Audit lens
Government website accessibility audit
Citizens expect to complete tasks without assistance: paying bills, finding office hours, downloading forms, and understanding eligibility. Clarity and robust forms matter as much as visual design.
Who this is for
Public-sector content owners, service designers, and developers shipping citizen-facing flows.
Key risk areas
- Complex navigation and mega-menus
- Long forms and eligibility wizards
- Linked PDFs and downloads
- Emergency or alert banners
Scan these pages first
Use public URLs only. Scan, note findings, then open the linked issue guides.
- Homepage and top tasks from analytics
- One high-volume service or transaction page
- Site search results page
- Contact or feedback form
Try it on your URL
Paste a public URL. You get a shareable report. Fix issues, deploy, then rescan the same URL to compare results.
How teams use scans with this lens
- Pick template URLs
One URL per major pattern.
- Scan and triage
Map rules to issue guides.
- Fix shared components
Reduce repeated failures.
- Rescan and compare
New report link each run.
Cluster
Skips levels
Page title
Subsection (styled as heading but wrong level)
Logical sequence
H1 Page title
H2 Section
H3 Subsection
Headings and landmarks repeat on every template.
Cluster
Body text sample
Fails WCAG AA for normal text
Body text sample
Stronger contrast
Badges, footers, and secondary buttons add noise.
Cluster
~32px
~44px+ target
Cart and nav patterns compress targets on phones.
How this lens works
Sample high-traffic tasks from analytics: search, top services, and contact flows. Scan landing URLs plus one deep form flow per service.
Note linked PDFs: automation covers HTML pages; PDF remediation is a separate workflow.
Typical patterns we see
Complex menus without clear focus order, essential PDFs without HTML alternatives, and long forms missing programmatic error summaries.
Headings that skip levels when content is pasted from documents, breaking screen reader outlines.
Common issues by page type
Service and form flows
Missing labels, unclear error summaries, and headings pasted from Word that skip levels.
News and policy pages
Ambiguous link text and images of text without alt or HTML equivalents.
What to fix first
Missing labels on search and filter fields, ambiguous link text (“click here”), and low contrast on secondary buttons.
How to fix
Establish a component library for alerts, forms, and steppers. Train content authors on headings and link text.
Publish an accessibility statement that describes known limits and feedback channels.
Issue pages
Guides and overviews
What to do next
Keep the scan, fix, rescan loop going
Ship a fix, then run another scan on the same URL. Each run gets its own report link so you can compare before and after.
Open scan