SEO and content marketing specialist who started working in the field in 2011. I love all things content, search engines, web accessibility, design, tech, and AI.
SEO and accessibility often require similar fixes. Teams save time and resources by auditing and fixing issues for both at once.
A “read more” link fails twice: screen reader users browsing a list of links hear the same two words for every story, with no indication of which story each link leads to. Google’s crawler gets no description of the page behind the link.
WCAG and Google both read four page elements: the page title, the heading outline, image alt text, and link text. Audit each element once, in the same crawl that collects metadata and broken links, and log every defect against both WCAG and search.
It’s possible, and often advisable, to collect all these issues in one fell swoop (or, as my 4’11” grandmother used to say, in one swell foop). You’ll save time and be better able to prioritize tasks, improving your accessibility and SEO scores with the same fixes.
Summary
- Screen readers and Google’s crawler both rely on the same four HTML elements: page title, heading outline, image alt text, and link text.
- Running separate accessibility and SEO audits creates duplicate backlogs for the same underlying defects, inflating issue counts and confusing prioritization.
- Shared page layouts and templates propagate defects across every page they serve, so fixing one template closes the issue site-wide.
- Title II compliance deadlines for public universities moved to April 26, 2027.
Similarities between screen readers and search engine crawlers
Screen readers and Google’s crawler both parse a page’s HTML, the layer beneath the visual design. A college page can ship with errors like a duplicate title, jumps from H1 to H4, or blank alt text. When that happens, both audiences lose the same information, and one fix closes a WCAG failure and a search problem together.
Link text shows the mechanism most plainly. Section508.gov notes that screen reader users often prefer to listen to a list of links, and in that mode the screen reader may read only the link text. Every “read more” on a department page then sounds identical. Google reads that same isolated anchor text to work out what the destination page covers.
| Page element | WCAG 2.2 success criterion | What a screen reader user gets from it | What Google gets from it |
| Page title | 2.4.2 Page Titled | The first words announced on load | A primary source for the title link in results |
| Heading outline | 1.3.1 Info and Relationships | A way to skim by jumping heading to heading | The page’s structure and topics |
| Image alt text | 1.1.1 Non-text Content | A spoken description in place of the image | Context for ranking the image |
| Link text | 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) | The link’s destination, heard out of context | A description of the linked page |
Per W3C, WCAG 2.2 carries these criteria over from 2.1 unchanged, so the four checks hold whichever version your policy names.
College sites multiply these defects through shared layouts. Fix the layout once, and every page the theme serves inherits the repair.
Your ten highest-traffic pages are the place to start. Check each for a unique <title>, one H1 with headings that descend in order, and alt text on every informative image. Where a page fails, trace the failure back to the layout that produced it if applicable.
Record every URL in one row
A combined audit starts with one crawl across every college subdomain, returning one row per URL. Each row carries four fields:
- Ownership: the owning college or department, and the CMS instance that publishes the page.
- WCAG results: automated failures, grouped by success criterion.
- Metadata: title, meta description, canonical URL, heading outline, and robots directives.
- Links: internal and outbound links returning a 4xx or 5xx status, including links to PDFs.
Accessibility and SEO staff filter the same dataset, each by their own columns.
Robots directives earn their place in the metadata field. Google’s crawling documentation explains how noindex and robots meta tags control which content Google can find and parse. A noindexed admissions page still has to pass WCAG, and an accessible page blocked from crawling stays invisible to prospective students who search. Recording both on the same row exposes each mismatch.
Missing alt text and empty links appear in both columns. The scanner logs them as WCAG failures and the crawler logs them as image and anchor-text warnings, so one row per URL counts each defect once. The WCAG column records automated test results; full conformance also needs manual review.
Point our platform, or any crawler that runs automated accessibility checks, at every college subdomain. Include the public course pages and syllabi colleges host. Export URL, owning college, WCAG violations, title, meta description, H1 status, robots directives, and 4xx/5xx links into one sheet. Sort it by template, and repeating defects group themselves.
Two audit tools count one defect twice
A separate accessibility scanner and SEO crawler give a central team two backlogs that describe the same broken element under different names. A single backlog keyed by URL and root cause lists each defect once. The team triages it once, and the owning college receives one ticket for one fix.
