Adience study finds AudioEye detects far more WCAG issues than rivals, urges layered approach

Adience study spotlights AudioEye’s automated WCAG coverage

TUCSON, Ariz., Feb 12 (Reuters) — AudioEye says a new independent evaluation by B2B market research firm Adience finds wide variation in automated detection of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) issues and shows AudioEye’s technology detecting substantially more issues than rivals. Adience scans five leading automated accessibility tools and maps findings to WCAG Levels A, AA and AAA, reporting that AudioEye detects between 89% and 253% more issues than competing products across the tested sites.

The report highlights that at the commonly referenced regulatory level AA several tools return no findings on multiple sites, while AudioEye is the only vendor to consistently identify issues at all three WCAG levels across every website examined. At Level A, AudioEye finds 509% more valid accessibility issues than the lowest-performing tool and 68% more than the next closest; at Level AA it finds 380% more than the lowest-performing tool that returned results and 41% more than the next-closest tool. Adience says all tools are tested under identical conditions, underscoring the variation in what automated scanners detect even on the same pages.

AudioEye positions the results as evidence of its broader detection coverage, combining automated scanning with human verification. The company says its platform leverages years of data drawn from hundreds of thousands of sites and billions of unique visits, and that its approach uses agentic tooling, human testing, custom fixes and continuous monitoring to improve coverage and visibility into compliance gaps.

Rapid digital expansion and legal risk

AudioEye’s CEO David Moradi says the number of websites and apps is growing 40–60% year over year as low-code and other tooling proliferate, and that some large language models and automated systems rely on detection methods with lower detection rates. He warns a record number of digital accessibility lawsuits is being driven by those detection gaps, signalling growing legal and compliance risk for organizations that rely solely on basic automation.

Adience emphasizes automation as foundational but not sufficient

Adience Managing Director Chris Wells stresses that, while automation provides scale, human evaluation remains essential to resolve complex and contextual barriers that scanners miss. The firm concludes that a layered model — automated detection plus human validation and remediation — is necessary to improve digital accessibility and reduce exposure to regulatory and litigation risk.