Australia Website Accessibility Audit Services

Not exactly. Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) is a broad anti-discrimination law rather than an accessibility-specific statute, but the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), which handles DDA complaints, treats an inaccessible website or app as a form of unlawful discrimination. Its Guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services now recommend WCAG 2.2 Level AA. Those guidelines are issued under section 67(1)(k) of the DDA and are not legally binding; the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 itself is the binding law.

WCAG 2.2 Level AA. The AHRC recommended this standard in its April 2025 guidelines, replacing its earlier WCAG 2.0 guidance, and it’s the benchmark the Commission uses when looking at whether a website or digital service meets DDA obligations. For ICT products and procurement, the AHRC also points to AS EN 301 549, Australia’s adoption of the European ICT accessibility standard. Because that standard still references WCAG 2.1, the Commission says to use WCAG 2.2 where appropriate. See our EN 301 549 explainer or our EU accessibility compliance audit.

It applies broadly. AHRC guidance confirms DDA obligations extend to SaaS and PaaS platforms, AI-generated services, CAPTCHAs, two-factor authentication, extended reality, QR codes, mapping applications, and IoT interfaces, not just traditional websites.

The person lodges a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission, ideally within 24 months, because the President may terminate a complaint lodged later. The Commission investigates and usually tries conciliation, which often ends with an agreement to fix the site, a timeline and sometimes compensation. If the complaint is terminated, the person can apply to the Federal Court or the Federal Circuit and Family Court within 60 days, and the court can order compensation and other remedies (Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986, sections 46PH and 46PO). In Maguire v SOCOG (2000), a blind user was awarded $20,000 after the Sydney Olympics website was only partly fixed. There is no fixed penalty schedule, but the cost of a complaint is real.

Yes, at the Commonwealth level. The Digital Transformation Agency’s Digital Experience Policy is effective from 1 January 2025 and applies to corporate and non-corporate Commonwealth entities. It sets four standards: Digital Service, Digital Inclusion, Digital Access and Digital Performance. The Service Standard has applied to new public-facing services since 1 July 2024, and existing public-facing services had to meet the Service Standard from 1 July 2025 and the Inclusion Standard from 1 January 2026. See the DX Policy timeline for the dates that apply to your service, or use our government audit request form.

The technical testing is the same, WCAG 2.2 AA, but a DDA-focused audit also maps findings to how the AHRC evaluates complaints and Australia’s expanded digital scope, SaaS, AI, CAPTCHAs, and more, so you understand your actual legal exposure, not just a pass or fail score. If you also operate in other markets, see our Canada and UK compliance audits, and for document-heavy sites our PDF document remediation service.

HalfAccessible publishes fixed prices: the $500 Quick Audit covers up to 5 page templates with a top-10 issues report, and the $2,000 Complete Audit covers up to 25 templates or key user flows with a retest of fixed issues, an accessibility statement draft and 90-day support. Not sure which fits? Start with a free 30-minute call to talk through where you stand and get a quote, or use the free needs assessment. If you already have findings and need a hands-on technical session with a developer, book the $100 one-hour consultation. See the pricing page for details.

Have a short list of the templates and journeys that matter most (for example a homepage, a booking or checkout form, a login flow and any PDF people need to use your service), plus any existing accessibility statement, DDA Action Plan or prior scan. A free automated pass on AccessibilityScore.in is a useful starting point that complements a manual audit; bring those results if you have them. If you have received an Australian Human Rights Commission complaint, or you are a Commonwealth entity working to the Digital Experience Policy, tell us so we can prioritise those journeys.

You receive a prioritized, developer-ready report mapped to WCAG 2.2 AA, the level the Australian Human Rights Commission recommends. We walk through the findings on a call, help you plan remediation, and for Complete Audits we retest fixed issues and draft an accessibility statement. If you prefer to start with discovery only, book a free 30-minute call; if you need to review findings live with your developer, book the $100 technical hour.

We scope the templates and journeys that matter most, run automated scans, then test by hand with a keyboard and with NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver and TalkBack against WCAG 2.2 AA. You get a report with each issue’s severity, WCAG success criterion, screenshots, reproduction steps and fix guidance, organized so it can feed your accessibility statement or DDA Action Plan. See a sample audit report.

Not as a target. The AHRC’s 2025 guidelines replaced the 2014 advisory note that pointed to WCAG 2.0, recommend WCAG 2.2 Level AA and say to meet the latest published version. WCAG 2.2 builds on WCAG 2.1, so testing to WCAG 2.2 AA also covers the 2.1 criteria still in force, and it maps to AS EN 301 549 for ICT procurement.

No. Neither the DDA nor the AHRC guidelines accept an overlay as proof of accessibility, and overlays cannot fix the underlying code that keyboard and screen reader users depend on. In 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its overlay could make any website compliant. Read more in accessibility overlays and lawsuits.

Neither is mandatory for private businesses, but both help. The AHRC guidelines recommend publishing an accessibility statement that explains how standards have been met. Under Part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, a service provider may prepare a Disability Action Plan and give it to the Commission (section 64), and the terms of that plan are one of the factors weighed when deciding whether unjustifiable hardship applies (section 11). The $2,000 Complete Audit includes an accessibility statement draft based on your findings.

Often, yes. The European Accessibility Act has applied since June 28, 2025 to covered products and services offered to consumers in the EU, such as ecommerce, consumer banking, e-books and electronic communications, wherever the business is based. Microenterprises providing services are exempt. A WCAG 2.2 AA audit gives evidence for both the DDA and the EAA; see our EU accessibility compliance audit.

Yes. The AHRC guidelines apply the DDA to apps as well as websites, so we test native iOS and Android apps with VoiceOver and TalkBack, and check PDFs and office documents for tags, reading order and form fields with NVDA. See document accessibility testing, and our PDF document remediation service fixes the files we flag.