How should a business prioritize which compliance issues to fix first?

Fix what's cheap and highly visible first — consent-gating for tracking scripts, color contrast, and missing alt text. Then address issues by visitor exposure, tackling anything affecting checkout or core navigation before internal documentation gaps like missing DPAs.

How often should a website be scanned for compliance issues?

Regularly, not just once. Routine changes — a new tracking tag, an added chatbot, an unlabelled image — reintroduce issues on sites that were previously compliant, which is why continuous or periodic monitoring catches more than a single one-time scan.

Do compliance requirements differ between EU member states?

GDPR and the AI Act are EU regulations that apply directly and consistently across member states, though enforcement authorities and practical enforcement intensity vary by country. The EAA is a directive, transposed into each member state's national law, so some procedural and enforcement details can differ even though the substantive accessibility requirements are harmonized.

Can one platform check GDPR, AI Act, and accessibility issues at the same time?

Yes for GDPR and accessibility, which are checked from the same rendered-page scan. The AI Act module is a separate self-assessment questionnaire, since most of what it evaluates — governance, disclosures, internal policy — isn't visible in a page's rendered HTML.

Cross-Module Checklist

Website Compliance Checklist: The Most Common Issues Across GDPR, AI Act, and Accessibility

The same handful of mistakes show up on most sites, across all three domains.

Quick answer

Across GDPR, the EU AI Act, and accessibility (WCAG), the most common website compliance issues are: tracking scripts firing before consent and an incomplete privacy policy (GDPR); an undisclosed AI chatbot or unlabeled AI-generated content (AI Act); and low color contrast, missing alt text, and unlabelled form fields (accessibility). Most of these are checkable directly from a rendered page, which is why they show up repeatedly across unrelated sites — they're implementation mistakes, not edge cases. Fix consent-gating and contrast/alt text first: they're the fastest to fix and the most visible to both regulators and visitors.

By GetGDPRScan Editorial · Last updated 2026-07-24

Reviewing GDPR, AI Act, and accessibility issues separately hides how often the same root causes show up across all three: a third-party script added without checking what it does before consent, a chatbot added without a disclosure line, an image uploaded without an alt attribute.

This checklist groups the issues by module, then gives a practical order to fix them in. It's not exhaustive — see What Automated Compliance Scanners Can (and Can't) Detect for what a scan can't catch.

GDPR: the most common issues

These are almost all about what fires before consent and what's disclosed afterward — see GDPR Compliance for Websites for the full picture.

•Analytics or advertising scripts (Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, ad tags) firing before a visitor consents
•A cookie banner with only an "Accept" option and no equally easy way to reject
•A missing, outdated, or incomplete privacy policy (no disclosure of what's collected, why, or for how long)
•No Data Processing Agreement on file with third-party vendors (analytics, email, live chat)
•No stated data retention period for collected personal data

EU AI Act: the most common issues

Most sites using AI aren't building it — they're deploying someone else's tool without adding the disclosure the law expects. See EU AI Act Explained for Website Owners for the full picture.

•An AI chatbot with no disclosure that visitors are talking to AI, not a person
•AI-generated text, images, or video published without any label indicating it's AI-generated
•No internal inventory of which AI tools the business actually uses
•No written AI usage policy or designated contact for AI-related questions

Accessibility (WCAG): the most common issues

These are the most mechanically checkable issues of the three domains, which is exactly why they're so common — they're easy to introduce and easy to miss without specifically testing for them. See European Accessibility Act & WCAG for the full picture.

•Text-to-background color contrast below the 4.5:1 (normal text) or 3:1 (large text) WCAG 2.1 AA thresholds
•Images missing alt text, or with unhelpful alt text like "image1.jpg"
•Form fields with no associated label, making them unusable with a screen reader
•Heading structure that skips levels (e.g. an H1 followed directly by an H4) or has no headings at all
•Interactive elements (menus, custom buttons) that can't be operated by keyboard alone

How should a business prioritize which issues to fix first?

Start with whatever is both cheap to fix and highly visible: tracking-before-consent (usually a consent-manager configuration change, not a rebuild), color contrast, and missing alt text. These three account for a large share of findings on a typical scan and can often be fixed in hours, not weeks.

After that, prioritize by exposure: a customer-facing AI chatbot without disclosure or a checkout flow with an inaccessible form field affects every visitor, whereas a documentation gap (like a missing DPA) is real risk but doesn't affect the live user experience the same way. Fix what visitors and regulators can both see first; handle the internal documentation and governance work in parallel.

How GetGDPRScan checks this: GetGDPRScan's GDPR and accessibility modules check these page-level issues directly from a rendered snapshot of the site; the AI Act module is a separate self-assessment questionnaire, since AI governance depends on internal practices a page render can't show — see How Website Compliance Scanning Actually Works.

How often should a website be scanned for these issues?

Sites change more often than most owners track — a new analytics tag, a redesigned form, a new chatbot widget added by a marketing tool, an image uploaded without alt text. A one-time scan only reflects the site as it existed on that day. Continuous or periodic monitoring catches regressions introduced by routine changes, which is usually how compliance issues reappear on sites that were previously checked and fixed.

Key takeaways

•The most common issues across all three domains are implementation mistakes, not edge cases — they repeat across unrelated sites.
•Fix consent-gating, color contrast, and missing alt text first: cheap, fast, and highly visible to both regulators and visitors.
•Routine site changes (new scripts, new widgets, new images) reintroduce fixed issues, which is why one-time scans understate real risk.
•GDPR and accessibility issues are checkable from a rendered page; AI Act compliance depends more on internal governance and needs a separate self-assessment.

FAQ

What Is a Website Compliance Platform?

The category this checklist spans: one platform, three live modules.

GDPR Compliance for Websites: The Complete Guide

The full GDPR picture behind the checklist items above.

EU AI Act Explained for Website Owners

The full AI Act picture behind the checklist items above.

European Accessibility Act & WCAG: Who Must Comply and By When

The full accessibility picture behind the checklist items above.

Sources