An audit report listing every issue found with its severity, location and remediation; a conformance statement naming the standard (WCAG 2.2 Level AA), the scope audited and the date; and a VPAT/ACR in the standard format, rendered as branded HTML and PDF, signed, and servable at a public URL so a buyer can verify it.
Why is it scoped and dated rather than just "certified"?
Because that is the only honest form the claim can take, and every legitimate audit firm works this way. Conformance is a property of specific pages at a specific moment. The day after the audit you might publish a new landing page. A statement that did not name its scope or its date would be making a promise about pages that did not exist when it was written.
Do I need a plan as well?
They do different jobs. The audit tells you where you stand and gives you something a buyer will accept; a plan does the ongoing work and watches for regressions between audits. Most stores that need the certification also want the monitoring, because a certificate with no monitoring behind it decays quietly.
What is recertification?
An annual re-audit at €990 that keeps the statement current. It is a subscription because conformance drifts — that is not a caveat we are adding to sell you something, it is the reason a dated statement is the honest artefact in the first place.
Who does the audit?
Qualified human auditors, using assistive technology, on your real store. Automation is used where automation is reliable — it is pointless to have a person count contrast ratios — and human judgement is used for everything else, which is most of it.
Start with the free scan either way.
It costs nothing and it tells you how much work the audit is likely to be. Three engines, nine probes, your real pages including checkout.