Accessible Login transforms the default WordPress login, lost-password, password-reset and registration screens into a fully accessible, mobile-friendly experience that conforms to
WCAG 2.2 Level AA out of the box — without sacrificing any of the visual customization power that site owners expect from a modern login plugin.
Live demo: Try the accessible login demo »
Why this plugin?
This plugin approaches login customization with accessibility as the starting point. Its defaults, palettes and customization options are designed around WCAG 2.2 AA requirements — colour combinations are checked for contrast, focus indicators are preserved, and target sizes are kept within recommended bounds — so that customizing the login screen does not come at the expense of accessibility.
Key features
- 10 hand-tuned, WCAG 2.2 AA compliant color palettes — pick one during the 1-minute setup wizard and apply it instantly. Or design your own; the plugin never forces a palette on you.
- Custom backend login URL with a real block (optional — off by default) — replace
/wp-login.php with a slug you choose (e.g. /my-secret-door). With blocking on, the old URL returns a generic 404 for every logged-out request — all HTTP methods including POST and all actions — so brute-force bots cannot even submit credentials there. Logged-out visits to /wp-admin also return 404 instead of a redirect that would reveal your hidden URL.
- Accessible branded login emails — the WordPress password-reset, welcome and password-changed emails become a small accessible HTML template: your logo with alt text, readable 16 px text, and the action link as a large high-contrast button plus a copy-paste address. Every colour is contrast-checked before sending; anything failing falls back to audited colours. On WooCommerce stores, one click applies the same accessible palette to the WooCommerce email settings.
- Save-time contrast enforcement — the same WCAG pairs the live checker shows are now enforced when you press Save: a colour change that would break a required pair is rejected with a precise explanation (which pair, measured ratio, required ratio) and the previous colours are kept. The plugin can no longer be saved into an inaccessible state.
- Logo upload + customization — your logo, your dimensions, your alt text, your link target (defaults to your homepage, never wordpress.org).
- Five layout styles — centered, minimal, split-left, split-right, full background image.
- Background customization — solid color, image upload, overlay opacity, or one of four CSS-only patterns (dots, grid, waves).
- Typography control — pick from system, Inter, Poppins, classic sans, serif or monospace; minimum 16 px enforced.
- Show / hide password toggle — satisfies WCAG 2.2 SC 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication.
- Caps-lock warning — announces to screen readers via aria-live.
- 3 px focus ring with 2 px offset — meets the new WCAG 2.2 SC 2.4.11/2.4.13 focus requirements.
- 44 × 44 default target size (24 × 24 enforced minimum) — meets WCAG 2.2 SC 2.5.8.
- Reflows cleanly at 320 px — no horizontal scrolling on the smallest phones.
- prefers-reduced-motion respected — animations disabled for users who request it.
- Windows High Contrast / forced-colors mode supported.
- Settings export / import — JSON-based, useful for migrating between sites.
- Structured layout controls — fine-tune corner radius, form width and padding, input height, button weight, focus-indicator width and a card-shadow toggle. Every value is bounded to a WCAG-safe range; the plugin does not accept arbitrary CSS, JavaScript or PHP.
- Real-time contrast checker — every important colour pair is checked live against WCAG (4.5:1 text, 7:1 AAA, 3:1 for borders and focus) as you pick colours, shown with a symbol and words, never colour alone.
- Cognitive accessibility boosters (WCAG 2.2 SC 3.3.7 / 3.3.8) — an optional "You are signed in" hold screen with an adjustable 1–5 second delay and a live region, plus a contextual "Need help signing in?" help drawer with your own guidance text.
- Accessible password strength meter — strength shown in words (Weak / Fair / Good / Strong) with friendly suggestions, never by colour alone.
- Accessibility health check — a dashboard widget scores your login screen out of 100, checking every contrast pair plus text size, target size, field height and focus-ring width.
- Front-end login block & shortcode — place the accessible form anywhere with
[accessible_login] or the "Accessible Login" block, carrying the same accessible styling and a signed-in state with logout.
- WooCommerce styling bridge (optional) — applies the same accessible colours, focus states and target sizes to the WooCommerce "My Account" login and registration forms.
- Reset to defaults with a single click.
- Semantic versioning + DB schema versioning — safe automatic migrations on upgrade.
- Translation-ready — all strings wrapped in
__() with the ananyoo-accessible-login text domain.
Accessibility testing
This plugin is tested with the same tools and standards used in commercial accessibility audits:
- JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver (macOS & iOS), TalkBack (Android)
- Keyboard-only navigation
- Color Contrast Analyzer
- Browser zoom up to 400 %
- Deque AXE
- Google Lighthouse
- wave.webaim.org
These tools and assistive technologies are part of the plugin's development and testing workflow.
About the author
Shivaji Mitra is the proprietor of M/S. Anblik (est. 2003) and an Accessibility Consultant based in Kolkata, India. He specializes in building websites and mobile applications that meet the needs of users with disabilities, in conformance with WCAG guidelines. Find more of his accessibility work at
https://ananyoo.com.
