Accessibility Audit: A Practical WordPress Plugin for Finding WCAG Issues Before Your Visitors Do

Web accessibility is no longer something website owners can afford to treat as an optional enhancement. An inaccessible website can prevent people from reading content, completing a purchase, submitting a form, or even understanding what a button is supposed to do.

At the same time, regulations such as the European Accessibility Act have made digital accessibility increasingly relevant for businesses operating in the European market. The European Accessibility Act entered into application on June 28, 2025, introducing common accessibility requirements for several products and services, including e-commerce and other digital services offered to consumers.

For WordPress website owners, however, knowing that accessibility matters is only the first step. The real challenge is identifying what is wrong and understanding what needs to be fixed. This is where Accessibility Audit - WCAG & EAA Compliance Checker becomes particularly useful.

A WordPress Accessibility Scanner That Works Inside WordPress

Accessibility Audit is a WordPress plugin designed to scan published pages and posts for common accessibility issues based on WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA criteria. Instead of forcing users to copy URLs into an external service, the plugin runs directly from the WordPress administration area. It scans the finished, rendered version of each page inside the browser and produces a structured report showing the problems that were found.

This distinction matters. Many accessibility tools analyse the raw HTML returned by the server. Accessibility Audit examines the rendered page, allowing it to evaluate visual characteristics that depend on CSS, including inherited colours, CSS variables and translucent overlays. As a result, the plugin can perform more realistic colour-contrast checks based on what visitors actually see rather than relying exclusively on the source code.

Privacy-Friendly by Design

One of the plugin’s strongest features is its local scanning approach. The content of the website is not sent to an external accessibility platform. The scan takes place inside the administrator’s browser, and the results remain within WordPress.

This means website owners do not need:

• an external API key;
• a separate accessibility-scanning account;
• a data-processing agreement for another cloud service;
• usage credits or per-scan payments.

The plugin also does not add an accessibility widget, toolbar or additional script to the public-facing website. It is an auditing tool for administrators rather than a visual overlay presented to visitors. For organisations handling private, unpublished or commercially sensitive content, this architecture is an important advantage.

What Accessibility Audit Checks

Accessibility Audit performs up to 25 automated checks covering a selection of WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA requirements. The plugin can identify problems such as:

• images without alternative text;
• links and buttons without accessible names;
• form fields without labels;
• insufficient colour contrast;
• skipped heading levels;
• duplicate HTML IDs;
• tables without header cells;
• positive tabindex values;
• frames without titles;
• missing page-language information;
• incorrectly structured lists;
• missing main landmarks;
• touch targets that may be too small;
• missing autocomplete attributes on personal-data fields.

These checks cover several frequently encountered accessibility barriers, including issues connected to content structure, navigation, forms, contrast and assistive-technology compatibility. The plugin does not simply produce a generic score. It explains which rule was violated, identifies the related WCAG criterion and indicates how widely the problem appears across the website. That makes the report considerably more useful than a dashboard displaying an unexplained percentage.

Reports Organised Around Fixes, Not Fear

Accessibility reports can easily become overwhelming. A scanner may report the same design problem dozens of times because it appears on multiple pages. A theme colour with insufficient contrast, for example, might be counted separately on every page where that colour is used.

Accessibility Audit groups findings by rule rather than presenting every occurrence as an unrelated problem. Instead of seeing twelve separate warnings, a user might see that one issue has twelve occurrences across three pages. This makes it easier to recognise that a single change to a global colour, template or reusable component could resolve several findings at once.

Each group includes information about:

• the impact of the issue;
• the relevant WCAG success criterion;
• the number of occurrences;
• the pages affected;
• the elements responsible for the problem.

Where possible, findings can also link directly to the relevant WordPress editor or Media Library item. This is one of the clearest advantages of running an accessibility scanner within WordPress: the report is closely connected to the environment in which the problem will actually be corrected.

Comparing Scans Makes Accessibility Measurable

Accessibility work is rarely completed in a single session. A website owner may fix missing alternative text, adjust a theme colour, update a form and then run another scan to verify the results. Accessibility Audit supports comparisons between scans, making it possible to see which problems have been resolved and whether new issues have appeared.

This transforms the plugin from a one-time diagnostic tool into a practical maintenance workflow. It can also be useful for agencies and development teams that need to document progress while improving an existing website. Rather than relying on memory or screenshots from different tools, they can compare scan results directly within WordPress.

A Useful European Accessibility Act Statement Generator

The licensed edition includes a generator for creating an accessibility statement connected to the European Accessibility Act. The generator uses the latest scan to prefill identified barriers and the related accessibility criteria. The resulting statement can then be published as a normal WordPress page and linked from the website footer.

This does not replace legal advice or a complete accessibility assessment. It does, however, reduce the practical work involved in preparing and maintaining a transparent accessibility statement. For small businesses and website administrators who are unfamiliar with accessibility documentation, having the technical findings translated into a structured starting point can be extremely valuable.

A Surprisingly Capable Free Version

Accessibility Audit offers a free mode that is genuinely functional rather than being limited to a demonstration screen. Without purchasing a licence, users can:

• run 20 accessibility checks;
• scan up to five pages at a time;
• access complete reports;
• compare scans;
• retain the three most recent scans.

The paid licence removes the five-page restriction, enables five additional WCAG checks, provides unlimited scan history and unlocks the EAA accessibility-statement generator. There is also no separate premium plugin to install. The same download is used for both versions, and entering a purchase code unlocks the additional features. This provides a sensible upgrade path: users can test the core scanning experience on a real website before deciding whether the expanded functionality is necessary.

Honest About the Limits of Automation

One of the most reassuring aspects of Accessibility Audit is that it does not claim to make a website fully compliant with a single click. Automated tools can detect many technical problems, but they cannot determine complete WCAG conformance on their own. W3C guidance makes clear that accessibility evaluation requires a combination of automated testing and human assessment.

For example, software may detect that an image has alternative text, but it cannot always determine whether that description is meaningful in context. Similarly, keyboard navigation and screen-reader usability need to be evaluated by a person. Accessibility Audit explicitly acknowledges these limitations. Its report should therefore be treated as a strong technical starting point rather than a substitute for manual testing, assistive-technology testing or professional legal advice. That honesty makes the plugin more trustworthy, not less useful