Free tool

Free website accessibility checker for WCAG 2.1 AA

Scan up to 5 pages of your site in a real browser. Each finding names the rule it comes from and, where one applies, the WCAG criterion, and where we can, we propose the fix in your code. No signup, about 2 minutes.

Free · no signup · up to 5 pages · a confidence label on every finding · results deleted after 24 hours

We scan our own site with the same rules see our score

Example result

example.comScan complete

Composite

Good

HighContrast 3.1:1 on .btn-secondaryConfirmed

WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum), Level AA

Removed: -color: #8A93A8;Added: +color: #515A70;

Illustrative. Your results replace this panel.

The short answer

What does a website accessibility checker do?

A website accessibility checker is a tool that loads a web page and tests it against the WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria. It flags the failures a machine can detect, such as low text contrast, images without alt text, form fields without labels, controls without a name and broken heading structure. It cannot judge everything WCAG asks for, and it cannot certify that a site is compliant.

Scope

What this accessibility checker tests

This tool loads each page in a real headless browser, lets its JavaScript run, and then evaluates the page as a visitor would receive it, not just the raw HTML. Menus, content added by scripts and consent banners are tested in their rendered state. Our own rules map each finding to the WCAG criterion it relates to, give it a severity, and label how certain we are: Confirmed, Likely or Needs review. An axe-core cross-check then adds structural issues our own rules do not cover. The scanner applies 49 documented rules across six dimensions, and accessibility is one of them, which makes this a WCAG 2.1 AA checker that also tells you about security, privacy and deceptive design on the same pages.

Checks, criteria and how certain we are
Check	WCAG 2.1 criterion	Level	What we flag	Usually
Text contrast	1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)	AA	Text below 4.5:1 against its background (3:1 for large text), with a compliant colour suggested	Confirmed; Needs review for text over images
Image alt text	1.1.1 Non-text Content	A	Images with no alt attribute	Confirmed
Empty alt on an informative image	1.1.1 Non-text Content	A	A large image marked decorative that looks like it carries information	Likely, never Confirmed automatically
Form labels	1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value	A	Form fields with no label a screen reader can announce	Confirmed
Control names	4.1.2 Name, Role, Value	A	Buttons and button inputs with no accessible name	Confirmed
Heading order	1.3.1 Info and Relationships	A	Heading levels that skip a step, such as h1 to h3	Confirmed
Page language	3.1.1 Language of Page	A	No `lang` attribute on the page	Confirmed
Vague link text	2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context)	A	Links that say only "click here", "read more" or similar	Likely
Link names	Flagged by our axe-core cross-check, no criterion assigned	n/a	Links with no discernible name	Confirmed
Landmarks	Flagged by our axe-core cross-check, no criterion assigned	n/a	Content that sits outside any page landmark	Confirmed
Zoom blocked	Flagged by our axe-core cross-check, no criterion assigned	n/a	A viewport setting that stops visitors zooming	Confirmed
Accessibility statement link	Not a WCAG criterion	n/a	No link to an accessibility statement anywhere on the page	Confirmed

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Limits

What automated checkers can't catch, and what to test by hand

Automation finds a lot, but not everything. Deque, which makes the axe-core engine, reports that in its own audit data automated testing found 57.38% of total issues, across first audits of over 13,000 pages or page states and nearly 300,000 issues (Deque, Automated Accessibility Coverage Report). That is a vendor's study, and it counts issues by volume. Counted by WCAG success criteria instead, the share a tool can fully test is lower, because many criteria need a human to judge whether something makes sense, not just whether it exists. A checker can see that an image has alt text. Only a person can say whether the alt text describes the image.

These are the checks to do by hand, on your most important pages and journeys:

Keyboard only: complete your key flows (sign-up, checkout, contact) without a mouse.
Focus order: the focus indicator is always visible and moves in a logical order.
Screen reader: do a pass with NVDA and Firefox, or VoiceOver and Safari, and listen to whether headings, labels and buttons make sense.
Alt text quality: each description says what the image means in context.
Captions and transcripts: they exist and are accurate.
Error messages: form errors say what went wrong and how to fix it.
Reflow and zoom: the page works at a 320 pixel wide viewport and at 400% zoom.

A clean scan means no machine-detectable failures were found on the pages scanned. It is not a compliance certificate. For more on this, read why a Lighthouse score of 100 isn't compliance.

How it works

How to check your website's accessibility in 3 steps

Enter your URL. We scan up to 5 pages in a real browser, which takes about 2 minutes. No account is needed, and guest results are deleted after 24 hours.
Read the findings by severity. Each one names the rule it comes from and, where one applies, the WCAG criterion, and carries a Confirmed, Likely or Needs review label, so you know which findings are facts and which need a person to look.
Fix at the source, then scan again. Use the proposed code change where SURE offers one, hand the findings to your developer, or pass them to an AI coding assistant through our MCP server. Nothing is applied to your site automatically. When the fixes are live, run the scan again.

For an example of the full output, see a sample report.

Research

What we found when we scanned 304 agency websites

In 2026 we scanned the front pages of 304 web agencies, the businesses other organisations hire to build their sites. These are the accessibility findings that appeared most often.

