A manual WCAG audit of a small product takes one to four weeks of the provider’s time, and the published turnaround time runs from five business days for a five-page VPAT to 70 business days for a 100-page, 40-template tier at the same vendor, read on and re-checked on . Harbor commits the signed VPAT/ACR at day 21 on a Focused engagement, day 45 on Standard and day 60 on Professional, with the Enterprise date fixed at signing, and each date is backed by automatic credits if missed. Remediation and re-testing run after the document, on your team’s clock, and a full cycle typically lands around day 75.
Key Takeaway
The date a provider quotes is the date of the report, not the date your product conforms. The two phases that stretch a timeline are access provisioning at the start and your own developers’ fixes at the end, and both sit on the buyer’s side of the fence.
WCAG Audit Turnaround Time by Provider
Read from each provider’s own page on and re-checked on . The distinction that matters is the last column: most published dates are estimates, and an estimate is a plan rather than a promise.
| Provider | Published Turnaround | Estimate or Commitment |
|---|---|---|
| Accessible.orgaccessible.org/audits | Audit report “within 1-2 weeks,” 3 weeks for larger scopes. Expedited same-day or overnight turnaround is priced at $250 to $750 on its pricing page. | Estimate. |
| Skynet Technologiesskynettechnologies.com | “Usually delivered in 5 business days” for the 5-page, 2-template VPAT tier, then 7, 14 and 28 business days by tier, up to 70 business days for 100 pages and 40 templates. | Estimate. No remedy stated if missed. |
| TestProstestpros.com/services/accessibility/vpat | Typically two to four weeks. | Estimate. |
| DigitalA11Ydigitala11y.com/services/vpat | “Several weeks,” depending on product complexity and the number of issues found. | Estimate. |
| Web Audit Solutionswebauditsolutions.com | “A small website may take a few days to audit, while a larger website with more complex functionality may take several weeks.” | Estimate. |
| Harbor Accessibility Co.harboraccessibility.com/pricing | Signed ACR on day 21 (Focused, up to 5 templates), day 45 (Standard, up to 10), day 60 (Professional, up to 20); on Enterprise (20 or more templates, or an authenticated app) the date is fixed at signing. Expedited Standard commits day 30, and expedited Professional commits day 45. | Committed at signing. Automatic credits of 10% to 30% if missed, and a right to cancel past 10 business days late. |
Harbor’s dates are longer than the fastest estimates above on purpose. Every unique template is evaluated by hand against all 55 criteria, and the date is a commitment with credits behind it rather than a delivery estimate.
Where the Calendar Time Goes
A Standard engagement runs in four phases. The first three are the provider’s work, which is why the date can be committed. The fourth is yours.
| Phase | Days | What Happens |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | 1 to 7 | Templates in scope confirmed, access provisioned, delivery date locked. Stalls here are almost always access. |
| Audit | 7 to 40 | Scans first, then every template by hand with a keyboard and a screen reader against all 55 WCAG 2.2 A and AA criteria. |
| Signed VPAT/ACR | 45, committed | The report of current state, including what does not conform yet. It does not wait for fixes. |
| Remediation and re-issue | Typically to about 75 | Your developers fix from the visual guides; follow-up reviews re-test the changed pages and re-issue the ACR. The pace is set by your team. |
What Slows an Audit Down
- Access. Test accounts that do not work, staging that is down, a login tied to someone on holiday. Days waiting on client-side prerequisites are the single most common delay, and on a Harbor engagement they pause the clock rather than counting toward lateness.
- Unanswered questions. A fair number of findings turn on intent: what a control is supposed to do, whether a flow is still in use. One named contact who answers within a day removes most of the drift.
- Mid-audit deployments. A redesign shipped to the audited environment during testing invalidates the work already done on those templates. A short deployment freeze, or a frozen staging copy, avoids it.
- Slow fixes. The longest phase on most engagements is the one between the report and the re-test. It is engineering time, and the audit cannot shorten it.
Planning Backwards From a Deadline
If a procurement date is driving this, work back from it. The figures below are Harbor’s committed dates; other providers’ estimates above give the market range.
- 90 days out: room for a Standard engagement, a round of fixes and a re-issued ACR.
- 60 days out: a Standard ACR at day 45 with a fortnight in hand, or a Focused engagement with a remediation round.
- 30 days out: a Focused engagement (day 21) if the scope fits in five templates, or an expedited Standard (day 30).
- Under three weeks: a report of current state on a small scope is still possible. Conformance by the date is not, and an honest ACR saying so is what reviewers expect to see.
Enterprise evaluation windows commonly run 30 to 90 days, so a credible report inside that window usually keeps a vendor in the running. If you have a hard date, say so on the first call and you will get a straight answer on whether it can be met.
- The Four Phases
- What Happens During an Audit
- What a VPAT Costs
- Engagement Tiers
- Talk Through Your Deadline
Common Questions
- How long does a VPAT take to produce?
- For a small product, published estimates run from five business days for a five-page VPAT to one to two weeks for a small audit, and several weeks for a larger product. Harbor commits the signed ACR at day 21 on a Focused engagement (up to 5 unique templates), day 45 on Standard (up to 10) and day 60 on Professional (up to 20); on Enterprise the date is set at signing. Each date is fixed at signing rather than estimated.
- How long does remediation take after the audit?
- It is usually the longest phase, and it belongs to your developers. On a Standard engagement the full cycle, with follow-up reviews and a re-issued ACR, typically lands around day 75. That figure is an estimate rather than a commitment, because the pace is set by your team.
- Can an accessibility audit be done in a week?
- A scan can. A manual evaluation of every template against all 55 WCAG 2.2 A and AA criteria, with a keyboard and a screen reader, takes days of a person’s time, so a week is realistic only for a very small scope. When a quote promises a week, ask what is being tested and how.
- What can we do to make the audit go faster?
- Have a working test account for each user role before kickoff, name one person who can answer questions within a day, hold deployments to the audited environment during testing, and agree the scope in writing. Waiting on access is the most common delay, and it is almost always on the buyer’s side.
- Does the conformance report wait for our fixes?
- It should not. The report documents current state, and Partially Supports with specific remarks is normal. Harbor delivers the signed ACR on the committed date and re-issues it after each follow-up review as fixes land, so the document you hand to procurement does not wait on engineering.