Accessibility Statement3 November. Fifty-eight days to 31 December 2026 — and the question almost nobody asks before signing is about the year after that.
890 CAD the first year. 712 every year after. Most suppliers quote the first number and go quiet on the second, which is a reasonable sales tactic and a terrible basis for a budget.
Three situations. One of them is yours.
A) You are comparing quotes and the renewal price is either missing or written in a footnote.
B) You bought an accessibility audit last year, it expired quietly, and nobody noticed.
C) You are wondering why anything should cost money in year two at all, since the site is already tested.
C is the fair question, so here is the answer.
Year two is not a copy of year one. What it actually buys:
A fresh manual test, because the site changed. It always changes. A new checkout step, a redesigned contact form, a plugin update that strips a label.
Monthly retests — twelve dates, not one. The record states what was true on a date; twelve dates is a different claim from one.
The feedback log kept and exportable for five years. That log is the evidence the process exists, and five years is the retention the regulation expects.
Documents updated if the law moved. Between now and your next filing, something will shift. Either someone tracks it or nobody does.
And if you stop paying, the record lapses and nothing is hidden. The badge turns red and the public register says when it expired. That is deliberate. A system where a lapsed record silently keeps looking valid would be worthless to the inspector, the customer and the buyer doing their diligence — and it would make the green badge meaningless for everyone who did keep paying.
One case where you pay less, and we say it before you ask: if you already filed in 2023 with someone else, you start at 712, not 890. Same if you hold a WCAG audit under twelve months old. Bring the old file and the first year is priced as a renewal.
Write A, B or C in the comments. I read each one and reply personally with whether a renewal makes sense for your site or whether a single test would genuinely be enough.
Then send this to whoever handles the renewals calendar. They are the person who will find out the hard way otherwise.
