DSGN Accessibility Audit and Statement

DSGN Accessibility Audit and Statement is an honest accessibility tool by DSGN. It does three things, well:

1. Audits your site with a server-side analyzer and shows, in a clean dashboard, which WCAG 2.1 AA criteria are not met.
2. Gives visitors a panel with preferences the site genuinely honours: text size and spacing, link highlighting, high contrast, negative colours, pausing motion, reducing animations, disabling autoplay audio and video, read-aloud (browser speech), a visible keyboard focus and a bigger cursor.
3. Generates the Accessibility Statement and provides a feedback mechanism to report barriers — both required under the European Accessibility Act.

Available in English and Italian (full translation included). What this plugin does NOT do (by design) It is not an overlay. It does not alter your site to pretend it is accessible, and it never declares a conformance you do not have. Accessibility is achieved by building the site correctly: the tool helps you see what to fix and document the status, not hide it. Automated analysis only covers part of the WCAG criteria. The rest — focus order, keyboard navigation, alternative-text quality, reading order — require human review. The plugin says so clearly instead of masking it. The controls and the WCAG criteria they map to

• Text size — 1.4.4 Resize Text
• Text spacing — 1.4.12 Text Spacing
• Highlight links — 1.4.1 Use of Color
• Pause motion — 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide
• Reduce animations — prefers-reduced-motion
• Disable autoplay audio/video — 1.4.2 Audio Control

Scanning: server-side, runs anywhere The default static engine runs on the server: it fetches your pages and analyses the markup (alt text, form labels, link and button names, page language, document title, blocked zoom, empty headings, duplicate ids, untitled frames). No browser, no JavaScript execution — it works on any host, on demand or on a weekly schedule. Colour contrast (1.4.3) and JavaScript-rendered content cannot be evaluated from markup alone. The browser engine covers them: it runs axe-core in your own browser, on demand, when you press Run scan. Your browser is the rendering engine, so colour contrast and the post-JavaScript DOM are included. Nothing leaves your site. axe-core (MPL-2.0) is bundled and loaded only in the admin, only when the browser engine is selected. The on-site visitor panel is branded Threshold by DSGN — https://dsgngroup.it

0.7.5

• Listed on WordPress.org as "DSGN Accessibility Audit and Statement"; the on-site panel keeps the "Threshold by DSGN" name.
• Text domain aligned to the plugin slug.
• Removed the manual load_plugin_textdomain() call (WordPress.org loads translations automatically).
• Code-standards cleanups for the plugin directory review.

0.7.3

• Panel footer back to dark with the white logo and a bit more padding.
• Removed the divider under "Report a barrier".
• Custom black document icon for the Accessibility Statement link.

0.7.2

• Panel footer now uses the real DSGN logo (PNG), is lighter and links to dsgngroup.it.
• Admin credit links to dsgngroup.it.
• New setting to hide the DSGN credit from the panel footer (on by default; admin always keeps it).

0.7.1

• Fixed the brand mark not showing in the panel footer (now white on the dark footer).
• Removed the mark from the Accessibility Statement title (it was misaligned).

0.7.0

• Lighter, editorial admin design (no more dark background).
• Much fuller Accessibility Statement (EAA / EN 301 549 sections: non-accessible content, preparation, enforcement) with an optional known-limitations field.
• Brand mark is now an inline SVG everywhere (no raster image to break).
• Text spacing reworked as a reliable per-element stepper.
• Fixed the panel breaking when High contrast was toggled.
• New Negative colours preference.

0.6.0

• New visitor aids: read aloud (browser speech), keyboard focus highlight (2.4.7), bigger cursor.
• Redesigned dark admin interface.
• "Learn more" links now point to the official W3C WAI Understanding pages.
• Removed the external headless engine option (static or browser only).

0.5.0

• Actionable audit: each issue now explains what it is, why it matters, how to fix it, and shows the affected element with a code snippet and a "Learn more" link.
• Issues are grouped by rule across pages, with a severity summary.
• Browser-engine results are localised (Italian) via axe-core locales.
• The admin no longer loads external fonts either (system font stack everywhere).

0.4.0

• Text size now resizes text reliably even on px-based themes (Elementor etc.).
• Text spacing no longer affects icon fonts or the panel itself.
• New High contrast comfort preference.
• Browser engine now injects axe-core into the page being scanned (fixes empty/0% results); a page that cannot be read is reported as an error, never as "compliant".

0.3.1

• Front-end no longer loads external fonts (Google Fonts): the panel uses a system font stack. Zero external requests on the front-end, better privacy and performance.

0.3.0

• New browser engine: runs axe-core in the admin's browser to cover colour contrast (1.4.3) and JavaScript-rendered content, with no external service.
• Three scan engines selectable in Settings: static (server), browser, external headless.

0.2.0

• Server-side scanning: new static engine (no browser) plus an optional external headless engine. axe-core is no longer bundled.
• Weekly scheduled scan via WP-Cron.
• Full English and Italian translations.

0.1.0

• First version: front-end panel, accessibility scan, Accessibility Statement, feedback mechanism.