Lodestone Accessibility Audit - Accessibility Checker

Lodestone Accessibility Audit is an accessibility checker for the person who maintains the site. It scans a page and tells you what is wrong, which WCAG 2.2 success criterion it fails, which element is at fault, and how to fix it — then keeps the record of what you found, what you fixed, and what you decided to leave alone and why. It is a scanner and a reporter, not a widget bolted onto the front end for visitors. Scanning runs in your own browser using axe-core, the same open-source engine behind most professional accessibility tooling. Your pages and your results are never sent anywhere. No account, no API key, no scanning service, no setup wizard. Activate the plugin and scan a page immediately. This is not an accessibility overlay Overlay widgets promise to "fix" accessibility with a line of JavaScript that rewrites your page for visitors. They are rejected by the disability community, they have been the subject of lawsuits, and they do not work. This plugin adds nothing to your front end for visitors. It shows you what is broken so that you can fix it properly, in your content and your theme. Which standard, and which law WCAG is the standard the rules point at, so WCAG 2.2 is what this tests against:

• The European Accessibility Act reaches it through EN 301 549, the harmonised European standard, which incorporates WCAG.
• Section 508 incorporates WCAG 2.0 Level AA for US federal agencies and their suppliers.
• Under the ADA, the Department of Justice's 2024 rule adopted WCAG 2.1 Level AA for state and local government. For private businesses no rule names a version, and WCAG is the reference courts have generally worked from.

WCAG 2.2 contains everything in 2.0 and 2.1, so testing against it covers all three. What no automated tool can do — this one included — is tell you that you meet any of them. See the questions below. The accessibility statement Most of these regimes expect a published statement: what you tested, when, what you found, and what you have not fixed yet. The plugin generates one as a normal page you can edit, dated, and carrying a paragraph that says plainly which parts of the site were checked automatically and that automated testing does not cover everything. That paragraph is not configurable, because a statement that overstates what you know is worse than no statement. The free statement already carries the feedback route visitors are meant to have. Pro adds the rest of the EU model accessibility statement (Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1523): the non-compliance and disproportionate-burden sections, what is out of scope, how the assessment was made and on what date, and the enforcement body a visitor can escalate to. What the free version does, permanently

• Scan any post, page or custom post type on demand, from the row action in your lists or from the block editor sidebar.
• Re-scan automatically when you save a post in the block editor.
• Full detail on every issue: the axe rule, its impact level, the WCAG 2.2 success criterion it maps to, the CSS selector, the offending markup, and a link to the fix documentation.
• "Show on page": open any issue on the real page with the element outlined and the problem named beside it. Only you see it — it is signed for you and for that issue, and checked against your permission to edit that post.
• The checks axe-core cannot decide on its own, listed by name, with how many elements each one covers and a link to how to check it by hand — and a place to record that a person checked each one, and what they found, kept with their name and the date like an ignore.
• A dashboard across everything you have scanned: open issues, a breakdown by severity, and the worst offending pages.
• Ignore an individual issue, with a required written reason recorded against your name and the date.
• Generate a plain accessibility statement page.

There is no page limit, no scan quota, no trial period, and nothing that switches itself off later. If you never buy the Pro version, nothing you use today stops working. What Pro adds Pro is for people who have to prove the work was done: a full ignore log with author, date and reason, exportable; history and trend lines showing regressions; CSV and printable audit exports; and the rest of the EU model accessibility statement. It also adds a queue that scans every published post and page from one screen, weekly or monthly re-scan scheduling, a small set of genuinely safe server-side fixes (all off by default), WP-CLI commands for status, exports and starting a run, and a multisite network dashboard. Scans always run in a browser, because the checks need one — nothing scans unattended. One notice, and one menu The plugin shows exactly one dismissible admin notice, ever. It tells you where the plugin lives and retires itself the moment you open that screen. It registers one top-level menu and nothing else: every screen is a tab inside it. No banners, no countdown timers, no nags on other people's screens, no onboarding wizard, and nothing installed or suggested that you did not ask for. We ask you for exactly one thing, once. After the scanner has completed a few scans, a panel on the plugin's own scan screen asks whether you would rate it on WordPress.org. It is not an admin notice, it is only ever shown to editors and administrators, and whichever button you press — including "No thanks" — it never appears again. There is no activation step and no consent screen in your way. Licensing is handled by the Freemius SDK, which starts switched off: nothing is registered, and it sends nothing on its own unless you go and opt in, and everything works whether you ever do or not. Two things you do yourself do reach Freemius: opening the upgrade page loads its prices and checkout, and if you fill in the optional feedback form when deactivating, that answer is sent. Opening the upgrade page also adds a Freemius "Upgrade" item under the menu while you are on it.

