The accessibility report arrives with findings, examples and recommendations. Who implements them: the auditor, the website supplier or your editors? If that was never agreed, the work may stop at the document.
Separate investigation, fixes and verification when planning the purchase. Each stage needs time and an owner.
Define what will be checked
Describe the page types, key user journeys and documents. Include signed-in areas and services delivered through external tools. Ask the supplier to explain its method and why it has chosen that sample.
The scope should name the assessment criteria. Confirm the requirements applicable to your organisation with the person responsible for them. Do not assume that every service called an “audit” examines the same things or covers the same part of a website.
Ask for findings people can act on
For each problem, you need its location, steps to reproduce it, its effect on users and guidance for correction. Grouping repeated findings helps distinguish an issue in one item of content from a shared component affecting the whole site.
Ask whether findings will be grouped by code, design, content and documents. That makes it easier to route work to the right people, although the final responsibilities still need to be agreed with them. A category in a report does not automatically assign the task to a supplier.
Budget for the next steps
Request separate prices for discussing the findings and checking the fixes. Agree with the website supplier how remediation will be estimated once the report is available. A reliable price for every repair needs a known scope.
At completion, record which problems were corrected, what was checked again and what remains open. Receiving the report alone does not establish that the website has become easier to use. The budget needs to cover the work that turns findings into improvements.
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