Links
1.2.3
- Valid HTML: the empty action="" attribute is removed from the two settings
screen forms. The W3C Nu checker reports action="" as an error, "Bad value
for attribute action on element form: Must be non-empty". A form with no
action attribute submits to the current URL, which is exactly what action=""
was doing, so saving settings behaves identically.
- No accessibility change. novalidate stays, so the plugin's own validation and
error messaging continue to handle WCAG 3.3.1 and 3.3.3; no label, ARIA,
landmark or focus behaviour is touched. WCAG 2.2 AA is unaffected.
- These forms are on wp-admin screens only, so this never affected the public
site. Fixed so the plugin's own markup is clean throughout.
1.2.2
Released: 2026-08-21
- Fixed — the "Block direct access to wp-login.php" switch no longer turns itself off. Since 1.0.0 the sanitizer reset this setting on every save that came from a tab without the switch on it — so saving the Colors, General or any other tab silently disabled the block again. This was the root cause of the block appearing "not to work". The setting now only changes when the Security tab itself is saved.
1.2.1
Released: 2026-08-21
- Readme: shortened the 1.2.0 upgrade notice to meet the wordpress.org 300-character limit (flagged by Plugin Check). No code changes; functionality is identical to 1.2.0.
1.2.0
Released: 2026-08-21
Security hardening, guaranteed colours everywhere, and accessible emails.
- Security fix — the wp-login.php block is now a real block. Previous versions only blocked plain GET requests and whitelisted several actions on the raw URL, which meant a POSTed brute-force attempt against
/wp-login.php still reached the WordPress authentication layer even with blocking on. With Block direct access enabled, every logged-out request to /wp-login.php — all HTTP methods, all actions — now receives a generic 404 before any credential processing can run. All legitimate flows (login, logout, lost password, reset links, post passwords, privacy confirmations) already travel through your custom slug, because the plugin rewrites every URL WordPress generates.
- Security fix — /wp-admin no longer reveals the hidden login URL. Previously a logged-out visit to
/wp-admin/ was redirected to your-custom-slug?redirect_to=…, printing the "secret" slug in the address bar for anyone to read. Those requests now return the same generic 404. admin-ajax.php and admin-post.php are exempt (they serve legitimate logged-out requests), and logged-in users are never affected. With blocking off, mirror mode is honest: both URLs work.
- The 404 is self-contained — a minimal, accessible, theme-independent page (proper lang attribute, heading, dark-mode aware) that renders identically on classic and block themes and carries no fingerprint that a login plugin intercepted the request.
- New — accessible branded login emails (WordPress core). The password-reset, new-user welcome and password-changed emails are now sent as a small accessible HTML template: your logo (from the Logo tab, or the Site Icon) with proper alt text,
lang attribute, 16 px left-aligned text, and the action link as a large high-contrast button that is underlined — plus the same address repeated as plain text for copy-paste. Colours come from your palette but are contrast-checked at send time; any pair below WCAG AA falls back to audited colours, so the email can never go out unreadable. Politely steps aside if another plugin already made the email HTML. Can be switched off on the General tab.
- New — one-click accessible WooCommerce emails. WooCommerce sends its own store emails with its own colour settings. On stores, the General tab now has "Apply palette to WooCommerce emails": it writes contrast-safe values into the WooCommerce email base, background and text colours and sets your logo as the email header image.
- Colour system — contrast is now enforced at save time. The live checker on the Colors tab was advisory; a colour that failed could still be saved. The same thirteen WCAG pairs (4.5:1 text, 3:1 UI) are now verified when you press Save — a change that would break a pair is rejected, the previous colours are kept for that pair, and the notice tells you exactly which pair failed, at what ratio, and what it needs.
- Colour system — the WooCommerce bridge now paints its own surface. The bridge previously set text and link colours against a form background it never painted, so a theme's own background could silently break the audited pairs. The My Account login, registration and lost/reset-password cards now get the palette's form background and primary text colour, secondary text and link-hover colours are exported, links inside the forms are underlined (never colour alone), and the button hover state re-asserts the button text colour so a theme hover rule can never bleed in.
- Fixed — default palette focus ring. Ananyoo Classic shipped
#facc15 (1.5:1 on white) as its focus ring; it is now #a16207 (4.9:1 on white, 4.5:1 on the page background), matching the audited defaults new installs already received.
- Compatibility: tested up to WordPress 7.1.
1.1.2
This is a large accessibility release. Six new features have been added, and all of them keep the login, registration and password screens conforming to WCAG 2.2 Level AA.
- New — Real-time contrast checker (Colors tab): As you pick colours or apply a palette, each colour is checked live against WCAG right next to its field, shown as a colour-coded pill — 4.5:1 for normal text (AA), 7:1 (AAA) and 3:1 for borders, focus and the focus ring. Each result shows a symbol and words together, never colour alone, names what it is checked against, and a polite spoken summary reports the overall tally. This helps you avoid a low-contrast palette before you save it.
