How to procure accessibility monitoring without buying a false assurance

Define the service before the scanner

Begin with the journeys people must complete: understanding an offer, signing in, submitting a form, paying, downloading a document and getting help. Include mobile layouts, error states and third-party components. For each journey, identify the team able to make a change. This becomes the evaluation sample and prevents an attractive homepage score from dominating the decision. Ask suppliers to work with representative content and agreed test accounts, with permission and appropriate handling of any information behind a login.

• Include at least one form and one PDF.
• Identify third-party steps your team cannot edit directly.

Clarify the applicable UK duties

UK public-sector guidance identifies WCAG 2.2 AA and an accessibility statement within the scope of the public-sector accessibility regulations, subject to stated exemptions. It also explains the wider duty to consider reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010, or the Disability Discrimination Act in Northern Ireland. Do not turn that into a blanket claim that every private organisation has identical obligations. Record which services and procurement requirements apply to your organisation, and use qualified advice where the scope is uncertain.

• Make the applicable standard explicit in the brief.
• Avoid treating a vendor badge as a legal determination.

Separate automated findings from human judgement

W3C explains that evaluation tools help identify issues but cannot determine accessibility on their own. Your buying process should therefore combine repeatable automated checks with manual assessment and testing involving disabled people. Ask the supplier to identify what it can test, what it flags for judgement and what remains outside the product. Require a demonstration of a potential issue that a reviewer accepts or rejects. A clean scan should not close a journey that still fails with a keyboard or assistive technology.

• Budget for specialist review as well as software.
• Keep the rationale for human decisions with the findings.

Evaluate the remediation workflow

Give each shortlisted supplier the same small set of known barriers. Have an editor locate the affected element, understand the explanation, assign the task and verify the correction. Include a repeated template issue and a content-specific problem. Check that evidence can be exported and that a team can distinguish an old result from a new scan. For a multi-site organisation, test whether access can be restricted to the responsible team. The useful result is a repeatable path to a fix, not simply a growing issue count.

• Ask an actual editor to perform the task.
• Time the hand-off and retest rather than only the scan.

Keep AI suggestions reviewable

AI explanations and proposed code or alternative text may reduce drafting effort, but evaluate them against the real purpose of the page. A decorative image, a chart and an action button need different treatment. Require someone accountable to approve suggestions and recheck the resulting experience. Inspect what information the AI receives, where it is processed and which usage allowances apply. Reject a procurement claim that an overlay or automatic patch removes the need to repair underlying content, test interaction or maintain an accessibility process.

• Test a suggestion that sounds plausible but changes meaning.
• Retain a route to reject or reverse generated changes.

Make the quote and handover measurable

Ask for domain, page, document and scan-frequency limits, supported authenticated journeys, CMS connectors, developer tooling and manual-service allowances. Keep these separate from the headline subscription. Agree who owns the findings, how records leave the platform and what happens to access after cancellation. Before renewal, review whether important journeys improved and whether the team can sustain the workflow. Compare progress on a stable test sample while documenting content changes. Treat scores as triage information, alongside unresolved barriers and evidence from people using the service. Include the supplier's own interface in the accessibility evaluation.

• Specify currency, VAT, renewal and implementation charges.
• Assign continuing ownership to content, design and engineering teams.

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