Fix-at-Source Was Built for a Web That No Longer Exists

The Americans with Disabilities Act turns 36 this year. When it passed in 1990, the internet was barely a concept. A decade later, as websites skyrocketed, digital accessibility emerged as a new frontier, and fix-at-source became the logical approach. The web was simpler then: static pages, limited content, and enough time to remediate issues before they reached users.

That was 25 years ago.

Today, the internet looks nothing like it did at the turn of the millennium. Websites are exponentially more complex, with dynamic content, personalized experiences, and continuous deployment cycles. Marketing campaigns launch, new product features release, blog posts publish, A/B tests run, all before lunchtime. The pace is relentless, and the scope is massive.

Yet many organizations still rely on the same fix-at-source methodology that was designed for a far simpler web. The principle is sound, but the math no longer holds. Fix-at-source cannot keep up with the speed and scale of modern web operations, and as long as it remains the default, full accessibility will stay out of reach.

Hidden Costs Add Up Fast 

Fix-at-source models and other manual-heavy approaches demand developer resources that organizations often cannot sustainably provide, regardless of their commitment to accessibility.

The 2026 Accessibility Advantage report shows that an organization's intent often doesn’t align with the capabilities of its current accessibility strategy. In other words, they are committed to accessibility, but don’t fully understand the complexity and nuance involved.

The math is unforgiving. We talk to many companies that don’t fully understand the time and resources it takes to fix accessibility at the source code level. The same report surveyed current business leaders and found that 6 in 10 believed they would fail an accessibility audit today, and that more than half of those leaders had already been sued. 

To help companies weigh the cost of accessibility, we built a calculator to understand the potential real cost to their organizations.

Organizations often focus on the bottom line, but fail to fully account for the costs of using their in-house developers. This miscalculation puts undue pressure on an already often overloaded team. Developers typically have a backlog of priorities that stack up, and when accessibility fixes are added to the mix, their list can become unmanageable. 

But even the best fix-at-source approach has a ceiling, and that ceiling isn't quality. Its capacity. The accessibility talent pool, whether in-house or contracted, simply can't scale to keep pace with today's digital landscape. Manual audits are inherently slow and resource-intensive, and even when experts design scalable processes from the ground up, those systems still depend on ongoing human oversight that most organizations are not equipped to maintain. Every implementation cycle draws on developer time, and the moment dev teams shift priorities, accessibility programs stall.

Fix-at-source assumes periodic change that can be addressed through periodic intervention. Organizational reality demands continuous protection. 

Accessibility that Works at Scale

There are two pillars that create a foundation for scaled digital accessibility: intelligent automation and expert testing. This combination of people and technology offers the most compliance and reduces as much risk as possible. 

Fix-at-source accessibility is hard to scale cheaply and efficiently. We must employ a better way in today’s digital environment to scale accessibility.

Automation is the foundation of a scaled approach to digital accessibility. Given the size and speed of modern websites, employing technology is a must. Yes, it’s not a silver bullet. But organizations that use the best detection and automatic fixing set themselves up for success that scales from the start. Automation handles the breadth of digital accessibility needs by finding and fixing common accessibility issues. Employing accessibility experts alongside automation provides the necessary depth of coverage not achievable by automation alone. 

This approach addresses the economic and operational realities outlined above, delivering what traditional fix-at-source cannot.

An accessibility icon surrounded by two icons that represent finding and fixing accessibility errors manually

Automation Handles Volume and Velocity

Our detection covers 37 of 55 WCAG Level A and AA criteria, identifying up to 2.5x more issues than competitors. We fix 50% automatically and in real time. Other automated tools capture only a small percentage of issues, leaving organizations to miss the full potential of intelligent automation and risking a false sense of security. 

Our automation continuously monitors, addresses common problems instantly, and improves over time as models learn from tens of millions of interactions. With powerful detection, the system’s effectiveness compounds over time, creating an intelligent system that audit-based approaches cannot replicate. 

Experts Handle What Requires Human Judgment

The second pillar of AudioEye’s comprehensive solution complements automation, identifying issues automation alone cannot detect and providing depth to find fixes to the accessibility barriers most likely to get you sued. 

Certified professionals, including members of the disability community, test the remaining ~50% of WCAG criteria that automation cannot detect. Based on these audits, our accessibility experts write code-level fixes that are deployed via automation as part of the custom fixes process. These custom fixes address issues automation cannot reliably resolve, such as inaccessible checkout flows, broken keyboard navigation, mislabeled forms, and complex interactive components — precisely the barriers that trigger litigation.

The expert focus on high-risk, high-complexity issues creates better outcomes than spreading manual effort across all accessibility work. The fixes are served up in the automation javascript in real time, so they don’t sit in developers’ long queues. Industry-leading automation serves as the foundation powering the customized code for fast, comprehensive delivery. 

Developers stay focused on building products. Accessibility experts handle accessibility. Organizations achieve sustainable operations. Custom fixes, combined with automation, result in faster accessibility at scale with no bottlenecks required. 

The Results Make the Case

When automation handles volume and speed while experts focus on the issues that require human judgment, the outcomes speak for themselves.

Organizations using this comprehensive approach can fix over 90% of accessibility issues at scale, recovering hundreds of developer hours per implementation and spending 70-80% less than they would with traditional consulting. 

These aren't projections. They're measurements from real customer sites that change daily, serve millions of users, and can't afford gaps in coverage.

But the most important outcome isn't a statistic. The disability community doesn't experience methodology. They experience whether or not they can use a site. The organizations delivering the most consistent, accessible experiences have built their programs around that reality.

These outcomes are the standard the industry should be measuring against.