What Happens After an Accessibility Audit? Re-Testing and Validation Explained
An accessibility audit delivers a detailed report of findings, but the report is not the end of the process. It is the beginning of a remediation cycle that ends with validated compliance. Understanding what happens after the audit, and planning for it, is essential to achieving a compliant deliverable on schedule.
What the Audit Report Contains
A comprehensive accessibility audit report includes:
- An issue log listing every accessibility barrier found, organized by severity and WCAG success criterion
- Severity ratings that help your team prioritize remediation (critical, major, minor)
- Remediation guidance for each issue, explaining what needs to change and why
- An executive summary for stakeholders who need to understand the compliance posture without reading every finding
- Testing methodology documentation identifying the standards, tools, and environment used
The issue log is the working document your development team will use to plan remediation. Each finding includes the specific WCAG success criterion that was violated, a description of the barrier, and guidance on how to resolve it.
Planning Remediation
Once the audit report is delivered, remediation planning begins. This is a development effort, and it should be treated as one, with assigned resources, a timeline, and clear acceptance criteria.
Effective remediation planning follows this approach:
Triage by severity. Start with critical and major issues. Critical issues are those that completely block a user with disabilities from accessing content or functionality. Major issues create significant barriers. Minor issues should be addressed but are lower priority.
Group by component. Many accessibility issues share a root cause. For example, if your application uses a custom dropdown component throughout the interface, fixing the component once resolves every instance. Grouping issues by component reduces total remediation effort.
Estimate accurately. Accessibility fixes vary in complexity. Adding alt text to images is straightforward. Rebuilding keyboard navigation for a complex multi-step form is not. Involve your development team in estimation rather than guessing.
Set a remediation deadline. Work backward from your compliance deadline, the contract deliverable date, the option year review, or the procurement submission. Build in time for re-testing after remediation is complete.
What Remediation Involves
The specific remediation work depends on the findings, but common categories include:
HTML and semantic structure, fixing heading hierarchy, adding proper landmarks, using semantic elements instead of generic divs with ARIA overrides.
Keyboard accessibility, ensuring all interactive elements are focusable, tab order is logical, focus is managed in modals and dynamic content, and no keyboard traps exist.
Form accessibility, associating labels with inputs, providing error messages linked to the relevant fields, ensuring form validation is announced to screen readers.
Color and contrast, adjusting color combinations to meet 4.5:1 contrast ratio for normal text, ensuring color is not the sole indicator of meaning.
Document accessibility, tagging PDFs correctly, fixing reading order, adding alt text to images in documents, structuring tables properly.
ARIA implementation, correcting invalid ARIA attributes, ensuring dynamic state changes are communicated to assistive technology, removing ARIA that conflicts with native HTML semantics.
Your development team should fix each issue and verify the fix locally before submitting for re-testing. The audit report's remediation guidance provides the specific changes needed for each finding.
What Re-Testing Is
Re-testing is an independent verification that remediated issues have been properly resolved. It is not a new audit, it is a focused evaluation of the specific issues documented in the original audit report.
During re-testing, the evaluator:
- Reviews each finding from the original issue log
- Tests whether the specific issue has been resolved
- Verifies that the fix does not introduce new accessibility barriers
- Documents the pass/fail status of each finding
- Produces an updated issue log with current conformance status
Re-testing is typically faster than the original audit because the scope is limited to previously identified issues. However, if the evaluator discovers that a fix introduced a new barrier, that finding is documented as well.
What You Receive After Re-Testing
After re-testing, you receive:
- An updated issue log showing the pass/fail status of each remediated finding
- A compliance confirmation letter if all critical and major issues have been resolved
- A remaining issues summary if any findings persist, with guidance on next steps
- An updated ACR if applicable, reflecting the current conformance level of the product
The compliance confirmation letter is particularly valuable for federal contractors. It provides documented evidence that the product has been evaluated, issues were identified, remediation was completed, and conformance was independently verified. This documentation strengthens your position in procurement evaluations and acceptance reviews.
What If Issues Remain After Re-Testing?
Not every remediation effort resolves every issue on the first attempt. Common reasons findings persist include:
- The fix addressed the symptom but not the root cause
- The fix was applied to one instance but not all instances of the same component
- The fix introduced a regression that created a new barrier
- The development team misunderstood the remediation guidance
When issues remain, the re-testing report provides updated guidance. Your team addresses the remaining findings and submits for another round of re-testing. Most engagements reach full compliance within one or two re-testing cycles.
The Complete Compliance Timeline
From initial audit to validated compliance, the typical timeline looks like this:
- Audit (2-3 weeks), comprehensive evaluation produces the findings report
- Remediation planning (1 week), development team reviews findings, triages, and estimates
- Remediation (2-6 weeks), development work to resolve findings, depending on volume and complexity
- Re-testing (1-2 weeks), independent verification of remediated issues
- Final documentation (1 week), updated ACR and compliance confirmation
Total elapsed time from audit kickoff to validated compliance is typically 6-12 weeks, depending on the number and complexity of findings.
Planning Ahead
Organizations that achieve compliance most efficiently share common practices:
- They budget for the full cycle, audit, remediation, and re-testing, not just the audit
- They assign dedicated development resources for remediation rather than fitting it in between other work
- They communicate with their evaluator during remediation to clarify findings and avoid misinterpretation
- They start early relative to their compliance deadline, leaving room for re-testing cycles
The worst outcome is discovering significant accessibility barriers two weeks before a deliverable is due. Starting the audit process early gives your team time to remediate properly and validate the results.
Simkins & Elgazar provides re-testing and validation services as part of every engagement. We verify that your remediation efforts resolve the findings and produce the documentation you need to demonstrate compliance. Contact us to plan your audit and remediation timeline.