Accessibility quick check

What this checks

This tool opens your homepage in a real browser, the way a visitor would, and runs the open source axe-core test suite against it. That suite tests against WCAG, the international guidelines for making web content usable by people with disabilities. Nothing on your site is changed, no form is submitted, and no mail is sent.

It looks for the things software can measure reliably. Text too faint to read comfortably. Images with no description, so a screen reader and a search engine both come away with nothing. Form fields with no label, which is what turns a contact form into a guessing game. Buttons and links with no readable name. Headings in an order that does not match the shape of the page. Controls too small to tap without hitting the wrong one.

The result is not the raw list. Every problem found is ranked by how serious it is and how much of your page it affects, and the five that matter most are translated into plain sentences, each with who it affects, roughly how many places on the page it appears, and whether the fix is small, medium or large. Everything else is counted so you know it is there.

What it cannot do is tell you your site is fine. An automated pass finds the measurable minority of real accessibility problems. The report says so, every time, and this page says it here too.

Questions people ask

What does accessibility actually mean for my business?

It means the people who want to buy from you can. Faint text, unlabelled forms and images with no description quietly turn away older customers, customers with weaker eyesight, and anyone using a phone in bright sun, and none of them ever tell you why they left.

Why does it only show five problems?

Because a list of ninety findings gets read once and closed. The five shown are ranked by how serious each problem is and how much of your page it affects, so fixing them in order does the most good first. The rest are counted so you know they are there.

If this check passes, is my site compliant?

No, and no automated tool can tell you that. Software can measure things like contrast and missing labels, which is a minority of what makes a site usable. Whether someone can actually finish a booking with a screen reader is found by a person trying it, not by a scan.

What are WCAG and AODA?

WCAG is the international set of guidelines for making web content usable by people with disabilities, and it is what this check tests against. AODA is Ontario's accessibility law, which requires many organisations operating in that province to meet a level of WCAG on their public websites.

Slow pages hurt the same visitors twice. Run the website health check.