How to Make Your Website ADA Compliant

Creating a website that’s compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) isn’t just about avoiding lawsuits, though that is a major benefit; it’s about opening your digital doors to everyone, including the billions of people worldwide with disabilities. From a legal standpoint, non-compliance can lead to expensive fines or penalties and reputational damage. 

Here’s the good news: creating an ADA-compliant website isn’t as difficult as you might think, and it can bring real benefits to your business: a broader audience, new revenue opportunities, and an enhanced brand reputation. 

Below, we’ll break down the practical steps to make your website ADA-compliant, how long each step takes, and how an accessibility partner like AudioEye can make the process fast, easy, and cost-effective.

What ADA Compliance Requires

The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, which includes online spaces. The act does not name a specific technical standard for compliance, but the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA is the standard that courts and the Department of Justice reference when evaluating website accessibility. In practice, that means making your website ADA-compliant is meeting the success criteria included in WCAG.

Laptop screen displaying ADA compliance checklist: Alt Text, Color Contrast, Form Labels, and Closed Captions, all checked.

How to Make Your Website ADA Compliant in 5 Steps

1. Conduct an Accessibility Audit

A free accessibility scan is the first step to ADA compliance because it identifies which WCAG 2.1 Level AA criteria your site currently fails. A scan takes a few minutes and typically returns a list of issues — things like poor color contrast, missing alt text, and unlabeled form fields — that give you a clear starting point and tell you how much work is ahead of you. 

Start by scanning your site with AudioEye’s free Website Accessibility Checker and record your findings. This will give you a baseline to measure against.

2. Prioritize the Violations that Block Tasks

Fix the violations that block core tasks first: unlabeled form fields, keyboard traps, missing alt text on functional images, and insufficient color contrast. These high-impact issues prevent people from completing actions rather than simply degrading the experience. We recommend working in this order:

• Unlabeled form fields: Screen reader users can’t complete a form that they can’t identify. Label every field clearly and write descriptive error messages.

• Keyboard traps: Some users navigate solely by keyboard. Every button, link, and menu must be reachable, and users must be able to move back out of every element. 

• Insufficient color contrast. WCAG 2.1 Level AA calls for a color contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text.

• Missing alt text on functional images: Any image that conveys meaning or performs an action needs descriptive alt text.

• Illogical heading order: Headings should nest properly (H1, then H2, then H3) so screen reader and keyboard users can navigate the page’s structure.

• Vague link text: Replace “click here” with text that says where the link goes.

These are just some of the issues that hinder the experience for users with disabilities. For a full list, see our ADA compliance checklist for websites.

3. Fix Common Issues with Automatic Fixes

Automatic fixes can continuously resolve common WCAG 2.1 Level AA violations across your site, without waiting for a development cycle. This is what makes the process fast: rather than filling out tickets for every missing label and contrast failure, automation handles the repetitive issues at scale while your team focuses on the ones that require judgment. 

4. Verify and Fix with Expert Testing

Pairing automation with expert audits is what actually gets your site to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, because automation resolves issues at scale and human testing catches the criteria that require judgment. Whether alt text is accurate, whether a custom component behaves predictably, whether a page makes sense when read aloud — those need a person. Test with screen readers like JAWS or NVDA, navigate the site by keyboard alone, and, where possible, test with people who use assistive technology. 

An audit is only useful if someone works the list. Complex failures in custom components, dynamic content, and page structure need code-level fixes, which means either your development team takes them on or your accessibility partner does. 

However you resource it, the pattern holds: automation clears the volume, expert testing catches what it can’t, and the findings get fixed rather than filed. Expert audits that include fix guidance and testing by people who use assistive technology daily, close that loop rather than handing you another list of issues.

5. Monitor Continuously 

Websites fall out of ADA compliance as content changes, so continuous monitoring against WCAG 2.1 Level AA is required to keep a site compliant. Every new page, image, and form is a chance to reintroduce a barrier you already fixed. Real Time monitoring catches regressions as they happen rather than at the next audit.

How Long Does it Take to Make a Website ADA-Compliant?

An automated scan takes minutes; actual fixes of the issues the scan found can range from days to weeks. Automatic fixes of common WCAG 2.1 Level AA violations begin almost immediately, while expert testing and the more complex issues it surfaces typically run several weeks, depending on the size of your site. Compliance is then maintained continuously rather than finished once.

Here’s how that breaks down by step:

• Scan your site: minutes. You get a list of WCAG 2.1 Level AA failures on the same day you start. This is the step people expect to be hard, and it isn’t.

• Prioritize what blocks tasks: 1 to 2 days. Sorting the scan results by what actually prevents someone from completing an action, rather than working from top to bottom. 

• Automatic fixes: days to start, then ongoing. Common violations across your site begin resolving without waiting for a development cycle. This runs continuously rather than finishing.

• Expert testing: 2 to 4 weeks. Depends heavily on how many unique templates and custom components your site has. A 10-page brochure site and a 10,000-page store are not the same audit.

• Fixing what the audit surfaces: varies. The honest answer. Complex failures in custom components and dynamic content need more in-depth work, and the timeline depends on who’s doing it and what else is in their queue. This is the step where compliance efforts stall. 

• Monitoring: continuous. No end date, by design.

Most sites see meaningful improvement in weeks, not months. But no site is ever finished, because every content update is a chance to reintroduce a barrier. Any tool promising compliance in a day is describing a claim, not a process.

Woman with red hair sitting at a desk working on a computer; the accessibility symbol is next to her as are various plants and a clock.

What if I want this Handled for Me?

If you want ADA compliance handled for you, you need a tool that combines automation with expert testing, so you have WCAG 2.1 Level AA violations identified and fixed rather than just reported. That distinction is critical: most accessibility tools return a list of issues and then stop, leaving you with the same problem. 

What a managed platform changes is ownership: expert testing and fixes sit with the provider instead of in your backlog. AudioEye works this way, and the free accessibility scan is the same starting point whether you continue on your own or hand it off. 

Start Your Path to ADA Compliance with AudioEye

Making your website ADA-compliant comes down to a repeatable sequence: scan against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, fix what prevents people from completing tasks, pair automation with expert testing, and monitor as your site changes. None of it requires becoming an accessibility expert. It does require that the work actually gets done. And that’s where most compliance efforts come apart.

AudioEye is a digital accessibility platform built to run that entire sequence in one place. Automation handles common issues at scale, while Real Time Monitoring surfaces new violations as your site changes. Expert Audits then dig deeper into your site, surfacing issues that automation can’t find and moving you closer to compliance. And if your compliance is ever challenged, AudioEye Assurance backs that work with legal support — documentation of what’s been tested and fixed, plus help responding if a claim arrives.

A scan without fixes is a report. Automation without expert testing misses the criteria that block users. An audit nobody works on is a document. AudioEye closes all three gaps.

Run a free accessibility scan to see where your site stands, or talk to an expert now.