An image-only link with no alt text shows the problem. The scanner logs a failure of WCAG 2.4.4 Link Purpose, and the crawler logs empty anchor text. Both tickets point at the same <a> tag, and one template edit closes both.
Split backlogs distort the count, the priority, and the meeting:
- The open count doubles, so progress looks slower than it is.
- Each tool grades severity on its own scale, so one defect sits high in one queue and low in the other.
- Triage meetings spend their time matching records.
- When a college fixes its menu, one ticket closes on the next scan while its twin waits for the other tool’s crawl.
The abstract for a session on the EDUCAUSE 2026 conference agenda names the wider version of this duplicate ticketing: decentralized higher education environments where “disparate systems, duplicated processes, and fragmented data create barriers to efficiency”.
Export both tools to CSV and join them on URL. Collapse each pair of findings that targets the same element into one ticket named for its root cause, such as “navigation template image links lack alt text,” and tag it with the WCAG criterion and the SEO check. Assign it to the owning college in Jira or your existing tracker. Your ticket count then matches the number of real fixes. Our platform runs both sets of checks in one crawl and skips the join.
Give each college a one-page scorecard
A college web editor should be able to act on the report from the page alone. Give each college one page of root-cause fixes, ranked by pages affected, traffic, and WCAG severity, with an owner and a due date on every line.
Write each line as the change to make. “Rewrite the ‘Read more’ links on news listings” tells a communications officer exactly what to do.
Rank by pages affected times monthly visits. An example spreadsheet would look something like:
| Fix | Pages affected | WCAG criterion | Search warning removed | Owner | Due |
| Add alt text to navigation image links | Every page the college theme serves | 1.1.1 Non-text Content | Empty anchor text | College web editor | Before next re-crawl |
| Add a title field to the news layout | Every story on the news listing | 2.4.2 Page Titled | Duplicate title tags | Central web team | Before next re-crawl |
| Rewrite “Read more” links on news listings | Every story on the news listing | 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) | Non-descriptive anchor text | College communications office | Before next re-crawl |
| Fix the H1-to-H4 jump in the events layout | Every events page | 1.3.1 Info and Relationships | Unclear heading structure | College web editor | Following re-crawl |
Re-crawl every quarter and print last quarter’s count beside the new one. At time of writing, two re-crawls remain before the April 2027 deadline. That’s enough for a college to show its dean a shorter list, and for every rewritten “read more” link to tell both audiences where it goes.
Frequently asked questions
What do screen readers and Google crawlers have in common?
Both parse a page’s underlying HTML rather than its visual design. Page title, heading outline, image alt text, and link text each serve a screen reader user and Google’s crawler simultaneously, so one markup defect, like a blank alt attribute or duplicate title, causes a WCAG failure and a search problem at the same time.
What should go in a combined accessibility and SEO audit spreadsheet?
One row per URL with four fields: page ownership and CMS instance, automated WCAG results grouped by success criterion, metadata including title, meta description, canonical URL, heading outline, and robots directives, and broken internal or outbound links returning 4xx or 5xx status, including PDFs. Missing alt text and empty links appear in both the WCAG and metadata columns.
What is the Title II compliance deadline for public university websites?
The compliance deadline is now April 26, 2027 under the Justice Department’s Title II rule. Smaller public entities, including some community college districts, are April 26, 2028. Private universities under Title III can treat April 2027 as a planning benchmark, with due dates set ahead of it.
References
- Google crawling and indexing | google search central | documentation. (n.d.). Google Developers. Retrieved October 26, 2026, from https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing
- Liu, H., Sun, J., He, Z., Huang, H., Liu, X., & Nie, L. (2026). Web accessibility of university websites in China: An empirical study. Journal of King Saud University Computer and Information Sciences, 38(5), Article 244. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44443-026-00544-6
- Regents of the University of Michigan, Ravi Pendse, & Strickman, T. (2026, April 21). Message to employees on Digital Accessibility compliance date extended to april 2027. Equity, Civil Rights & Title IX Office. https://ecrt.umich.edu/digital-accessibility-compliance-date-extended-to-april-2027/
- Section508.Gov. (2024). Section508.Gov. https://www.section508.gov/blog/accessibility-bytes/descriptive-links-and-hypertext/
- W3C. (2024, December 12). Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) overview. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
