What Happens After Your Free Scan: Understanding Your Compliance Report Card
You pasted your URL into AuditAble's free scanner. A few minutes later, you are looking at a readiness report card with a score, a letter grade, and a list of violations you may have never heard of. This guide walks you through exactly what your report means, what to worry about first, and how to use it to build a remediation plan before the DOJ Title II deadline.
What the Free Scan Checks
AuditAble's free scan evaluates up to 15 pages of your website against the WCAG 2.1 Level AA standard, the same standard the DOJ requires under the Title II Final Rule. The scan uses axe-core plus keyboard and accessibility-tree checks to test your pages against 28 of the 50 WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria, with AI-assisted evaluation adding more when enabled, and it tells you exactly which criteria it evaluated and which still need a person to review.
This covers criteria like color contrast ratios, the presence of alt text on images, proper heading structure, form labels, language declarations, link text, and keyboard focus indicators. These are the issues that affect the greatest number of residents and that the DOJ evaluates first in any compliance review.
The free scan automatically evaluates your homepage and up to 14 additional pages it discovers through your site's navigation. For most government websites, this provides a representative sample of your overall compliance posture.
How to Read Your Score
Your report card presents a readiness score from 0 to 100, along with a letter grade from A through F. The score is calculated based on the number and severity of violations found relative to the number of elements tested. Here is what the grades mean:
A (95-100)
Strong compliance posture. Few or no violations found in automated testing. Your site is well-positioned for the DOJ deadline, though manual testing is recommended to cover the remaining 30% of criteria.
B (85-94)
Good foundation with some issues to address. Typically means your templates are mostly accessible but specific content pages have violations. A focused remediation effort can resolve most findings.
C (65-84)
Moderate compliance gaps. Your site likely has systemic issues, problems in your templates or CMS configuration that affect every page. Fixing these systemic issues will improve your score significantly.
D (40-64)
Significant compliance risk. Multiple categories of violations are present. This score suggests your site was built without accessibility requirements in mind. Prioritized remediation is urgent.
F (Below 40)
Critical compliance exposure. Residents with disabilities are likely unable to use significant portions of your site. This level of non-conformance represents immediate legal risk under the Title II rule. Emergency remediation is recommended.
What the Severity Levels Mean
Every violation in your report is assigned a severity level. Understanding these levels is essential for prioritizing your remediation work:
Critical
A feature or service is completely unusable for residents with certain disabilities. Example: a payment form that cannot receive keyboard focus, making it impossible for residents who cannot use a mouse to pay their utility bills online. Fix these immediately.
Serious
A feature is very difficult to use but not completely blocked. Example: images on your parks and recreation pages that lack alt text, so a blind resident using a screen reader hears "image" or the file name instead of a description of the content. Fix these in your first remediation sprint.
Moderate
A feature is somewhat difficult to use or creates confusion. Example: color contrast that is below the 4.5:1 ratio but still partially readable. These should be addressed but are lower priority than critical and serious issues.
Minor
A best-practice issue that creates a small inconvenience. Example: a redundant link where the same destination appears twice in the same navigation context. Address these as part of ongoing maintenance.
The Top 5 Violations We See on Government Sites
After scanning government websites across the country, certain patterns appear again and again. Here are the five most common violations, in order of frequency:
1. Missing or inadequate alt text on images
Found on 89% of government sites we scan. This includes images with no alt attribute at all, images with generic alt text like "image" or "photo," and decorative images that should have empty alt attributes but don't. Every informative image needs a description that conveys the same information a sighted resident would get.
2. Insufficient color contrast
Found on 84% of sites. The minimum contrast ratio for normal text is 4.5:1 and for large text is 3:1. Light gray text on white backgrounds is the most common offender. This affects residents with low vision, color blindness, and anyone reading their screen in bright sunlight.
3. Form fields without labels
Found on 76% of sites. Many government forms use placeholder text as the only indicator of what a field expects. When a screen reader user tabs to that field, they hear nothing. The placeholder disappears and no label is announced. Every form field needs a programmatically associated label element.
4. Links with non-descriptive text
Found on 71% of sites. Links that say "click here," "read more," or "learn more" without context are meaningless to a screen reader user navigating by links. A resident hearing a list of 15 links that all say "read more" has no way to distinguish them. Link text should describe the destination or action.
5. Missing page language declaration
Found on 52% of sites. Without a lang attribute on the HTML element, screen readers do not know what language to use for pronunciation. A screen reader configured for English might mangle Spanish-language content, or vice versa. This is a one-line fix that takes 30 seconds.
What Your Score Means for DOJ Compliance
It is important to understand that your automated scan score is not a complete compliance determination. The scan evaluates 28 of the 50 WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria today (33 when AI-assisted evaluation is enabled), and it reports every criterion it did not test as Not Evaluated instead of counting it as passed. The remaining criteria require human judgment: Are captions accurate and synchronized? Is this content navigable by screen reader? Are complex ARIA patterns working correctly?
That said, your scan score is a strong leading indicator. Sites that score below 70 on automated testing almost always have extensive issues in the criteria that require manual review as well. Sites that score 90+ on automated testing tend to have been built with accessibility in mind, and their manual-review issues are typically minor.
Think of your free scan as a health screening, not a full physical. It catches the most common and measurable issues. A clean screening does not mean you are perfectly healthy, but a screening full of red flags means you need immediate attention.
What the Full Report Adds
The free scan gives you a representative sample. AuditAble's paid plans extend coverage to your entire site: every public page, every form, every document link. The full report includes:
- Complete site coverage: Every page scanned, not just five.
- Page-level detail: Which specific pages have which violations, so your team knows exactly where to make changes.
- Remediation guidance: Step-by-step instructions for fixing each violation type, written for the developer or content editor who will do the work.
- Trend tracking: Monthly re-scans show your score improving (or regressing) over time, giving you documentation of your compliance progress.
- Exportable reporting: Generate reports suitable for city council presentations, budget requests, and compliance documentation.
See where your site stands in a few minutes
Paste your URL, get your readiness report card. No account needed, no credit card, no sales call. Just an honest look at what the DOJ will see when they evaluate your site.
Get the Readiness Score Reference Sheet as a PDF
What your automated scan score means, how to read each violation category, and the steps to take based on your results. Formatted as a one-page reference for your team or council. No account required.