Accessibility Budget Calculator

What's the difference between strategies?

Automated regression testing

Automated regression tests run on every commit in CI. Compared to running axe-core in CI, focusing on regressions allows developers to identify newly introduced issues on a branch without getting bogged down by preexisting debt. We recommend Chromatic's Accessibility Testing pipeline.

Tests run continuously without slowing down development. This means you catch issues when they're cheapest to fix: during development before merging.

External consultants

Accessibility experts hired on a contract basis to audit your app. Consultants have deep expertise and use scanners to speed up their work. But they still rely heavily on manually navigating page-by-page to check against WCAG criteria. We sampled quotes from several vendors in our calculations.

Coverage is limited by hours and budget. Most teams hire consultants for periodic audits—typically twice a year. Because consultants work outside your development pipeline, there's a multi-month delay between when code is written and when issues are found. Fixes are more expensive because you're patching production code instead of catching issues during development.

Full-time auditor

A dedicated accessibility specialist on your team. Like consultants, auditors use scanners but rely on manual processes like navigating page-by-page and compiling notes. Their main advantage is continuous attention to accessibility rather than periodic audits.

However, coverage is still limited because auditors can't check every possible state. Auditors often review code after it ships rather than being integrated into the development lifecycle. This means audit results come weeks after code ships when fixes are much costlier.

What goes into an accessibility budget?

Detection cost

The annual expense involved in identifying accessibility issues within your application. For example, it costs ~99% less money to run automated regression tests in CI than hiring an external consultant or full-time auditor.

Remediation cost

The human expense associated with fixing the accessibility issues identified in your application. Calculated as bugs found multiplied by the average cost to fix a bug.

Undetected liabilities

Undetected issues can result in legal liabilities. Calculated by estimating how many issues are not detected by a strategy and the total cost to remediate them. With an uptick in lawsuits related to web accessibility, undetected issues pose significant risks. Notable cases include:

• National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corp.
• Robles v. Domino's Pizza LLC
• National Association of the Deaf v. Netflix

Debt accumulation over time

Every commit can increase accessibility debt if issues are undetected or unaddressed, raising costs and risks over time.

Cost per bug

Average cost to fix an accessibility bug. Studies from NASA JPL suggest fixing a bug takes 1.6 hours end-to-end. Fixing a bug in production is 5 to 10 times more expensive than addressing it during development. We use a blended average rate of $100/hour.

Coverage

The extent to which your accessibility testing strategy can identify issues across your application.