Website Machine & AI Accessibility Auditing

Can AI Agents see & access your web pages?

Can they interact with your website?

Search Engines like Google and Bing put huge resources into being able to see web pages as a human does and adding them to their index.

AI Agents don’t crawl like search engines or render pages like search engines, they don’t have an index as such and prefer to access a machine friendly version of your site, not one made for humans.

As well as accessing content, AI tools with Agentic capabilities want to interact with your site on behalf of their human users (think of AI Agents as more like a personal assistant who can get things done on your behalf).

Many standards for accessibility already exist and are being adopted by key AI Tools such as Claude, Gemini and chatGPT; for their upcoming developments or premium versions if not their standard, currently available versions.

Dave the SEO has brought together the different standards and requirements, including for AI and other Machines including Search Engines, Accessibility Tools and others, into MAWS (Machine Accessibility Web Standards) and put together this Audit based on these standards.

The AI Accessibility Audit checks specifically for how easy it is for AI tools to access the front end (website) and back end (Endpoints such as APIs) of your current site. There is a standard version and extended version for e-commerce & interactive websites.

There is also a full Machine Accessibility Audit that includes checking accessibility for different machines including AI and Search Engine.

Prices Start from £2,000 GBP / $2,750 USD but depend on the size and complexity of the site and setup.

Below is an outline of the Accessibility Checks included in the standard & extended AI Audit (marked ‘Extended only’):

AI Accessibility Audit

Front End (Website Accessibility)

Basic Web Page Accessibility –

·        Content in Source Code

·        Markup in Source Code

·        Use of Static Links (Source Code & Initial DOM)

·        JS Reliance (Initial DOM)

·        SPAs Use & Setup

·        SSR & CSR Use

·        Headings Structure

·        Image Alt Tags

·        Use of Interstitials

Page Structure & Semantics

·        Semantic HTML Usage (HTML 5+)

·        Meta Data Setup

·        Visible, Static Navigation & Links

·        Content (text content) in images or other media

·        (Un)Broken Head Section

Forms & Interactive Content

·        Interactive Content Labelling (Extended Only)

·        Form Labelling

·        Accessible Forms

·        Use of Non-Replicable Actions

·        SPA reliant Forms and Content

Navigation & Linking

·        Machine Friendly Navigation

·        URL Structure

·        Breadcrumbs

·        Links in Source Code

·        Use of Sitemaps

·        Use of JS Redirects

·        IP Based Redirects

·        Browser / Agent Language based Redirects

Structured Data

·        On Page Markup

·        Alternate ‘Machine Friendly’ Page Versions (URL or via Backend)

·        Referencing to Alternate Versions

·        Content Body in Structured Data

·        Use of ‘Preferred’ Schema Types

·        Additional Schema Types

·        Actions Schema Markup (Extended Only)

·        Events Schema Markup (Extended Only)

·        Images Schema Markup

·        Markup Validation

Control & Permissions

·        Reliance on Cookies

·        Robots.txt

·        Meta Robots Tags

·        Blocked Resources

·        LLMs.txt

·        Licensing / usage policies (Extended Only)

·        Consent Mechanisms (Extended Only)

·        Captchas, Robot Detection, Paywalls Setup (Extended Only)

·        Security & Bot Access Controls incl.

  o   User agent based blocking,

o   Firewalls

·        Headless Setup (If Applicable)

·        Pay to Crawl (Extended Only)

·        Content behind login / paywall (Extended Only)

o   Hard Paywall Setup

o   Soft Paywall Setup

Web Accessibility Standards (WCAG)

·        Content Order

·        Landmarks Tags

·        Screen Reader Labels

·        Inclusion of Roles Labels

o   Indicate Primary, Complementary and Other Content

·        ARIA Labels

·        Keyboard Navigable 

Content & Media Accessibility Standards

·        Machine Friendly Summaries

·        Lightweight Page Versions

·        Text in Images

·        Access to Media (Video, Audio etc.)

o   Static URLs

o   RSS Feeds

Backend – (Endpoint) Accessibility

MCP Use and Setup

·        Endpoint / MCP Server Discoverability

·        MCP Availability

·        MCP Endpoints Included / Not Included

·        Agent Instructions

Endpoint Access

·        API / Database Documentation (if no MCP)

·        API Setup (If Applicable) (Extended Only)

·        Content Availability

·        Forms Availability (Extended Only)

·        Interactive Tools Availability (Extended Only)

·        Product Details Availability (Extended Only)

·        Appointments Availability (Extended Only)

·        Account Sign Up Availability (Extended Only)

·        Purchases Availability (partial support for future) (Extended Only)

·        Permissions for accessing gated content, members only content / token passing – Oauth 2.0 & Token Storage (partial support for future) (Extended Only)

·        JSON Endpoint Speed