1.0.13

• New: "reviewed, and why". Each check axe-core could not decide can now carry a person's ruling — what they found when they looked — kept with their name and the date, and carried to later scans of the same page. Free. Pro's ignore log lists every one beside the ignored issues.
• Fixed: the rule name in the list of checks that need a person fell below the WCAG AA contrast ratio (4.15:1). It is now 5.9:1 or better.
• Fixed: editors were offered the Pro tab and the Pro panel, whose button leads to a page only administrators can open. Both now appear only to people who can act on them.
• Fixed: an editor or author who dismissed the one admin notice saw it come back on the next page.
• Fixed: publishing the accessibility statement again could overwrite an unrelated post if the statement's own page had been deleted and its id reused. It now only ever updates its own page.
• Pro: CSV exports no longer write a cell a spreadsheet would run as a formula.
• Closing the "Show on page" panel keeps keyboard focus on the page rather than sending it back to the top, and the first-scan instructions for authors now say which posts carry the scan link.
• The listing now says exactly when the Freemius SDK contacts Freemius.

1.0.12

• New: a live preview on the WordPress.org listing. Try the plugin in your browser, with a sample page to scan, without installing anything.
• The FAQ now links a guide to what automated testing cannot catch, and how to check it by hand.

1.0.11

• Fixed: when "Show on page" moved its panel to the top of the window to keep it off the element, it covered the WordPress toolbar. It now sits below it.
• Changed: the dashboard's one panel about Pro no longer appears on your first visit, before the plugin has done anything for you. It appears once you have ruled out an issue with a reason or published an accessibility statement, and says what Pro does with the record you are keeping.
• The plugin now links its own page, madebylodestone.com/accessibility-audit, from the Plugins screen.

1.0.10

• New: "Show on page" beside every issue opens the page with the element outlined and the problem named in a panel beside it. Only a signed-in user who can edit that post can open it; nothing is loaded for visitors, and the page is never cached or indexed while it is shown.

1.0.9

• New: the checks axe-core could not decide automatically are listed by name under each scan, with how many elements each covers and a link to how to check it by hand. Until now the scan said only how many there were. Scans made before this update keep the count alone.
• New: every screen of the plugin ends with a link to its support forum.
• Fixed: the description of Pro promised more than Pro does. Its scan queue covers every published post, page and public content type — not taxonomy archives or any URL you name, which it never did. Its WP-CLI commands check status, export the ignore log and start a run; they do not scan, because the checks need a browser. And scheduled re-scans are worked through on the Scan queue screen, not anywhere in the dashboard. The Pro tab, the free dashboard panel and this listing now say exactly what Pro does.
• Fixed: the statement this plugin builds was described as following "the EN 301 549 model form". There is no such form. EN 301 549 is the standard a site is assessed against; the statement follows the EU model accessibility statement, Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1523, and is now named as such.
• Housekeeping: the Freemius SDK can no longer add a trial or affiliate-programme notice to the admin, whatever is switched on in its dashboard. The plugin's one-notice limit now holds against settings as well as against code.

