How to Perform an RGAA Accessibility Audit of Your Website

What is an RGAA accessibility audit?

An RGAA accessibility audit is a methodical evaluation of a website's compliance with the 106 criteria of the French General Accessibility Improvement Framework (RGAA 4.1). The goal is to identify non-conformities and provide concrete remediation recommendations.

Types of audits

Automated scan

• Pros — Fast, covers the entire site, reproducible, affordable
• Limitations — Detects only 30-40% of issues, cannot evaluate content relevance

Manual audit

• Pros — More comprehensive, identifies usability and understanding issues
• Use case — For a thorough initial assessment or to prepare a full audit

Full RGAA compliance audit

• Pros — Exhaustive, yields a compliance rate for the official accessibility statement
• Cost — Between €5,000 and €20,000 depending on site size

Audit steps

1. Define the scope — Identify pages, user journeys and downloadable documents to audit.
2. Run automated tools — Start with RGAA Checker for a quick overview of common issues.
3. Perform manual testing — Check each RGAA theme: images, colors, scripts, forms, navigation.
4. Test with assistive technology — Navigate with keyboard only, test with NVDA screen reader, check 200% zoom.
5. Write the report — Executive summary, per-criteria results, non-conformity details, remediation plan.
6. Create remediation plan — Prioritize fixes by impact, group by type, estimate effort, set milestones.

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