Pre-Engagement Requirements
What has to be in place before a fixed fee can be quoted
A fixed-fee accessibility evaluation depends on being able to reach and read the property being evaluated. Most of the cost is in the work that follows the scan, and that work is only affordable because the scan itself is fast.
The items below are what makes that true. Where an item cannot be provided, the work still gets done; it just costs more or covers less. Each item states its consequence so there are no surprises after a number has been quoted.
The one that changes the price most
If the site blocks automated browsers, the evaluation still happens, and it costs more.
Many public sector sites sit behind a web application firewall or bot protection service. In a recent survey of 22 Southwest Florida public entity websites, five refused an automated browser outright. That is not unusual and it is not a criticism of the security posture; it is a fact that has to be settled before a number is quoted.
This firm does not circumvent security controls. Working around a bot protection measure on government infrastructure, while selling compliance services, is not a trade worth making at any price. The alternative is manual collection, which is slower and priced accordingly.
| Approach | Time to inspect 25 pages | Effect on fee |
|---|---|---|
| Allowlisted, automated | About five minutes, unattended | Fixed fee as quoted |
| Blocked, collected by hand | One and a half to two hours | Surcharge of roughly $600 on top of the fixed fee |
Manual collection means a person opens each page in an ordinary browser and runs the same measurement script against the page the site already served them. Nothing is circumvented and the results are comparable, but it takes about twenty times longer and the report notes two things the manual path cannot capture.
An allowlist entry usually takes one email to whoever administers the CDN or firewall. It is the single highest-value thing a client can do before the engagement starts, and it turns two hours back into five minutes.
Requirements
Items marked Blocker must be resolved before a fixed fee is quoted. The others affect scope or accuracy and are worth settling early.
| Req. | Item | Why it matters | If not provided |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1Blocker | Allowlist for the evaluation tooling A user agent string and source address are supplied on request. Applies to Cloudflare, Akamai, Imperva, AWS WAF, and similar. | Without it the scanner is refused and every page must be inspected by hand. | Surcharge of roughly $600 for manual collection, quoted before work begins. |
| 2Blocker | Page inventory A list of URLs in scope, or confirmation that a crawl from the home page is sufficient. | A sitemap.xml is a publishing artifact, not an inventory. Login pages, tools, and anything noindexed routinely sit outside it, and those are exactly the pages with forms and error messages. | Scope cannot be fixed, so a fixed fee cannot be quoted. |
| 3Blocker | Decision on authenticated areas In scope or out. If in scope, working test credentials for a non-privileged account. | Authenticated pages hold most of the forms, error messages, and status updates, which is where the harder criteria live. | Authenticated areas are excluded and the report says so. They are not evaluated on the basis of the public shell. |
| 4 | Document count and location Roughly how many PDFs and other documents are published, and where they live. | A document library is commonly the largest part of the exposure and the largest part of the cost. A mid-size county can hold tens of thousands. | Documents excluded from scope, stated in the report. Scoped separately later. |
| 5 | Named point of contact One person authorized to answer scope questions and confirm decisions. | Scope questions arise mid-evaluation. Waiting on a committee turns a two-week engagement into a two-month one. | Timeline extends. Fee unchanged unless delay is substantial. |
| 6 | Which obligation applies Public entity, private business, recipient of HHS funding, or vendor selling to government. For public entities, the 2020 Census population. | It decides the standard and the date. Title II is WCAG 2.1 AA; Section 508 is WCAG 2.0 AA. Population sets which Title II compliance date applies. | Evaluated against WCAG 2.1 Level AA by default, which satisfies the stricter reading. |
| 7 | Third-party embeds A list of embedded services: chat, video, mapping, payments, scheduling, analytics, accessibility widgets. | Embedded code is evaluated as it appears but cannot be remediated by anyone other than its vendor. Knowing what is there shapes the remediation list. | Evaluated as encountered. Findings attributable to third-party code are marked as such. |
| 8 | Prior work Any earlier audit, conformance report, accessibility statement, or remediation effort, including any monitoring or overlay product in use. | Avoids re-reporting known issues, and an existing accessibility statement is itself a claim that gets checked against the findings. | Evaluation proceeds without it. Existing statements are still checked against results and any contradiction is reported. |
| 9 | Change freeze, or notice of planned changes Whether a redesign, CMS migration, or template change is planned during the engagement. | A report describes a moment. A template change mid-evaluation can invalidate work already done. | Report is dated and scoped to what was evaluated. Re-evaluation after the change is a new engagement. |
| 10 | Screen reader testing decision Included or excluded. | It is the only way to fully verify two criteria and it cannot be automated. Excluding it is a legitimate choice; hiding the exclusion is not. | Excluded, and the report states which criteria are affected and why. |
Readiness checklist
Complete this before a fee is quoted: send it below, or print it and email it to brian@brianbeals.com. Anything unknown is fine; say so rather than guessing, and it gets resolved on a short call.
What happens after this comes back
- A short call to resolve anything marked unknown, particularly the allowlist question.
- A no-charge recon scan of a handful of pages, which confirms the tooling can reach the site and gives an early read on what is there.
- A fixed-fee Statement of Work, or an hourly proposal where a blocker could not be cleared.
A blocked site is not a lost engagement. It is a different one, priced differently, and worth saying so before a number is on paper rather than after. The reason this document exists is that quoting a fixed fee against an unknown access situation is how a fixed fee turns into unpaid work.