1.0.8

• New: once the scanner has a few scans behind it, the scan screen asks whether you would rate the plugin on WordPress.org. It is asked once per site, only of editors and administrators, and answering it either way retires it permanently. It is not an admin notice and does not appear on any screen but this plugin's own.
• Fixed: the Pro tab listed the statement's feedback mechanism as a Pro feature. It is in the free statement and always has been. The tab now names only what Pro actually adds.
• Housekeeping: the internal version constant had fallen a release behind the plugin header, which meant an updated site could keep serving the previous release's stylesheet from cache.

1.0.7

• Fixed: the published accessibility statement repeated its own title. The page showed "Accessibility statement" twice, once as the page heading and once again at the top of the content.
• Fixed: a statement published before the first scan said "0 pages were tested". It now says plainly that no pages have been tested yet.
• The statement's section headings are now one level up, so they sit correctly under the page title rather than skipping a level.
• The listing now says which standards the plugin reports against and how they relate to the ADA, Section 508 and the European Accessibility Act, and describes the accessibility statement it generates.
• Corrected the description of what the free statement contains: the feedback route for visitors is free, not a Pro feature.

1.0.6

• The directory name now says what the plugin is: an accessibility checker. Nothing about how it works has changed.
• The Pro tab now states the 14-day money-back guarantee next to the prices, and a founding-customer code for the first 20 buyers.
• Pro's scheduled re-scans now bring the database up to date themselves after an automatic update, instead of waiting for someone to open the dashboard.

1.0.5

• Pro is now €149 / €399 / €999 a year for 1 / 5 / 25 sites, down from €199 / €499 / €1,299.
• The plugin now names Lodestone as its author.

1.0.4

• The published accessibility statement now reads "3 pages were tested" rather than "3 page(s) were tested". It is a document you put your own name to, and it should not look like nobody read it.
• The same fix in the Pro full-site scan queue and its WP-CLI commands, which counted pages the same way.

1.0.3

• Fixed: scanning did not work on sites using WordPress' default "plain" permalinks. The scanner built a REST URL that put its argument inside the route name, so every scan failed with a routing error. It now works whichever permalink structure you use.
• The plugin's own dashboard is now the first thing you see. Opting in to email updates is offered rather than required, and nothing is transmitted unless you choose it.
• The dashboard now keeps a "Scan another page" button once you have scanned something, instead of removing every control after the first scan.
• Prices are shown in euros per year on the upgrade page, matching the Pro tab, instead of being converted to a monthly figure in dollars.
• Authors and contributors are no longer shown the accessibility statement tab, which needs a capability they do not have, or the Pro pitch, which they cannot act on. They keep the dashboard and can scan their own drafts.
• Issues are now titled in plain English — "Images must have alternative text" rather than "image-alt". The axe rule id is still shown, and still linked to its documentation.
• Fixed: the dashboard's "nothing scanned yet" button sent Authors and Contributors to the Pages list, which they cannot open. It now points at the list their role can actually use.
• Fixed: the block editor sidebar reported "1 open issues".
• Fixed: "0 further checks could not be decided automatically" was printed after every clean scan.
• The ignore log, CSV export and printable report now name WCAG success criteria in full ("1.1.1 Non-text Content (A)") instead of printing axe's internal tags.
• The Pro description no longer lists a safe fix that the Safe fixes screen does not offer.
• Clearer wording throughout on what the optional Freemius opt-in prompt is and what it shares.

1.0.2

• Ignoring or reopening an accessibility issue now refuses by default. Rulings on issues whose scan is missing, or on a scanned URL that is not a post, previously fell through the per-post check; they now require the Editor capability, and an issue with no scan behind it can be ruled on by nobody.

1.0.1

• Site-wide figures, the ignore log, the history chart and the printable report now require the Editor capability. Authors and Contributors see the dashboard scoped to their own content instead of the whole site.
• The full-site scan REST endpoints now require the same administrator capability as the screen that drives them.
• Class and view loading is restricted to files inside the plugin directory.

1.0.0

• Initial release.