How One Side Hustler Makes 12000 Monthly as a Web Accessibility Consultant

Lucas: So you visit a website. You can see it. You can click around. But millions of people can't — because the site wasn't built with screen readers or keyboard navigation in mind. Luna: And that's where today's side hustler comes in. Maria Chen makes twelve thousand dollars a month auditing sites for exactly those issues. Lucas: Maria was a front-end developer for five years. She knew HTML, CSS, JavaScript inside out. But she kept noticing that the sites her agency shipped were basically inaccessible to blind users or people with motor disabilities. Luna: So she decided to do something about it. She got certified — the IAAP Certified Professional in Web Accessibility — and started offering audits on the side. Lucas: Her first client was a local nonprofit that ran a food bank. She charged them eight hundred dollars for a full audit, which took her about ten hours. She found over forty violations of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — WCAG. Luna: Forty violations on one site — that sounds like a lot. Lucas: It's actually pretty typical. She says most commercial sites have dozens of issues. Missing alt text on images, poor color contrast, forms that don't announce errors to screen readers. The list goes on. Luna: And that's where the business opportunity is. Companies are getting sued over this. The number of ADA website accessibility lawsuits hit over four thousand in 2024. Lucas: Right. And the demand for consultants who can fix those issues before a lawsuit lands is huge. Maria's rates now range from twenty-five hundred to five thousand dollars per audit, depending on the size of the site. She does about three to five audits a month. Luna: So how does she find clients? Is it all referrals now? Lucas: Mostly. But she started on Upwork — billed herself as an accessibility specialist, not just a web developer. She also wrote a few articles on LinkedIn about common accessibility mistakes. One of them got picked up by a digital marketing publication. Luna: That's smart. Establish yourself as the expert in a niche that's growing fast. Lucas: And the niche is definitely growing. New regulations in Europe — the European Accessibility Act — will require many more sites to be compliant by June 2025. And similar pressure is building in the US, especially for companies that take federal contracts. Luna: Let's talk about the actual work. What does an audit look like? How does she spend her time? Lucas: She breaks it into three parts. First, she runs automated tools — WAVE and axe — which catch about thirty percent of issues. Then she does a manual keyboard-only walkthrough of the site. That catches another big chunk. Luna: So she's literally tabbing through every link and button? Lucas: Exactly. Making sure you can navigate without a mouse. Then the third part is testing with a screen reader — she uses NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on Mac. That finds issues the other methods miss. Luna: And then she writes up a report? Lucas: Yeah, a detailed PDF with screenshots, code snippets, and priority rankings. Critical, high, medium, low. The client can hand that straight to their dev team. She also offers a remediation service — actually fixing the issues — but that's a separate contract. Luna: That makes sense. The audit is the entry point. The real money might be in the fixes. Lucas: She says about a third of her audit clients come back for remediation. And she charges hourly for that — one hundred fifty dollars an hour. So a typical remediation project runs another two to three thousand. Luna: So total, she's pulling in maybe fifteen thousand some months. That's impressive for a side hustle. Lucas: And she's still working her full-time dev job. She spends about fifteen hours a week on the side hustle — mostly evenings and weekends. She says the key is batching her audits. She does all the automated scans for multiple clients on a Saturday, then the manual testing during the week after work. Luna: I love that. It's structured, not chaotic. And it's a skill that most developers already have a foundation for — they just need to specialize. Lucas: Right. If you already know how to build a website, accessibility consulting is not a giant leap. You're layering on a new set of standards and a new way of testing. Maria says she learned most of it from free resources — the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative, the Deque University courses, and the A11y Project checklist. Luna: The barrier to entry is pretty low then. No expensive equipment, no special software — just a screen reader and some browser extensions. Lucas: Exactly. Her only real cost is her IAAP certification, which is about five hundred dollars and requires an exam. But you don't need the cert to start. She landed her first three clients without it. Luna: So if someone listening has a web dev background and wants to try this, what's the first step? Lucas: Maria says: audit your own portfolio site. Run the tools. Fix everything. Then offer a free mini-audit to a local small business. Use that as a case study. Then put up a simple landing page and start pitching. Luna: That's exactly the kind of concrete advice our listeners need. And you know, if this episode has helped you think about a side hustle differently, or given you a new idea — honestly, if today was worth a coffee to you, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, that link goes straight to a virtual tip jar. No subscription, no ad overload. Just a way for listeners who find value here to keep the show going. And we really appreciate it. Luna: Alright, back to Maria. One thing I found interesting is that she says the hardest part isn't the technical work — it's convincing clients that accessibility is a business priority, not just a compliance checkbox. Lucas: Right. She often has to frame it in terms of ROI. A survey from Forrester found that accessible sites reach a wider audience, improve SEO, and reduce legal risk. She walks clients through the math: a five-thousand-dollar audit might prevent a twenty-thousand-dollar lawsuit. Luna: That's a compelling argument. And it's only getting stronger as regulations tighten. Lucas: She also points out that accessible design often leads to better UX for everyone. Think of captions on videos — they help people in noisy environments. Or high-contrast text — easier on the eyes after a long day. Luna: So it's not just about compliance. It's about good design. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the pitch that wins clients. She says once a company sees the audit results and understands the user impact, they're usually on board. Luna: What about the future? Does she plan to turn this into a full-time business? Lucas: She's considering it. Right now she's making more from the side hustle than her day job, but she likes the stability of a salary and benefits. Her goal is to save enough to launch an accessibility-focused agency in about two years. Luna: That's a smart timeline. Build the client base while you have the safety net, then go all in when you're ready. Lucas: And she's already thinking about scaling. She's training a couple of freelancers to help with audits, so she can take on bigger contracts without burning out. Luna: That's the dream, right? A side hustle that grows into a real business. Lucas: For sure. And the need is only going up. As of June 2026, we're seeing more states adopt their own accessibility laws. California and New York are leading. So the market is expanding. Luna: Alright, any final advice from Maria for someone starting out? Lucas: She says: pick one industry to focus on first. She started with nonprofits because they have tight budgets but high mission alignment. Now she works mainly with e-commerce and SaaS companies. Specializing helps you build a reputation faster. Luna: Great advice. And a reminder that the best side hustles often come from combining skills you already have with a growing market need. Lucas: Yeah. Web accessibility consulting is a perfect example. It's technical, it's in demand, and it genuinely makes the internet better for everyone.