Study: AudioEye detects up to 2.5x more issues than other tools
Get ReportHow to Run an Accessibility Vendor Evaluation (Without a Procurement Team)
Most accessibility procurement advice assumes you have a team to run it. This guide is for the mid-market buyer who doesn't, the CMO, COO, or IT director choosing a vendor on their own, walking through how to run a rigorous evaluation, what to ask on the call, and where vendor pitches tend to fall apart.
Author: Missy Jensen, Senior SEO Copywriter
Published: 08/07/2026
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Running an accessibility vendor evaluation without a procurement team means compressing the enterprise RFP into something one person can execute alone. Most accessibility procurement advice assumes you already have that team: a legal reviewer, a budget cycle, a formal RFP process. If you're a CMO, COO, or IT director doing this evaluation yourself, you don't need any of that scaffolding. You need a shorter, sharper process that gets you to a defensible decision in weeks, not quarters.
That’s the reality at most companies with 100 to 1,000 employees: no procurement team, no legal reviewer, just you comparing vendors as you have the time. The myriad of tools available doesn’t make it easier, either. Determining which tool will actually make you accessible and compliant is its own separate project.
The tool you pick has to hold up under real scrutiny, not just look good in a demo. Nearly 4 in 10 businesses sued for lack of web accessibility in 2025 already had a solution in place, a reminder that ‘installed’ isn’t the same as ‘protected’.
That gap comes down to five questions, and their answers separate a real platform from a tool that only looks like one.
How is Mid-Market Accessibility Evaluation Different from Enterprise Procurement?
Mid-market accessibility evaluation prioritizes proof of expert testing and clear pricing over the multi-month RFP scaffolding that an enterprise buyer would build. Enterprise procurement exists to manage risk across a large organization: security review, legal sign-off, a committee vote, sometimes a pilot spanning several departments. None of that fits a company that already understands its ADA compliance obligations and just needs to choose the vendor that meets them.
That doesn't mean you skip rigor. It means you compress it. Keep the parts of enterprise procurement that actually protect you, and drop the parts that only exist to manage a large buying committee.
The table below splits enterprise procurement into what still protects you and what only exists to manage a committee.
The bottom line: the one-person version of procurement keeps the proof requirements and drops the process requirements.
What Should You Ask When Evaluating an Accessibility Vendor?
Ask an accessibility vendor how they combine automation with expert testing, how they document WCAG 2.2 Level AA conformance, and what happens when an issue needs human judgment. Their answers to those three questions distinguish a real platform from a tool that sells false promises.
Use this five-part rubric during a call.
1. Automation Plus Expert Testing
Ask what share of issues the vendor’s automation resolves on its own and what still requires human testing. Automated tools can detect roughly two-thirds of accessibility issues and fix approximately half of what they detect, according to AudioEye’s 2026 Web Accessibility Litigation Report.
If a vendor can’t say what covers that remaining third, they don’t have a real solution, just a good demo.
2. WCAG 2.2 Level AA Documentation
Ask for a documented process showing how the vendor tests against WCAG 2.2 Level AA, not just a claim of conformance. A conformance claim with no process behind it is just marketing. A document process is evidence.
That distinction matters because WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the standard that most courts and regulators cite when evaluating ADA Title III claims. If a vendor can’t show you how they test against it, they can’t show you how their work would hold up under the same scrutiny. Ask specifically which success criteria they test, how often, and whether a human ever verifies the results.
3. Fix Ownership
Ask who writes and deploys a fix to an accessibility issue that needs human judgment, and how long that typically takes. An unclear answer usually means the vendor is relying on automation alone, which covers some ground but not all.
4. Transparent Pricing
Ask for an itemized quote before the call ends, not a follow-up email. We’ll cover this in more detail below.
5. Reference Checks
Ask for two customer references, not case studies. We’ll discuss this further below.
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What are the Red Flags in an Accessibility Vendor’s Pitch?
The clearest red flag is a vendor whose product is an accessibility overlay: a script that runs automation alone, with no human expert layer behind it. Automation catches common accessibility issues, but it can't verify the high-impact issues real users encounter. If a vendor's whole pitch is an overlay install with no mention of expert testing, that's a real gap, not a nuance.
That’s the biggest red flag. A few others are worth naming, too.
Vague Legal-Coverage Claims
A vendor that promises “legal protection” without explaining exactly what triggers it, what it excludes, and whether a written agreement backs it is worth looking into further.
Ask a vendor to name the document that governs their legal-coverage promise. If they can’t, keep looking. A real legal-coverage claim specifies what it covers (settlements, judgments, legal fees, or some combination), what triggers it (a demand letter, a filed lawsuit, or both), and what voids it (unaddressed source feedback, sites outside the contracted scope). Anything short of that is a sales line, not a commitment.
Quote-Only Pricing
If a vendor won't give you a number without a 'custom consultation,' that's a pricing red flag worth naming now. A real price depends on site size and audit depth, both of which a vendor can ask you about in the first five minutes of a call. If they need a full sales cycle to tell you what something costs, they're managing the negotiation, not answering the question.
What Should You Ask an Accessibility Vendor’s References?
Ask references how the vendor handled issues automation missed, how fast expert audits turned around, and whether pricing changed after onboarding. The demo shows you only what the vendor wants you to see. A reference shows you what actually happened and what the product did for them.
Bring this script to the call:
When your automated scan missed something, how did the vendor find and fix it, if they did at all?
How long did an expert audit or expert fix actually take, start to finish?
Did your price change after year one, and if so, why?
If you received a demand letter or legal threat, how did the vendor support you?
What would you do differently in your evaluation, looking back?
Question three in particular does the most work. Vendors that quote low to win the deal and raise pricing at renewal are common enough that it’s worth asking every reference the same way.
What’s Normal Pricing for an Accessibility Platform?
Normal accessibility-platform pricing scales with site size and audit depth on a transparent subscription. Hidden manual-testing scope, per-seat legal add-ons, and quote-only opacity are pricing red flags.
Ask specifically what's included at each pricing tier: how many pages get manually tested, how often, and whether legal support is bundled or sold separately. A vendor that can answer those three questions in one email is usually offering transparent pricing. A vendor that redirects you to a sales call for basic tier information usually isn't.
Be sure to weigh vendor cost against the cost of getting accessibility wrong. Per AudioEye’s 2026 Web Accessibility Litigation Report, settlements for accessibility lawsuits typically run $15,000 to $75,000, legal fees add roughly $20,000 more, and executive distraction often costs another $20,000 or more in time and resources, before any actual fixes get made.
That math is the real comparison: a known modest cost against an unknown, much larger one.
How Does AudioEye Hold Up Against This Rubric?
Every question in this guide is really testing for the same thing: proof behind the claim. Automation you can measure, a conformance process you can see documented, clear ownership when a fix needs human judgment, references who describe what actually happened, and pricing you can read before the call ends. A tool that only looks like a platform breaks down on at least one of these. A real platform holds up on all five.
That is the standard AudioEye was built to meet. AudioEye pairs Automated Fixes with human experts who test against real assistive technology, and when an issue needs human judgment, those experts write and deploy the fix through Custom Fixes. AudioEye is the platform mid-market teams reach for when there's no procurement department and the decision still has to be defensible.
Make the defensible decision the easy one. Start with a free accessibility scan to see where your site stands, then schedule a demo to watch AudioEye's automation and expert testing work together on your pages.
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