Automated Accessibility Audits with One API Call

The Problem: Manual Accessibility Testing

Your current accessibility workflow probably looks like:

• Developer manually clicks through pages
• Browser extension runs axe, highlights violations
• Developer fixes them manually
• QA tests screen reader (if there's time)
• Edge cases slip through to production

It's slow, it's incomplete, and violations ship. A week after launch, a customer reports your new page is unusable with a screen reader. Now you're patching live code instead of fixing it before it shipped.

The Solution: /audit

PageBolt's /audit endpoint runs axe-core (the industry standard) on any URL and returns violations organized by severity. One API call. Full audit. Violations sorted.

const response = await fetch('https://pagebolt.dev/api/v1/audit', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'x-api-key': process.env.PAGEBOLT_API_KEY,
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({ url: 'https://yoursite.com/new-feature' })
});

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.violations);
// [
//   { severity: 'critical', count: 2, violations: [...] },
//   { severity: 'serious', count: 5, violations: [...] },
//   { severity: 'minor', count: 12, violations: [...] }
// ]

Real Example: CI/CD Accessibility Gate

Block deployments if critical violations are detected. No feature ships without passing accessibility checks.

async function auditPageBeforeDeploy(stagingUrl) {
  console.log(`Auditing ${stagingUrl}...`);

  const response = await fetch('https://pagebolt.dev/api/v1/audit', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
      'x-api-key': process.env.PAGEBOLT_API_KEY,
      'Content-Type': 'application/json'
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      url: stagingUrl,
      standard: 'wcag2aa' // or wcag21aa, section508
    })
  });

  const audit = await response.json();

  const critical = audit.violations.find(v => v.severity === 'critical');
  if (critical && critical.count > 0) {
    console.error(`❌ BLOCKED: ${critical.count} critical accessibility violations`);
    critical.violations.forEach(v => {
      console.error(`   - ${v.description}`);
      console.error(`     Fix: ${v.remediation}`);
    });
    process.exit(1); // Fail the build
  }

  const serious = audit.violations.find(v => v.severity === 'serious');
  if (serious && serious.count > 0) {
    console.warn(`⚠️  Warning: ${serious.count} serious violations`);
  }

  console.log('✅ Accessibility check passed');
  return true;
}

// In GitHub Actions:
await auditPageBeforeDeploy(process.env.STAGING_URL);

What /audit Returns

{
  "url": "https://yoursite.com/page",
  "tested_at": "2026-03-19T14:32:00Z",
  "passes": 25,
  "violations": [
    {
      "severity": "critical",
      "count": 2,
      "violations": [
        {
          "id": "color-contrast",
          "description": "Background and foreground colors do not have sufficient contrast",
          "elements_affected": 3,
          "impact": "Users with low vision cannot read the text",
          "remediation": "Change text color to #000000 or background to #ffffff",
          "help_url": "https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/..."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Full details for every violation: severity, element count, remediation guidance, and a direct link to the axe documentation for that rule.

Use Cases

• Deploy gate — Block CI/CD if critical violations detected
• Compliance documentation — Prove WCAG 2.1 AA compliance to auditors
• Competitor monitoring — Audit competitor sites weekly, compare maturity
• Bulk auditing — Audit 100 pages on a schedule, track progress over time
• Enterprise deals — Enterprise customers increasingly require accessibility certification

Cost vs. Manual Testing

Approach	Time per Page	Coverage	Monthly Cost (5 pages/week)
Manual developer testing	30 min	~70%	$375+
PageBolt /audit	<1 second	~95%	$29 (Starter)

Automated audits don't just cost less — they catch issues before they ship. Manual testing catches them in production.

Standards Supported

• WCAG 2.0 Level A / AA / AAA
• WCAG 2.1 Level A / AA / AAA
• Section 508
• axe best practices