ADA Website Accessibility Monitoring & Maintenance

Your website may look and work perfectly well to you while creating serious barriers for someone who navigates with a keyboard, uses a screen reader, needs higher contrast, or has difficulty completing a complicated form.

Those barriers are common. In 2026, an automated study of one million home pages found detectable Web Content Accessibility Guidelines failures on 95.9% of them.^[1] More than 1 in 4 U.S. adults, over 70 million people, reported having a disability in 2022.^[2]

For businesses, website accessibility is both a customer-service issue and a website-quality issue. WCAG 2.2 Level AA provides a practical standard for finding and reducing many of the barriers that prevent people from using a website.

What Is WCAG 2.2 Level AA?

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The guidelines are published by the World Wide Web Consortium and are widely used as the technical standard for accessible websites. WCAG organizes accessibility around four principles: content should be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.^[3]

In plain language, an accessible website should allow people to:

• Read content with sufficient color contrast
• Understand images through appropriate alternative text
• Navigate links, menus, and forms without relying on a mouse
• See which control has keyboard focus
• Understand form labels, instructions, and error messages
• Enlarge or reflow content without losing important information
• Use assistive technology such as a screen reader

WCAG has three conformance levels: A, AA, and AAA. Level AA includes the foundational Level A requirements plus additional Level AA requirements. WCAG 2.2 is the current WCAG 2 recommendation and adds criteria related to keyboard focus, target sizes, dragging, consistent help, repeated data entry, and accessible authentication.^[4]

Conformance is broader than receiving a good score from a scanning tool. It applies to complete pages and user processes. A contact form, appointment request, payment process, or account login can still create a barrier even when the home page passes an automated scan.

Why Might a Business Need or Want It?

The simplest reason is that customers need to be able to use the website. An inaccessible menu, unlabeled form field, or low-contrast button can prevent someone from finding information, requesting service, making a purchase, or contacting the business.

Some organizations also have specific accessibility obligations. The U.S. Department of Justice rule for state and local governments names WCAG 2.1 Level AA as its technical standard and establishes compliance dates in 2027 or 2028, depending on the entity.^[5] Our local government IT resources provide more context for municipal organizations.

For private businesses open to the public, DOJ guidance says that the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to goods and services offered online. However, the Department has not issued a detailed Title III website regulation naming one technical standard for every private business.^[6] Businesses should obtain legal advice about their own obligations rather than treating a website scan as a legal opinion.

Even when a specific rule or contract does not require WCAG conformance, a business may still pursue it to improve customer access, strengthen website quality, and demonstrate that accessibility concerns are being addressed responsibly.

Why Accessibility Needs Ongoing Attention

Website accessibility is not a one-time project. A site can be improved today and develop new issues next month when someone changes a color, adds an image, publishes a document, installs a plugin, updates a form, or connects a new third-party service.

Automated scanning helps identify many common technical problems, including certain contrast, labeling, alternative-text, and code issues. But no automated tool can test every WCAG requirement. W3C states that knowledgeable human evaluation is required to determine whether a website meets accessibility standards.^[7]

That is why ongoing monitoring is more useful than a scan that produces a report and then gets filed away. Issues need to be reviewed, corrected, and tested again. New website changes also need to be monitored so the same types of problems do not quietly return.

The goal is continued improvement and a documented maintenance process, not a one-time perfect score.

How Inter-Quest’s Managed Accessibility Service Works

Inter-Quest’s Website Accessibility Monitoring & Maintenance service is designed to provide that ongoing process. It is a managed service, not simply an automated report delivered to the customer.

Each month, we scan the website using our internal accessibility testing system. Testing uses axe-core against applicable automated WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA rules. We review identified issues within the website content, design, and code under our management.

When we find an issue within that scope, we make the appropriate correction and test the affected area again to verify the result. We also maintain a record of scans, identified issues, completed corrections, and verification results.

Customers receive a quarterly Website Accessibility Status Report summarizing:

• Monthly scans completed and pages monitored
• Accessibility issues identified
• Corrections completed and verification results
• Current automated testing status
• Concerns involving linked documents or third-party content
• Testing and improvement history over time

The service can also include ongoing maintenance of the website’s accessibility statement when applicable. If no new issues are found during a reporting period, the report documents the completed scans and confirms that no corrective work was required.

The service covers the website and code under our management. Documents and third-party tools such as embeds, widgets, booking systems, payment tools, and iframes remain under their providers’ control. If our testing identifies a concern involving one of those items, we notify the customer so it can be addressed with the appropriate provider.

Automated testing supports continued alignment with WCAG 2.2 Level AA, but it is not an independent accessibility certification or legal opinion. It is a practical way to monitor the website, correct detectable problems, and maintain a clear record of the work being done.

Website accessibility does not have to become another technical responsibility your staff manages alone. Through our managed IT services, Inter-Quest can handle the regular scans, corrections, verification, and reporting. Contact our team to discuss adding accessibility monitoring and maintenance to your website.