The challenge of mapping your full digital landscape.
Most organizations believe they know what they have online. The reality is different. When asked, a typical answer is "we have a website" or "we have two websites." Independent audits consistently reveal three, five, sometimes ten or more digital properties that the organization did not account for.
This is not a failure of diligence. It is a consequence of how digital content has expanded, particularly since 2020. The shift to remote services, online forms, virtual events, and digital communications created an explosion of digital properties that sit outside any central inventory.
The first step in managing accessibility risk is understanding what you actually have. Without that, compliance efforts are incomplete from the start, and exposure remains unmeasured.
"You cannot manage what you have not mapped. The digital landscape grew faster than anyone's inventory, and that gap is where risk lives."
Marketing campaigns, event registrations, and seasonal promotions that launched and were never decommissioned. They are still live, still indexed, and still your responsibility.
Booking systems, payment portals, job application pages, and CRM portals hosted by vendors but carrying your brand. If a visitor sees your name, it is your exposure.
Forms, reports, newsletters, policies, and handbooks uploaded over years. Often numbering in the hundreds or thousands, rarely accessible, and frequently the target of complaints.
Departments, teams, or locations that set up their own web presence independently. Different platforms, different vendors, no central oversight.
LMS systems, onboarding portals, and e-learning content that expanded rapidly during COVID. Often maintained by different teams with different standards.
Embedded videos, social media widgets, interactive maps, and third-party integrations on your pages that you do not control but are responsible for.
Between 2020 and 2022, organizations moved services online at speed. Forms went digital. Meetings became webinars. Documents were uploaded in bulk. The priority was continuity, not compliance. The result is a digital estate that grew faster than any inventory could track, and most of that content is still live.
"We thought we had two websites. The audit found seven, plus over 400 PDFs we had forgotten about."
If your compliance program covers your main website but not your parent portal, your job application system, or the 300 PDFs on your resource page, then your exposure is not managed. Complaints do not distinguish between your "main" site and a forgotten microsite. If it carries your name and is publicly accessible, it is in scope.
"Once you map everything that is online, you manage the risk. Until then, you are guessing."
An independent risk audit maps your digital landscape and identifies what you have, where the gaps are, and what to address first. It provides the factual baseline for any compliance program, and it removes the guesswork.
Learn more about our Risk Audit - understand your position before committing to any program.
