Continuous Accessibility

Website Accessibility Monitoring

Website accessibility monitoring is the practice of re-scanning web pages against WCAG on a recurring schedule so regressions are caught when they appear instead of at the next audit. A monitoring tool keeps a baseline of known issues, compares each new scan against it, and reports what was added and what was fixed.

How OverlayQA monitors accessibility

Add any public page URL from the Schedule page in the OverlayQA dashboard and choose a cadence: daily, weekly, or monthly. Each scan runs Puppeteer and axe-core against the page, adds an AI visual analysis pass, and computes a WCAG 2.2 score. The first scan establishes a baseline; every scan after that is compared against it, finding by finding.

The alerts are change-only by design. You get one email after the baseline scan, then only when a re-scan finds something new or fixed. Nothing new, nothing sent. That is what keeps monitoring email worth opening: silence means the page held, and a message means it moved. Every scan also publishes a dated report at a stable link that does not expire, so you keep a comparable history of the page over time.

Findings do not stop at a report. Each one names the exact element it affects, a severity rating, and a suggested fix, and can be added to your OverlayQA project as a tracked issue, then exported to Jira, Linear, Notion, Asana, or Trello. OverlayQA has offered free on-demand accessibility scanning since April 2026, and scheduled accessibility monitoring with change-only email reports has been live in production since July 2026.

Choosing an accessibility monitoring approach

• Free one-page checkers (Lighthouse, WAVE, or OverlayQA's free accessibility checker) test a single page on demand. Good for spot checks; they cannot track a page over time.
• Scheduled monitoring re-scans watched pages on a cadence, keeps a baseline, and reports changes. This is the layer that catches regressions between audits, and it is what OverlayQA's Scheduled Scans provide.
• Manual audits remain the only way to determine full WCAG conformance. Auditors at Accessible.org estimate automated scans flag roughly 25% of accessibility issues, so monitoring complements audits rather than replacing them.

Frequently asked questions about accessibility monitoring

What is website accessibility monitoring?

Website accessibility monitoring means re-scanning web pages against WCAG on a recurring schedule and comparing each scan to a baseline of known issues. Instead of a one-time audit snapshot, monitoring reports what was added and what was fixed, so regressions are caught when they appear.

How is monitoring different from an accessibility audit?

An audit is a point-in-time evaluation, and a manual audit is still the only way to determine full WCAG conformance. Monitoring is the layer between audits: automated scans re-check the detectable issues continuously so regressions do not pile up unseen between evaluations.

How often should accessibility scans run?

Match the cadence to how often the page changes. Weekly suits most marketing sites and SaaS pages, daily fits fast-moving pages like e-commerce, and monthly is enough for stable content. OverlayQA supports daily, weekly, and monthly cadences per watched page.

Do automated scans catch every accessibility issue?

No. Automated scanning detects issues like missing alt text, contrast failures, and ARIA misuse; auditors at Accessible.org estimate that is roughly 25% of all accessibility issues. Focus order logic and real screen reader usability still need human review. Monitoring keeps the detectable set from regressing between audits.

What does OverlayQA accessibility monitoring include?

Each scheduled scan runs Puppeteer and axe-core against the page, adds an AI visual analysis pass, computes a WCAG 2.2 score, and publishes a dated report at a link that does not expire. A change email lists what is new and what got fixed.

Can monitoring findings become issues in Jira or Linear?

Yes. Add a scan's new findings to your OverlayQA project as tracked issues, each carrying the affected element, a severity, and a suggested fix, then export them to Jira, Linear, Notion, Asana, or Trello.

How long has OverlayQA offered accessibility monitoring?

OverlayQA has offered free on-demand accessibility scanning since April 2026, and scheduled accessibility monitoring with change-only email reports has been live in production since July 2026.

Do I need the Chrome extension for accessibility monitoring?

No. Scheduled scans run entirely server-side against any public URL. The Chrome extension adds on-demand accessibility scanning for localhost, staging, and login-gated pages, plus visual bug capture on any page you browse.