If you read one page before you start, make it this one. It describes every stage a scan goes through, so nothing later comes as a surprise.
The five stages
1. You add a website
You give us the address. We check that it is reachable and add it to your workspace. At this point nothing has been scanned yet.
2. We find your pages, which we call discovery
We follow the links on your site to build a list of pages. How long this takes depends on the size of your site, from under a minute for a small brochure site to considerably longer for a large one. You can stop it at any point.
3. You choose which pages to scan
Discovery usually finds more pages than you want to scan, and every plan has a limit on how many pages one scan may cover. So you pick. This step matters more than it looks, and it has its own article.
4. The scan runs, and you get your results
The automated checks run against each page you selected. When they finish, the scan shows Automated Scan Complete and your results are ready: every issue found, where it is and how serious it is, and a report you can download as a PDF.
5. If you want a score, a specialist reviews it
A compliance score out of 100 and a risk band come from an Expert Manual Review. You request it from the scan's results page, we send you a quote, and once it is approved and paid, a specialist checks every WCAG requirement by hand. The score then appears on that scan.
A scan without a review has no score. That is normal and it is not a fault. Your automated results are complete and ready to use.
How long the whole thing takes
The automated part is quick. An Expert Manual Review is done by a person, so it takes longer, and your quote gives the timeline. If you need a reviewed result by a particular date, request it with room to spare rather than the week before.
What happens after that
You fix what you can, then scan again to see the change. On paid plans you can scan as often as you like, and you can set scans to run automatically on a schedule. On the Free plan there is a three day wait between scans of the same site.
Next
Read The words you will see, then Is your site ready to scan?