ADA Compliance Testing for Beginners: A Complete Guide

What is ADA Compliance Testing?

ADA compliance testing ensures your website or app is accessible to people with disabilities. This is essential in today's digital landscape, as accessibility becomes more of a legal and business requirement.

For U.S. websites, ADA compliance involves following the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). These guidelines help ensure your website is operable, perceivable, robust, and understandable for all users, no matter their abilities.

By performing ADA compliance testing, you're not just avoiding legal risks—you're providing a better, more inclusive experience for all your visitors. You'll learn how to make your site accessible, helping it work seamlessly for everyone.

In this guide, we'll cover the basics of ADA compliance testing and how to do it effectively using a mix of automated and manual methods. Let's dive into the steps to ensure your website meets the standards that matter most!

Why is ADA Compliance Testing important?

We have conducted studies across dozens of real users and websites, and the pattern is clear.

Websites that regularly test for ADA compliance are significantly less likely to receive demand letters or face lawsuits.

In most cases where legal action occurred, audits were either never conducted or done infrequently, showing how important ongoing accessibility testing really is.

Here's why ADA compliance testing matters:

• Legal Requirements: Meet WCAG standards to avoid legal penalties. Non-compliance can lead to costly lawsuits.
• Inclusive Design: Accessibility improves the user experience for everyone, making your website easier to navigate.
• Boost SEO: Accessible websites are easier for search engines to crawl, helping your site rank higher.

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Growing Awareness Is Changing Accessibility Outcomes

Over the years, more teams have learned how to approach accessibility testing in a practical way.

Instead of reacting only after problems appear, many now test earlier and more consistently as part of their regular workflow.

As awareness has grown, the impact is clear.

While ADA-related lawsuits have not disappeared, the overall volume has declined compared to peak years, especially since 2021. Some year-to-year fluctuation still exists, but organizations that test regularly and address issues early are far less likely to face legal action.

Accessibility testing has shifted from a last-minute concern to an ongoing part of maintaining a usable website.

As you can see for yourself in the table below, increased awareness and consistent testing align with a broader downward trend in ADA lawsuits over time, even with occasional increases in individual years.

What are WCAG requirements for ADA-compliant Website Test?

In practice, ADA compliance follows four WCAG principles, commonly called POUR: operable, perceivable, robust, and understandable. Let's break them down:

• Operable: Ensure users can easily navigate your website not just with a mouse but also using a keyboard or other assistive input devices.
• Perceivable: Content should be available in multiple formats, such as text alternatives for images, audio descriptions, and captions for videos. Ensure the page structure is logical and informative.
• Robust: Your website should work well across various devices and with assistive technologies like screen readers. This ensures long-term compatibility as new technologies emerge.
• Understandable: The content on your website should be easy to read and comprehend. Use clear, simple language and offer alternative formats for those who need them.

When to Test Your Website for ADA Compliance?

Regular ADA compliance testing is essential to keep your website up to date with accessibility standards. You should perform testing:

• After major updates or redesigns
• Whenever new content or features are added
• If you have never tested your website for accessibility before
• When WCAG guidelines are updated (stay informed via our WCAG updates page)
• Regularly, especially if you are continuously evolving your site

How to Perform ADA Compliance Testing: Manual vs. Automated Testing

There are two main methods for testing ADA compliance: manual testing and automated testing. Combining both methods is the most effective approach.

Manual ADA Compliance Testing

Manual testing involves reviewing your website manually to identify accessibility issues. This allows you to assess the user experience directly and find issues that automated tools might miss.

Example:

• A tester navigates your website using only a keyboard to ensure the entire website is fully navigable without a mouse.
• A screen reader is used to check how well content is read aloud to visually impaired users.

Key Benefits:

• Detects issues related to user experience, like confusing navigation or improper use of color contrast.
• Tests how real users would experience your website using assistive technologies.

Challenges:

• Time-consuming
• Requires expertise to interpret the WCAG guidelines correctly

Automated ADA Compliance Testing

Automated tools can scan your website quickly and identify common accessibility issues like missing alt text, low contrast, or broken links.

Example:

• An automated tool scans your site for missing alt text on images or checks whether all links have proper descriptive text.
• The tool runs tests to verify if text contrast meets accessibility guidelines.

Key Benefits:

• Fast and cost-effective for identifying surface-level issues.
• Helps scan large sites quickly, especially for ongoing monitoring.

Challenges:

• Can't catch complex accessibility issues, like user interaction problems or content clarity.
• Often produces false positives or misses more subtle problems.

The Ideal Approach: Hybrid Testing

To get the best ADA compliance results, we recommend using both manual and automated testing together.

Automated tests are great for quickly catching common issues, but they miss some complex problems. Manual testing can spot these deeper issues but is time-consuming and costly.

With TabNav Accessibility Checker, you get the best of both worlds. We combine automated scans with real user interactions—like clicking buttons and navigating menus—to find issues that automated tools can't catch.

Plus, you can schedule regular scans to ensure your website stays accessible and get detailed reports directly to your inbox.

Next Steps for ADA Compliance Testing

To get started with ADA compliance testing, the first step is understanding where your website currently stands. Below are three clear steps to help you assess, fix, and maintain accessibility over time.

1. Start With an Accessibility Check

   Run a free accessibility check to see how your website performs against ADA requirements. This gives you a quick overview of common issues and helps establish a baseline before taking action.

2. Identify and Fix Accessibility Issues

   Review the results and decide how fixes will be handled. If you have access to the code and technical expertise, issues can be resolved internally. If you don't have developers available, you can work with accessibility specialists, such as tabnav's experts, to handle remediation correctly and efficiently for you.

3. Maintain Ongoing Compliance

   Accessibility is not a one-time task. Set up continuous monitoring and regular testing to catch new issues as your website changes. This helps keep your site compliant, usable, and protected from accessibility risks over time.

Final Thoughts

Accessibility isn't something you fix once and forget about. Websites change all the time, and accessibility issues often appear quietly as content, design, or features evolve.

The most reliable way to stay on track is to combine tools with real-world testing. Automated checks are useful for spotting common problems quickly. Manual and interaction-based testing is what reveals where real users actually get stuck.

The important part is getting started and staying consistent. Regular testing helps reduce risk, improves usability, and makes your website easier to navigate for everyone, not just users with disabilities.

When accessibility becomes part of how you maintain your site, it stops feeling like a burden and starts feeling like good product and content hygiene.