TLDR
Accessibility remediation is hard to price without a baseline audit. Issue counts, issue types, site architecture, and CMS constraints all affect effort in ways that aren't predictable from site size alone. The reliable path: audit first, quote remediation from the audit findings, scope it like any development project.
- Remediation
- The process of fixing accessibility issues identified in an audit. Remediation requires code changes to the site's source — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or CMS templates. It is distinct from overlay products, which apply JavaScript patches at runtime without modifying source code.
DEFINITION
- Issue severity
- In accessibility auditing, issues are typically categorized as critical (completely blocks task completion), serious (significant barrier), moderate (some barrier), or advisory (minor issue). Remediation prioritization typically addresses critical and serious issues first.
DEFINITION
- Estimate
- A projected cost for remediation based on the number and type of issues found in an audit. A reliable estimate requires seeing the actual audit findings — blanket estimates without audit data are unreliable because issue distribution varies widely between sites.
DEFINITION
Accessibility remediation is not a flat-rate service. Quoting “WCAG remediation” for $1,500 without seeing the site’s audit findings is like quoting a site rebuild without seeing the current site. Some sites need 10 hours of work. Some need 80.
The reliable approach is a two-phase model: audit first, remediate second.
Phase 1: The Audit (Flat Rate by Site Scope)
The audit is the predictable part. For a given page count and site type, an automated scan plus a structured manual review takes a predictable amount of time.
Pricing by page count works as a starting structure. Rough ranges (agencies should calibrate based on their market and actual time data):
- Under 20 pages: $500-$1,000 flat
- 20-100 pages: $1,000-$2,500 flat
- 100-500 pages: $2,500-$5,000 flat
- Large e-commerce (500+ pages): Custom, based on scoped representative sample
The audit deliverable is a report: issue list by severity, WCAG criterion references, affected pages, and recommendations. The client owns this report regardless of what happens next.
Phase 2: Remediation (Time and Materials or Fixed Scope)
After the audit, you have the data to scope remediation. The estimate is based on:
Issue count and type. Count critical and serious issues — these must be remediated. Categorize them by type. Alt text additions are fast (5-10 minutes per instance). Custom dropdown keyboard navigation may be 2-4 hours per component.
Site architecture. Template-level fixes (e.g., a heading hierarchy problem in a CMS page template) are efficient — fix once, resolved across every page using that template. Page-by-page fixes compound with page count.
CMS and codebase access. Agencies remediating their own builds move faster than agencies remediating a third-party theme or a page builder site where certain changes are constrained by what the tool allows.
Design dependencies. Color contrast failures that require a brand color change need designer involvement, which adds time and potentially client approval cycles.
Once you have counted and typed the issues, estimate developer hours with a per-issue-type rate. Add a contingency (15-20%) for unexpected complexity. Present the estimate as a range.
Structuring the Remediation Quote
Present remediation in two buckets:
Critical and serious issues: These need to be fixed. Scope this as a fixed-fee deliverable based on the audit findings. The deliverable: a final scan showing zero critical issues and all serious issues resolved or documented with remediation timeline.
Moderate and advisory issues: These are recommended but not urgent from a legal or user-impact perspective. Scope these as optional add-ons or include them in ongoing maintenance retainer scope. Clients who have just paid for an audit and critical remediation often prefer to stage advisory fixes over time.
Pricing New Builds vs. Legacy Remediations
New builds: Accessibility is cheapest to build in from the start. A new site built to WCAG 2.1 AA requires developer attention to accessibility in the build phase — it is not a separate project. The incremental cost over building without accessibility consideration is typically 10-20% of development time. Quote it as a project add-on, not a separate line item, and include a pre-launch scan confirmation.
Legacy remediations: An existing site that was built without accessibility in mind requires more work relative to site size because structural problems — heading hierarchy, markup semantics, custom component architecture — may require changes throughout the codebase. The per-issue cost may be higher than for new work, and there are often design dependencies that require client involvement.
For legacy remediations on sites the agency didn’t build, add a discovery phase before the remediation quote. Some issues are straightforward to fix in the source; others are constrained by theme or platform limitations that only become clear once the codebase is accessible.
What Not to Include Without Being Explicit
Define scope gaps explicitly in the proposal:
- Manual screen reader testing is not included in automated-scan-based audits. If a client needs screen reader-verified compliance, scope that separately.
- Video captioning is a separate workflow with separate vendor costs if source captions don’t exist.
- Cognitive accessibility (WCAG 3.x criteria, plain language) requires content work, not code work.
- Mobile-specific testing — automated scans cover desktop rendering; mobile accessibility testing on physical devices is a separate step.
Clients who understand the scope limitations are easier to work with than clients who assumed something was included and discover it wasn’t.
Q&A
How much does accessibility remediation cost for a typical SMB website?
Remediation cost depends on issue count and type, which vary significantly. A site built with basic web standards and some accessibility attention may have 5-15 issues, remediating in 4-8 developer hours. A site built without any accessibility consideration may have 50-100+ issues across structural, design, and content categories, remediating in 20-40+ developer hours. Without an audit, neither prediction is reliable.
Q&A
Should agencies charge for accessibility audits separately from remediation?
Yes. The audit is a standalone deliverable — a report the client owns. Remediation is a separate project scoped from the audit findings. Bundling them creates ambiguity about what is included. Some clients will take the audit and use it internally without purchasing remediation. That is a valid outcome — the audit still has value as a compliance document.
Q&A
How do agencies handle remediation for sites they didn't build?
Third-party site remediation requires a discovery phase before scoping. The audit identifies issues, but the remediation effort depends on the CMS, theme, custom code, and whether the agency has access to the development environment. Build in a discovery/access phase before committing to a remediation estimate.
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