Accessibility findings on 304 agency front pages
Finding	Share of 304 sites	WCAG criterion
Low text contrast	82%	1.4.3 (AA)
Link without a discernible name	39%	Flagged by our axe-core cross-check, no criterion assigned
Content outside landmarks	36%	Flagged by our axe-core cross-check, no criterion assigned
No link to an accessibility statement	29 to 30%	Not a WCAG criterion
Form field missing a label	20%	1.3.1, 4.1.2 (A)
Missing alt text	11%	1.1.1 (A)
Zoom blocked by the viewport setting	7%	Flagged by our axe-core cross-check, no criterion assigned

Professional web agencies fail contrast at roughly the same rate as the wider web: WebAIM's 2026 analysis of the top one million home pages found low-contrast text on 83.9% of them. Those are detected failures from a different tool and rule set, so the comparison is directional. The most common failures are also among the cheapest to fix at the source: one colour token in a stylesheet, or one label in a shared form. The same scan found security gaps too: no Content-Security-Policy header on 61% of the sites, and no HSTS header on 38%.

Shares are point estimates from one scan of each front page. Low text contrast: 95% confidence interval 77.5% to 86.1%. Intervals for every row and the method are in the paper.

Read the full 304-site benchmark

See where your site falls

Scan free

The law

Does an accessibility checker make my site ADA compliant?

No. No tool can certify that a site complies with the ADA. The Department of Justice's Title II rule names WCAG 2.1 AA as the standard for state and local government sites, and it is the benchmark most often used for private businesses too. An accessibility scan is the first layer of evidence about where you stand, not proof of compliance. Used as an ADA compliance checker, it tells you what to fix first.

Which rule applies to you
Who you are	Which rule applies	Where to read more
A state or local government	ADA Title II: WCAG 2.1 AA by 26 April 2027 if you serve 50,000 people or more, or by 26 April 2028 for smaller governments and special district governments	ADA Title II deadline: what changed
A private business open to the public	ADA Title III: no technical rule in regulation, but WCAG 2.1 AA is the usual benchmark	ADA website compliance checklist
A service provider selling to customers in the EU	European Accessibility Act, applying since 28 June 2025	Accessibility statements under the EAA

Our approach

Why we fix the code instead of adding an overlay

An accessibility overlay is a script that changes a page in the visitor's browser and leaves the source code as it was. In April 2025 the FTC finalised an order requiring an overlay vendor to pay $1 million and barring it from claiming its automated tools can make any website WCAG compliant without evidence. We take the other route. Every problem this checker finds is reported against your own code, with a source-level fix where we can propose one, and nothing is injected into your site at runtime. Read our position on overlays.

Plans

Free scan vs paid plans

The free guest scan is a full scan of up to 5 pages, across all six dimensions. Paid plans add more pages per scan, more sites, and documents you can hand to someone else. All six dimensions are included on every plan.

What each plan includes
	Free guest scan	Free account	Pro $29/mo	Business $79/mo	Agency $199/mo
Pages per scan	5	5	30	100	100
Sites	n/a (no account)	1	5	20	100
All six dimensions	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Saved results	Deleted after 24 hours	Saved history	Saved history	Saved history	Saved history
Re-scans	On demand	On demand	On demand	On demand	On demand
Accessibility statement, executive report, ACR draft	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
White-label PDF reports	No	No	No	No	Yes
REST API	No	10 requests an hour	100 requests an hour	500 requests an hour	2,000 requests an hour
MCP server	No	Included (fix guidance needs a paid plan)	Included	Included	Included

See plans

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is this website accessibility checker really free?

Yes. The guest scan checks up to 5 pages with no account and no card, and shows you the findings in about 2 minutes. Guest results are deleted after 24 hours. A free account keeps your scan history. Paid plans add more pages per scan, more sites, and documents such as an accessibility statement, an executive report and an ACR draft, with white-label PDFs on Agency.

Does it scan my whole site?

The free scan covers up to 5 pages, starting from the address you enter and following links from there. That is often enough to find problems in shared templates such as headers, footers and forms, which repeat on every page. Paid plans scan up to 30, 100 or 100 pages per scan, depending on the plan. See plans for the details.

Which WCAG version does it test?

It tests against WCAG 2.1 Level AA. That is the version the Department of Justice's ADA Title II rule adopted, and the version the European standard EN 301 549 v3.2.1 incorporates. WCAG 2.2 added further success criteria on top of 2.1, and none of our documented rules maps to one of those additions yet, so test them by hand if they apply to you.

Can it check pages behind a login?

No. The scanner reads public pages only, the ones any visitor can reach without signing in. If your key journeys sit behind a login, such as an account area or a checkout, test those pages by hand or with a browser extension that runs locally on your machine. Then use the scan for your public pages, which is usually where templates are shared.

How is this different from WAVE or Lighthouse?

WAVE and Lighthouse are excellent free tools that check one page at a time. This checker scans several pages in one go, in a real browser, and labels how certain each finding is. It proposes source-level fixes where it can, and the same scan covers security, privacy, deceptive design, technical quality and SEO. See Sitejar vs WAVE for a fuller comparison.

Will fixing everything it finds stop ADA lawsuits?

No tool can guarantee that. Fixing what the scan finds reduces your exposure and the barriers your visitors meet, but automated checks cover only part of WCAG. Add keyboard and screen reader testing, publish an accessibility statement, and keep scanning after each release. If you have received a demand letter, speak to a lawyer. Not legal advice.

Check another page, or your whole site

Need a statement too? Free accessibility statement generator

Built and maintained by Sitejar. Rule set maintained by founder Mohsen Vaziri. 49 documented rules, published on /transparency. Last reviewed 2026-10-27.