Make Your Website Accessible with Accessibility Checker
Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker helps you find and fix accessibility issues in WordPress. Scan posts and pages as you edit, review WCAG-based issues inside WordPress, apply automated fixes for common barriers, and generate an accessibility statement to support your compliance efforts.
Whether you're improving compliance with accessibility laws, working toward Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) conformance, or making your website easier for everyone to use, Accessibility Checker gives your team a practical workflow for ongoing accessibility testing and remediation.
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Why Make Your Website Accessible
Laws around the world, such as the European Accessibility Act (EAA), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Section 508, among others, require websites to be accessible and usable by people with disabilities. Accessibility may be required for your website to be legally compliant.
Accessibility fixes on websites often translate to better overall usability on the site and can improve search engine ranking and conversions.
Including Accessibility Checker on your website and fixing identified problems can help you to:
- Reduce legal risk.
- Improve SEO and increase reach.
- Increase sales and conversions.
- Reduce operational costs by allowing more people to self-serve on your website.
- Live your organizational values.
Real-Time WordPress Accessibility Scanning
Accessibility Checker scans your content each time you save or publish and shows accessibility problems directly in the WordPress editor. You can review issues without leaving the edit screen, or switch to a front-end view to see exactly which elements need attention.
Accessibility Checker runs over 40 automated checks based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 and provides documentation for every issue so content creators, site owners, and developers can fix problems faster.
Automated Accessibility Fixes
Need help resolving accessibility issues on your website? Accessibility Checker includes one-click fixes for common accessibility barriers in themes and plugins.
- Add skip links
- Add focus outlines
- Block links from opening new windows
- Force links to be underlined
- Label comment fields
- Label search fields
- Add missing
lang & dir attributes
- Make the viewport scalable
- Remove positive tab index to fix incorrect focus order
- Remove title attributes from elements with preferred accessible names
- Add warnings to links that open in new tabs
- Show error message for empty search submissions
- Add file size & type to links [Pro]
- Add missing page titles [Pro]
- Block PDF uploads [Pro]
- Label form fields [Pro]
Supports Accessibility Compliance Efforts
Laws and policies around the world require websites to be accessible. Accessibility Checker helps teams identify issues early, document progress, and support conformance work related to ADA, Section 508, AODA, EAA, WCAG, and more.
- Find problems faster.
- Learn accessibility as you go.
- Apply automated fixes for common barriers.
- Track changes over time. [Pro]
- Get personalized support and custom plans for more complex remediation needs. [Pro]
Accessibility Checker scans run on your server. This means there are
no URL-based scanning limits or API-usage fees. Get unlimited scanning of posts and pages without worrying about costs each time you scan.
Why Accessibility Checker
Accessibility Checker is designed to support both day-to-day publishing and broader accessibility initiatives.
- No limits on pages scanned. Scan as many posts and pages as your site contains.
- Built by accessibility professionals. Equalize Digital team members include certified accessibility professionals and experienced WordPress accessibility practitioners.
- WCAG 2.2 A, AA, and AAA guidance. Review issues against current WCAG success criteria.
- Readability analysis and simplified summary support. Check Flesch-Kincaid grade level and add a simplified summary for WCAG Success Criterion 3.1.5 Reading Level.
- Remove issues from reports. Dismiss items that have been manually reviewed and found not relevant or remediated, with notes, usernames, and timestamps.
- Accessibility statement generator. Draft an accessibility statement that you can customize and publish on your website.
- Footer accessibility statement. Insert an accessibility statement into your footer with one click.
- Detailed documentation. Use help articles and instructions for every issue to guide remediation.
- [Pro] Bulk scanning. Scan all posts and pages in bulk for a site-wide overview.
- [Pro] Scan additional post types. Extend in-editor accessibility checks to more content types.
- [Pro] Admin columns. View accessibility status at a glance in content lists.
- [Pro] Full-site reports. See existing issues in one place for faster remediation.
- [Pro] Dismissed Log. Review dismissed issues, who dismissed them, and when.
- [Pro] User restrictions on Dismiss. Limit which roles can dismiss issues.
Additional paid add-ons include:
- Audit History add-on: track and report on changes over time.
- CSV Export add-on: export issues to CSV for management in a spreadsheet or project management tool.
- Multisite add-on: see accessibility status and manage settings for all sites in your network.
How It Works
To get started with Accessibility Checker or learn more about how it works, see our
Getting Started Quick Guide or watch this video demonstration. Please note that the video includes some features available only in the paid version.
[youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncAfP06dPpU]
Support
The Equalize Digital team provides regular support for Accessibility Checker on the
WordPress.org forums. If you have a question about the plugin or its use, please post in the support forum and the team will do its best to respond quickly. Support hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM U.S. Central.
If you need one-on-one email support, please consider purchasing
Accessibility Checker Pro. Pro customers receive unlimited personal support on plugin usage and features.
Join our
WordPress Accessibility Facebook Group for community support and to connect with other developers, designers, and content creators working to make websites more accessible.
For paid Accessibility Checker customers on a small business plan or above, we provide two accessibility
office hours calls each month to answer remediation questions.