- New — Cognitive accessibility boosters (WCAG 2.2, SC 3.3.7 and SC 3.3.8): An optional "You are signed in" hold screen shows a clear success message with a short, adjustable delay (1 to 5 seconds) before moving the user to their account. It uses a polite live region and a no-JavaScript meta-refresh fallback, with a "Continue now" link for people who do not want to wait. A second option adds a contextual help drawer on the login screen — a native disclosure ("Need help signing in?") with your own guidance text, so users get help without leaving the page.
- New — Accessible password strength meter: On the set-password and registration fields, users now see the strength in words — Weak, Fair, Good or Strong — along with short, friendly suggestions on how to make the password stronger. Strength is never shown by colour alone, so it works for colour-blind users and in high-contrast mode.
- New — Accessibility health check (Admin dashboard widget): A summary widget on the WordPress dashboard gives your login screen an accessibility score out of 100. It checks every colour pair for contrast and confirms your text size, target size, field height and focus-ring width meet the WCAG thresholds, listing anything that needs attention.
- New — Front-end login block and shortcode: You can now place the accessible login form anywhere on your site using the [accessible_login] shortcode or the "Accessible Login" block in the editor. The embedded form carries the same accessible colours, focus states and target sizes as the main login screen, and shows a signed-in state with a logout link when the user is already logged in.
- New — WooCommerce styling bridge (optional): When enabled, the plugin's accessible colours, focus states and target sizes are applied to the WooCommerce "My Account" login and registration forms, so shops get a consistent, accessible sign-in experience.
1.0.5
Released: 2026-06-23
- Admin: changed the sidebar menu icon from the generic accessibility glyph to a key (dashicons-admin-network), which better signals a login/registration plugin. Cosmetic admin-only change.
1.0.4
Released: 2026-06-23
- Admin: WordPress admin notices (e.g. the core "Search engine visibility" notice) now appear above the settings-page header band instead of inside it, by adding a wp-header-end marker. Settings-screen only; no front-end or functional changes.
1.0.3
Released: 2026-06-23
- Accessibility (WCAG 1.3.1 / region best practice): all login-screen content is now contained within landmarks. The tagline and footer text (printed after the form) are wrapped in a
contentinfo landmark, and WordPress's screen-reader "Log In" heading is moved into the
landmark. Resolves the AXE "All page content should be contained by landmarks" findings. No settings or visual changes.
1.0.2
Released: 2026-06-20
- Listing tidy-up: simplified the display name (removed "2.2" from the title), moved the Links section to the foot of the listing, added a Live demo link after the intro, and removed a duplicated author-credit paragraph. No functional or code changes; settings and behaviour are unchanged.
1.0.1
Released: 2026-06-19
- Display name updated to "Accessible Login – WCAG 2.2 AA Login & Registration" for clarity and discoverability. No functional or code changes; settings and behaviour are unchanged.
- readme links and documentation references refreshed.
1.0.0
Released: 2026-05-28
First public release.
- Full WCAG 2.2 Level AA experience across all four screens — login, lost-password, password-reset and registration — developed and tested with the Deque AXE engine, Google Lighthouse, and the JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver and TalkBack screen readers.
- Ten accessible colour palettes plus full per-colour control through the WordPress colour picker, each maintaining AA contrast.
- Optional custom backend login URL (off by default) with a reserved-word blocklist; when enabled it can return 404 on
/wp-login.php for unauthenticated visitors to block automated brute-force scanners.
- Logo upload with configurable dimensions, alt text and link target; ships with a neutral, locally-served default placeholder logo (no external requests).
- Five layout styles, background image / overlay / pattern controls, and typography control with a 16 px minimum.
- Accessible show/hide password toggle (SC 3.3.8), Caps Lock screen-reader warning, ARIA error announcements, a 3 px focus ring with 2 px offset (SC 2.4.11 / 2.4.13), and a configurable 44 x 44 px default target size (SC 2.5.8).
- Reflows cleanly at 320 px and at 200% / 400% zoom (SC 1.4.4 / 1.4.10); honours
prefers-reduced-motion and Windows forced-colors mode.
- Structured, WCAG-bounded layout controls (corner radius, form width and padding, input height, button weight, focus-indicator width, card-shadow toggle). The plugin does not accept arbitrary CSS, JavaScript or PHP.
- All dynamic CSS is delivered through the WordPress stylesheet enqueue system; no inline style or script blocks are printed into the login markup.
- Settings export / import via JSON, reset-to-defaults, a first-run setup wizard, and a user-controlled clean-uninstall option (multisite-aware).
- Independently audited against WCAG 2.2 AA and remediated; default settings are seeded from a bundled JSON file so a fresh install is accessibility-clean out of the box.
- Requires WordPress 5.9 or higher.
- Translation-ready with the
ananyoo-accessible-login text domain.