A manual accessibility audit takes one to two weeks for most small-to-mid-size websites, measured from kickoff to report delivery. Larger sites and complex web apps run two to four weeks. Add one to two days for the proposal up front, and plan on a separate remediation period afterward – typically two to eight weeks depending on how much is broken – followed by a retest that takes a few days. If a vendor promises a complete audit in 24 hours, you’re being sold an automated scan with a cover page.
That’s the answer most buyers are looking for, and the rest of this post breaks down where the time actually goes, what stretches a WCAG audit timeline from two weeks to six, and what to do when a legal deadline means you don’t have two weeks.
The full timeline, stage by stage
An accessibility audit isn’t one block of time. It’s four stages, and buyers who only budget for the middle one get surprised.
Scoping and proposal: 1 to 2 business days. You share your URL and describe the site, the auditor identifies unique templates and flows, and you get a fixed price and a start date. At Labrador Services the proposal lands within two business days of your request. Enterprise firms often take one to two weeks for this stage alone, because discovery calls have to be scheduled before anyone will name a number.
The audit itself: 1 to 2 weeks for most sites. This is the manual testing – a human working through your pages and flows with a keyboard, with screen readers, at 200% zoom, then documenting every failure against a specific WCAG 2.2 success criterion with severity ratings and remediation guidance. We covered what that deliverable looks like in what an accessibility audit actually includes.
Remediation: 1 to 6 weeks, sometimes more. The audit hands your developers a prioritized work order. How long the fixes take depends on your team’s capacity and how deep the problems go. A brochure site with 15 issues might be clean in two weeks; a web app with a custom component library and 60 findings can take a quarter.
Retest: 2 to 5 days. The auditor verifies your fixes with the same assistive technology that found the issues. Ours is included in the audit price. Skip this stage and you have a list of things someone intended to fix, which is not the same as evidence that they’re fixed.
So when someone asks how long the whole process takes, site broken to site verified, the honest answer for a typical small business is six to twelve weeks, and the audit itself is the shortest part.
What actually drives audit turnaround time
The same things that drive audit cost drive the timeline, because both are measures of human hours.
Unique templates and flows, not page count. A 500-page blog on three templates audits faster than a 12-screen app with checkout, account management, and a drag-and-drop interface. Auditors test experiences, not URLs.
Component complexity. A custom date picker has to be tested in every state it can reach – open, closed, focused, errored – with a keyboard and a screen reader. One complicated component can take longer than ten static pages.
Assistive technology coverage. Testing with NVDA alone is faster than testing across JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver on desktop and mobile. Broader coverage multiplies hours. Whether you need it depends on your audience and your risk.
How much is broken. Every failure gets reproduced, rated, and written up with a fix. A site with 40 issues takes meaningfully longer to document than a site with 8, even when the testing covers identical ground. Teams that run a free automated scan first and clean up the obvious failures – missing alt text, empty buttons, low-contrast text – shorten their own audit. The scan only catches about a third of WCAG failures, which is why manual testing exists, but that third is fast to fix and slow to document.
Auditor availability. The quoted timeline starts at kickoff, not at signature. Ask every vendor two separate questions: how long the audit takes, and when they can start. A two-week audit that starts in six weeks is an eight-week wait.
Why can’t it be faster?
It’s worth taking the question seriously, because the instinct behind it is reasonable. Automated scanners return results in minutes. If a tool can check your whole site before lunch, why does a human need two weeks?
Because the tool and the human are answering different questions. A scanner checks whether your code matches patterns it can parse – alt attributes present, contrast ratios above threshold, form fields labeled. It cannot tell you whether the alt text describes the image, whether the label makes sense, or whether a screen reader user can actually complete your checkout. Finding that out means a person navigating every flow the way your users do, and there’s no compression algorithm for attention.
The documentation is the other half of the time. A finding that just says “keyboard trap on checkout” starts an argument with your developers. A finding with the failing criterion, reproduction steps, a screen recording, and code-level guidance starts a fix. The second kind takes hours the first kind doesn’t, and it’s the difference between a report that gets acted on and one that sits in a drawer.
When you don’t have two weeks
Legal deadlines change the math. An ADA demand letter usually gives you 10 to 30 days to respond, and your attorney needs a factual read on the claims well before that.
An expedited accessibility audit is a real option, though it means the auditor is reprioritizing their queue rather than skipping steps, so expect a rush premium and say what your deadline is upfront. We can scope and start within days when a client is on a legal clock.
There’s also a faster first move: a single-page audit. Our $495 homepage audit turns around quickly, gives your attorney an early factual read, and the fee is credited in full if you continue to a complete audit. If the letter names specific pages, a scoped audit of those pages does the same job. We wrote a full playbook for responding to an ADA demand letter if that’s what brought you here.
What a deadline doesn’t justify is the 24-hour “compliance” shortcut. A widget installs in an afternoon and fixes nothing underneath, and roughly a quarter of accessibility lawsuits now target sites that were running one when they got sued.
A worked example
Say you run a mid-size e-commerce site: product catalog, search, cart, checkout, customer accounts. You request a quote on a Monday. The proposal arrives Tuesday with a fixed fee and a kickoff the following Monday.
The audit runs two weeks, because checkout and account flows have to be tested end to end with a keyboard and two screen readers. You get the report on a Friday: 34 findings, 6 critical, sequenced into a remediation plan. Your two developers work through the criticals in three weeks and the rest over the next four, alongside their normal sprint work. The retest takes three days and verifies 32 of 34 fixed, with two sent back with notes.
Total elapsed time: about ten weeks from first email to verified fixes. The audit was two of those weeks. Budgeting ten weeks from the start is what keeps this process calm; discovering it in week six is what makes it expensive.
Frequently asked questions
How long does an accessibility audit take for a small website?
One to two weeks from kickoff to report for a typical small-business site, plus a day or two for the proposal up front. A single-page homepage audit turns around in days.
How long does a WCAG audit take for a large site or web app?
Two to four weeks for most large sites and SaaS products with authenticated flows and complex components. Very large engagements with broad assistive technology coverage can run longer, which is one reason to scope by unique templates and flows rather than raw page count.
Can I get an accessibility audit done in a week?
Sometimes. Expedited audits exist for legal deadlines and procurement crunches – expect a rush premium, and mention the deadline when you request a quote. A scoped single-page or few-page audit is the fastest legitimate option. Anything promising full-site results in 24 hours is an automated scan.
How long does accessibility remediation take after an audit?
One to six weeks for most sites, depending on your developers’ capacity and the number of findings. Complex web apps with many critical issues can take a quarter. A good audit report shortens this by sequencing fixes and including code-level guidance.
Does the audit timeline include the retest?
Ask, because it varies by vendor. Ours includes a retest after remediation at no extra cost – it typically takes two to five days and verifies fixes with the same assistive technology that found the issues.
How soon can an audit start after I sign?
That’s a separate question from how long the audit takes, and worth asking every vendor. Queues of two to six weeks are common at larger firms. We typically kick off within days, and faster when a legal deadline is involved.