Compatibility
Accessibility Checker supports multiple WordPress editing and site-building workflows and has been tested with:
- Gutenberg Block Editor
- The Classic Editor
- Advanced Custom Fields
- Avada
- Beaver Builder
- Divi
- Elementor
- Oxygen
- WP Bakery
- [Pro] WooCommerce
Learn Accessibility
Want to learn more about accessibility and stay on-top of accessibility best practices? Attend an official WordPress Accessibility Meetup!
These free virtual meetups are held twice per month via Zoom and are live captioned.
Learn more about WP Accessibility Meetup
About Us
Equalize Digital is a mission-driven organization striving to create a world where all people have equal access to products and tools on web, regardless of ability. Our team has been building custom WordPress websites, themes, and plugins since 2010. We're the trusted accessibility auditing team for WordPress plugin developers and organizations worldwide, including government, higher education, nonprofit, and enterprise businesses.
Getting started with Accessibility Checker is simple.
Install Within WordPress
- In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New.
- Search for
Accessibility Checker.
- Click Install Now on Accessibility Checker.
- Activate the plugin from the Plugins page.
- Follow the after-activation steps below.
Installing Manually
- Download the current plugin zip from WordPress.org.
- Upload the unzipped
accessibility-checker folder to /wp-content/plugins/ using FTP or your hosting file manager.
- Activate Accessibility Checker from the Plugins page in WordPress.
- Follow the after-activation steps below.
After Activation
After activating the plugin, open the Accessibility Checker settings page in your WordPress admin at
/wp-admin/admin.php?page=accessibility_checker_settings to configure the plugin.
Current settings in the free plugin include:
- Control if you want scans to run on both pages and posts.
- Control when the plugin prompts for a simplified summary.
- Choose the position of the simplified summary above content, below content, or manually in a template.
- Add footer accessibility statement.
- Choose positioning for the front-end Accessibility Checker.
- Show or hide the Accessibility Checker metabox in the block editor.
- Enable 12 automated fixes for common accessibility problems.
How to Start Testing
After activating the plugin and configuring settings, you can see reports on posts or pages in three ways:
1. On the front-end view (as a logged-in user), click the Accessibility Checker button to open the report for that page.
2. In the block editor, open the Accessibility Checker sidebar panel or (if enabled) in a metabox below the content.
3. In the classic editor, view the Accessibility Checker metabox below the content.
Any time you save the post (save draft, publish, update), Accessibility Checker will re-scan your page and update the report to reflect changes. The block editor sidebar panel and front-end view also include a button to scan a post without requiring a save.
2026-03-17 - version 1.39.0
- New - CSS modifier classes to opt out of the New Window Warning icon and tooltip.
- New - Setting to hide the legacy metabox in the Block Editor.
- New - Fix to allow empty search results to display a meaningful message instead of a 404.
- Fix - Orphaned settings labels on the options page.
- Fix - Issue modal content clipped when affected code contains long URLs.
- Fix - Undefined help_id notice in help link generation.
- Updated - Welcome dashboard UI updated to bring it in line with other UI changes.
- Updated - Made more strings translatable - particularly those returned by ajax.
-
Enhanced - Missing transcript detection now searches 2 additional levels up.
2026-03-04 - version 1.38.0
-
New - Block Editor Sidebar with accessibility scan data, issues, and quick access panel for faster navigation.
- New - Dismissed issues now have assignable reasons for the dismissal.
- New - Dismiss reason and severity now visible on issues (in both sidebar and classic metabox).
- New - Ability to reopen issues that were dismissed with one click from the sidebar.
- Updated - Classic Editor metabox visual design to match sidebar styling.
- Updated - Terminology: "Errors" now "Problems".
- Updated - Terminology: "Warnings" now "Needs Review".
- Updated - Terminology: "Ignore" now "Dismiss".
- Updated - Terminology: "Passed Tests" now "Passed Checks".
- Updated - in the sidebar contrast errors are now included in the "Problems" sections.
- Enhanced - Using both color and shape now indicate state of found issues and readability.
- Fix - Make sure that summary needed is flagged for above 9th grade. Some instances it could flag for summary at 9th.
- Fix - prevent welcome modal on the first visit from overriding other events on the page load.
-
Fix - various type safety and existed checks in places to prevent edge case errors.
2026-01-23 - version 1.37.0
-
Fix - Duplicate markup on the page can now be properly identified as an issue.
- Fix - Restrict global ignore management link and fix button label span closure.
- Fix - Update database schema to use selector as unique identifier for issues.
- Enhanced - Frontend issue matching with stable selectors and DOM ordering.
- Enhanced - Better handling of frontend highlighter positioning.
- Improved - More accurate restoration of styles after deactivating them in frontend highlighter.
-
Improved - When closing frontend highlighter it won't re-render unless needed.
2025-12-15 - version 1.36.0
-
Fix - passed tests percentage logic now accounts times no posts are scanned
- Fix - don't prevent scan speed saving when pro plugin is enabled.
- Add - new trigger for invalid alt text - "an image".
- Add - allow role="menuitem" with aria-expanded in link validation checks
- New - visit welcome screen on plugin activation.
Older versions can be found in the plugins
changelog.txt.