reala11y — Accessibility Checker & WCAG Scanner

No tool can. reala11y identifies common WCAG issues and remediates a defined subset at the code level. Full conformance requires manual review and user testing.

Yes — bring your own OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google Gemini key. The AI authoring features then work in this free version at no extra charge from us; your provider bills you directly for what you use. reala11y never resells or proxies AI usage.

Overlay widgets (e.g., accessiBe, UserWay) inject a floating JavaScript layer that does not modify the underlying HTML. Screen readers continue to see the original, unfixed page. The FTC fined accessiBe $1,000,000 on April 21, 2025 for claiming automated WCAG compliance. reala11y instead applies fixes to the actual HTML that browsers, screen readers, and crawlers see.

WCAG 2.2 AA. WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on October 5, 2023.

If you are looking for an accessiBe or UserWay alternative that fixes the underlying HTML instead of layering a JavaScript widget on top, reala11y is built for that. Overlay widgets leave the original page unchanged for screen readers; reala11y edits the actual code. As context, the FTC fined accessiBe $1,000,000 on April 21, 2025 over automated WCAG compliance claims.

Yes. The scanner flags images missing alt text (WCAG 1.1.1), and the bring-your-own-key AI tools can draft an alt-text suggestion using your own OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google Gemini key. Every suggestion is shown for your review and is never applied automatically.

Nothing changes without your say-so. Out of the box reala11y only scans: no fix is applied automatically, because the "auto-apply safe fixes" setting is off by default. When you do apply one, reala11y makes only Tier 1 ("safe") changes to your content — attribute-level edits that leave your text and markup structure alone. Examples: adding rel="noopener" to a link that opens in a new tab, removing a duplicate id, or stripping a redundant title attribute from an image. (Removing an image's title attribute also removes the tooltip some browsers show on hover. That is the intent: the tooltip usually repeated the alt text and was never available to keyboard or touch users.) The optional render-time fixes are deliberately different: a visible focus outline or a larger touch target is meant to change how the page looks. Each one is off until you switch it on. Every applied fix is logged, and one-click undo restores the exact content from before it ran. A single Safe Mode switch turns every fix off at once.

A visitor's page never waits for a scan. Scans are queued and carried out in the background by WP-Cron: the worker fetches the page over a separate request, much as a browser would, then analyses the HTML that came back. (As with all WP-Cron work on a standard install, that background request can be set off by site traffic, but it runs on its own and does not hold up the page your visitor sees.) The optional render-time fixes (skip link, visible focus outline, minimum target size, main landmark, restored pinch-zoom) stay off until you enable them individually. Once enabled they add a small amount of markup or CSS to the page, and no external requests.

reala11y scans the HTML your site actually sends to the browser, so it sees whatever your theme or page builder rendered, not just the raw post content. Render-time fixes apply to that same output.

Open the Fixes screen. Each applied fix is listed with a timestamp, and Undo restores the exact content from before it ran. If you would rather switch everything off at once without reverting each change, turn on Safe Mode.

Scanning and fixing happen entirely on your own server. The only outbound requests are the standard WordPress.org update check and — if, and only if, you add your own AI provider key and run an AI feature — the specific text or image you selected, sent to that provider under your own key. See "External services" above.

The free plugin can be activated on each site in a network and works per site. Managing many sites from the network admin — one roll-up dashboard, cross-site bulk scans, white-label reports — is the separate reala11y Pro add-on.

reala11y queues scans through WP-Cron, and the worker then fetches the page over an HTTP request back to your own site (a "loopback" request). If scans never leave "queued", the two usual causes are:

1. WP-Cron is turned off (DISABLE_WP_CRON is set to true in wp-config.php) and no real system cron job replaces it.
2. The server blocks loopback requests to itself, which some hosts and local development environments do by default.

The render-time fixes — skip link, focus outline, minimum target size, main landmark, restored pinch-zoom — are opt-in. Enable the ones you want on the Fixes screen, and check that Safe Mode is off, since Safe Mode disables every fix at once.

Because a single score would be misleading. Automated tools detect roughly 30–40% of WCAG failures by criteria; the rest need human judgement. reala11y shows what it found, what needs review, and what passed, so you can act on real issues rather than chase a number.