How to Make 8000 Monthly as a Freelance Accessibility Consultant

Lucas: So there's this side hustle that I honestly hadn't thought much about until a listener wrote in — digital accessibility consulting. Basically, auditing websites to make sure they work for people with disabilities. Luna: And the listener is making eight thousand dollars a month doing this part-time? Lucas: Eight thousand, yeah. Her name is Priya — former special ed teacher who learned accessibility testing during a career break. Now she works maybe 15 to 20 hours a week and earns more than she did teaching full-time. Luna: That is a serious jump. And honestly, if today's conversation helps you see a new path forward in your own work, that's exactly the kind of thing that makes this show worth doing. There's a link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo if you ever want to support what we're building here — no pressure, just if it lands. Lucas: Totally. And like you said, it's about finding angles that actually move the needle. So Priya's story — she started by taking a free course from WebAIM on web accessibility principles. That gave her enough to do basic audits for local small businesses. Luna: Wait — free? So you don't need a certification to start? Lucas: Not at the beginning. The certification that carries weight in this field is the Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies, or CPACC, from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. That costs about four hundred dollars for the exam. But Priya didn't have it when she landed her first client. She just showed up with a sample audit she'd done on a friend's bakery site. Luna: Okay, so what does an actual audit look like? I imagine it's not just running a tool and sending a report. Lucas: Right, there's a manual layer that matters a lot. Automated tools like WAVE or Axe catch maybe 30 percent of issues. The rest requires human judgment — testing with a screen reader like JAWS or NVDA, checking keyboard navigation, reviewing color contrast ratios. Priya charges five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars per audit depending on the site size. A typical small ecommerce site with maybe 50 pages runs her about 8 to 10 hours. Luna: So at fifteen hundred per audit, that's roughly six audits a month to hit eight grand. That's doable if you're efficient. Lucas: Exactly. And she's not just doing one-off audits. She also offers retainer contracts for ongoing monitoring — three hundred a month to run quarterly check-ins. About a third of her clients are on retainer now. Luna: Who's actually paying for this? I mean, are small business owners lining up to get their sites audited? Lucas: Some are proactive, but most come in because they've gotten a demand letter from a law firm. There's a specific subset of plaintiff's firms that target websites with accessibility violations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. According to recent data, over 4,600 ADA website lawsuits were filed last year. That number has been climbing year over year. Luna: So there's a fear factor driving demand. Lucas: Absolutely. But Priya frames it as risk reduction, not fear. She tells clients, look, a fix costs you fifteen hundred now. A lawsuit could cost twenty thousand in legal fees plus a settlement. Her conversion rate on those cold emails is actually pretty high — she says about one in five respond. Luna: How does she find those clients? She's not a lawyer, so she can't access court filings directly. Lucas: She uses two methods. First, she searches for small businesses in industries that get sued a lot — restaurants, retail stores, local services — and checks their websites for obvious issues like missing alt text on images. Then she sends a brief, friendly email saying she noticed some barriers and offers a free initial scan. Second, she partners with a web design agency that refers clients to her whenever a client's site needs a compliance check. Luna: So the agency gets to offer added value without hiring someone full-time, and Priya gets a steady stream of leads. That's smart. Lucas: Exactly. And the agency partnership alone brings her two or three audits per month. She also lists herself on the IAAP directory and gets occasional inbound from that. Luna: What's the most common issue she finds? I'm guessing something like low contrast text or missing form labels. Lucas: You nailed it. Low color contrast is the number one failure. Think light gray text on a white background — impossible to read for someone with low vision. Next is missing alternative text on images, then non-descriptive link text like 'click here.' Those three probably account for 70 percent of violations on small business sites. And they're relatively easy to fix. Luna: So a non-technical person can definitely learn this. Priya was a teacher, not a developer. Lucas: Right. She says the biggest skill is empathy and attention to detail. You need to be able to imagine navigating a site without a mouse or with a screen reader. The technical side — learning to use the tools — takes maybe two weeks of practice. Luna: What about tools? You mentioned WAVE and JAWS. Are those free? Lucas: WAVE has a free browser extension, which is great. JAWS is expensive — about ninety dollars for a home license — but NVDA is free and works well on Windows. For color contrast, the WebAIM contrast checker is free. So you can start with basically zero investment. Priya's total startup cost was maybe a hundred bucks for some courses on Udemy and a subscription to an accessibility plugin. Luna: That's low enough that almost anyone could try it. But how long before she landed her first paying client? Lucas: She says it took about three months. She did free audits for five local businesses in exchange for testimonials. Then she used those to build a portfolio. Her first paid gig was a restaurant website for four hundred dollars. Within six months she had three regular clients. After a year she was at eight thousand a month. Luna: And she's still part-time? That's impressive. Lucas: Yes. She keeps it at 20 hours max because she's also raising two kids. She says she could scale to full-time and probably double her income, but she likes the balance. Luna: Is there a certification or credential that clients actually ask for? I know you mentioned CPACC earlier. Lucas: Clients rarely ask about credentials directly. But having the CPACC or the Web Accessibility Specialist certification — which is the next level up — helps with credibility, especially when you're reaching out cold. Priya got her CPACC after about a year. She said it made her feel more confident charging higher rates. Luna: What about liability? If you audit a site and miss something, could you be sued? Lucas: That's a smart question. Priya has a simple contract that limits her liability to the fee paid. She also carries errors and omissions insurance, which costs about thirty dollars a month for her policy. She recommends it to anyone doing this seriously. Luna: Good to know. So for listeners who are interested, what's the first step? Lucas: First, run a free WAVE audit on your own website or a friend's. Just get familiar with the reports. Then read the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — WCAG — especially the AA level. There are free summaries online. Then practice by fixing one issue on a site. That hands-on experience is what you'll talk about with potential clients. Luna: And after that, find a small business owner in your network and offer a free audit. That's how Priya got her start. Lucas: Exactly. One free audit leads to a testimonial, which leads to a paid audit, and then you've got a side hustle. It's a repeating pattern. Luna: I love that this is a side hustle with a social impact. You're literally making the web more accessible for millions of people. Lucas: Yeah, and the demand is only going up as regulations tighten. The European Accessibility Act comes into effect next year, and similar laws are being considered in several US states. This niche is going to keep growing. Luna: Alright, I'm actually going to check out that WAVE extension after this. Thanks for the deep dive. Lucas: Happy to. If you try it, let us know how it goes. That's it for this episode of The Side Hustle Podcast.