Accessibility · PSBAR & WCAG 2.2 AA
Find what's broken. Fix what matters. Prove it's fixed.
We audit websites against WCAG 2.2 at levels A and AA — every page we crawl, plus the PDFs and documents linked from them — and return a prioritised fix list your team can actually work through.
Public sector bodies must meet WCAG 2.2 AA and publish an accessibility statement. Private organisations have accessibility duties too, under the Equality Act — the same checks and the same fixes apply.
What the law requires
Meet WCAG 2.2 AA
Your pages — and the PDFs and documents linked from them — need to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 at level AA.
Publish an accessibility statement
A statement in the specific format the regulations require, kept up to date and linked so people can find it.
Keep it current
Accessibility isn't one-and-done. Content changes, new pages and PDFs go up, and the statement has to keep reflecting reality.
How Signal Layer helps
Automated WCAG 2.2 checks across your whole site
We run axe-core 4.10.2 — the open-source engine most of the industry tests with — over every page we crawl and the PDFs and documents linked from them, covering 99 of its rules across WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 at levels A and AA. Findings are grouped by success criterion, so it's clear what failed and why. We also run three checks axe can't: whether keyboard focus is genuinely visible, whether placeholder text meets contrast, and whether video and audio carry alternatives.
A prioritised fix list, not a data dump
A large site returns thousands of findings and nothing like thousands of problems — one contrast fault in a shared header is a single job that repeats on every page. We group findings by the element behind them and mark the ones that are template-level — on a 700-page public sector estate that turned several thousand findings into a couple of hundred distinct fixes, ordered so the ones that move the most pages come first. Each is explained in the words someone who edits the site would use: we've written our own plain-English description for 92 of the 99 rules we run, rather than passing axe's technical one through.
A handover pack, with a sheet for each team
One workbook, five sheets, and nobody has to read someone else's. An overview for whoever commissioned the work. Selectors, markup and acceptance criteria for developers. One row per page, no CSS in sight, for the content team. One row per file for whoever looks after the PDFs. And anything our checks could not be certain about on its own sheet, deliberately outside the fix count — so nobody spends a morning on a false positive.
A ready-to-publish accessibility statement
We generate a draft statement in the PSBAR-required format, pre-filled from your site and your findings. You review, finish the bits only you can know, and publish — instead of starting from a blank page.
Before-and-after evidence, not just a fresh score
We re-check on a schedule and diff the result against your previous audit, sorting every rule into resolved, improved, still outstanding, and newly introduced. That is the artefact to put in front of a monitoring body — a number on its own says nothing about the work you did to earn it.
An honest word on automation
Automated checks can't catch everything — and we won't pretend otherwise.
Automated testing catches a great deal — missing alt text, poor colour contrast, unlabelled form fields, broken document structure. But some criteria need human judgement: is the alt text actually meaningful? Does the page make sense when read aloud? So we don't hand you a percentage and hope. Every report tells you which rules we ran, which of them passed, how many pages we actually reached — and lists separately every finding that still needs a person to look at it. We never declare a site compliant. That judgement stays with you.
Who it's for
Whose sites we check
Accessibility specialists and agencies
Signal Layer automates the testable layer of an audit — the part that scales badly as page counts grow, PDFs multiply and re-tests eat the hours you would rather spend on judgement. Run it across your clients' sites from the partner console: every site's status in one view, on one bill, with each client's data in their own account.
Public sector
PSBAR has applied since 2018 — local government, the NHS, universities and colleges, housing associations and emergency services. Schools and nurseries are partially exempt: the duty covers the content people need in order to use your services, and the statement, rather than the whole site. Audit at the level you need, then publish a statement that reflects where you actually are, and keep it there.
Private and regulated organisations
No PSBAR duty, but the Equality Act still applies — and procurement questionnaires, investors and customers increasingly ask for the same evidence. Same checks, same fix list.
Schools and academies can start instantly with a free self-serve review. For every other estate, tell us what you need looked at and we'll scope it with you.
— accessibility review
Tell us what you need us to look at.
Whether it's your own site or your clients', tell us the shape of it and we'll come back with what a first review would cover and what it would cost.
- One site or a whole portfolio — the answer changes the shape of the review, not whether we can do it.
- We can run a first review against a live site so you can see the outputs before committing to anything.
Looking after several sites or a client portfolio? Our partner programme runs the whole lot from one console, on one bill.