What to Look for in Accessibility Monitoring

Monitoring is the part of accessibility work that keeps working after the first fixes land. A site changes every week: new pages, new products, new plugins, new theme settings. Each change can bring back a barrier that was fixed last month. A monitoring plan should catch those returns early, tell a named person, and keep the history so the next report shows what changed and when. Many plans say "ongoing monitoring" and stop there. Ask for the five things below, and treat a plan that names none of them as no plan at all.

1. Frequency: how often, stated as a number

Ask how often checks run, and get a number: weekly, daily, or after each release. Axeazy runs weekly monitoring on paid plans, so new problems after an update are caught within a week and dated. A plan that says "regular checks" with no number cannot be compared with one that says weekly, and cannot be held to a timetable when a problem sits for a month. If your site changes daily, ask whether the plan can run after releases, and what that costs. If your site changes rarely, weekly checks are a sensible floor, because a month is long enough for a new barrier to sit on a checkout page unnoticed.

2. Pages: which pages, named by template

Ask which pages the plan covers, named by template: homepage, product or service pages, contact form, checkout or booking path, and any new templates added during the year. Many plans cover a set page count, and the count matters less than which templates sit inside it. A plan that covers 500 pages of blog posts and misses the checkout form misses the path where a barrier costs a sale and draws a letter. Ask what happens when you add a template: does it join the monitored set automatically, or does it wait for a manual step nobody remembers?

Axeazy's Starter plan covers one site with up to 500 pages, Pro covers three sites, and Agency covers up to ten client sites. Check the current limits on Axeazy's pricing page on the day you buy, because page limits and site counts are the two numbers that most often change between a sales call and a contract.

3. Alerts: who gets them, and what they say

Ask who gets alerts, by role and by name, and what an alert contains. A good alert names the page, the problem, the severity, and the fix step, and goes to a person who can act on it: an owner, a developer, or an agency contact. A monitoring report with no owner is a file nobody reads. Ask whether alerts go by email, and whether they repeat until the problem is fixed or closed. Ask what happens when an alert is ignored for two weeks: does the plan escalate, or does it quietly file the problem under a growing count?

Run a sample alert test before you sign. Ask the vendor to show one alert from a real monitored site, with names removed, and read it end to end. If you cannot tell what is wrong, where it is, and what to change, the alert feature fails its only test.

4. History: old reports kept with their dates

Ask how old reports are kept, and for how long. A monitoring plan should keep each scan with its date, so a later report can show what changed between two dates on the same site. That history is what a lawyer can read beside a demand letter, what a client can read beside an invoice, and what a future owner can read beside a site update. Axeazy records every scan and fix with a date and time, and reports can be exported as a PDF. Ask whether exports stay available after the subscription ends, and whether the history can be downloaded in full. A plan that shows only the current state gives you no history, and a current score with no date cannot sit beside anything.

5. What monitoring does not do

Monitoring finds problems. It does not fix them by itself, and it does not replace a manual check. The scan behind Axeazy's monitoring runs 98 automated checks against WCAG 2.2 AA, grouped into 14 categories. That scan catches part of the problems. A person using only a keyboard, and a person using a screen reader, catch the rest. The United States Department of Justice guidance says automated checkers can help, but a clean report does not mean everything is accessible, and a manual check paired with automated checks gives a better picture. Pair monitoring with a keyboard check of your top paths each month, and with a manual review when a template changes.

Monitoring also does not cover everything on a page. Axeazy does not scan PDFs, so document work needs a separate plan. Third party widgets hosted elsewhere may sit outside a scan's reach. Ask the vendor to name its edges in writing, and plan manual checks for the parts it cannot reach.

How to compare two monitoring plans

Put both plans side by side on five lines: frequency, pages by template, alert owner and content, history length and export, and price for the same scope. Add a sixth line: what happens after a fix, and whether the next scan retests the same pages. A plan that retests fixed pages proves the fix. A plan that only scans new pages leaves old fixes unchecked. For sites with a GitHub repository, Axeazy sends fixes as a real pull request with a visible code diff that the owner or developer reviews and merges, and the next weekly scan can show the change in the code. For Shopify stores and other sites with no repo, Axeazy scans the site and gives a guided checklist, and the next scan can show which checklist items were applied.

Related reading

For the full ranked feature list, read accessibility tool features that matter most, and for weekly reports in practice, read weekly accessibility reports for your site. For the buyer checklist behind this guide, read accessibility tool buyer checklist.

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FAQ

Is weekly monitoring enough?

For most small sites, yes, because most sites change weekly rather than daily. Sites with daily releases should ask about checks after each release, and sites with a checkout path should add a keyboard check of that path each month.

What should I do with the first monitoring report?

Fix the highest severity items on the most visited templates first, record the dates, and check the next report for the same items. A monitoring report that never changes is either a site that never changes, or a plan that is not looking at the right pages.

Does monitoring replace an audit?

No. Monitoring is a repeat scan with history. An audit is a person testing sampled pages and writing findings a developer can act on. Use monitoring every week, and an audit when the site is complex, when a path changes, or when a third party needs a report from a person.

Last checked: October 31, 2026 Sources: W3C WCAG 2.2; ADA.gov web guidance; Axeazy capabilities and pricing pages.

Start with Axeazy's free scan to see a dated report, then ask any monitoring vendor to match its five lines before you sign.