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ADA / WCAG checker
Accessibility is
risk you can measure.
The Grader finds the WCAG violations that drive ADA complaints — and explains each one as business risk, in plain language, with the fix that clears it.
Sample audit shown. Live axe-core scanning is rolling out. This is not legal advice.
ADA and WCAG, explained.
We test against WCAG 2.2 AA and report each finding by principle and success criterion — so remediation is unambiguous.
On this page
What ADA and WCAG actually are The business-risk picture What we check — the POUR categories How to fix it — in priority order Frequently asked questionsWhat is the ADA?
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a U.S. civil-rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. It is best known for physical access — ramps, doorways, parking — but for years it has been applied to the digital front door too: the websites and apps that businesses use to serve the public. The core idea is simple. If members of the public can use your site, people with disabilities should be able to use it as well.
The ADA itself does not spell out pixel-level technical rules for websites. In practice, courts, settlements and government guidance have repeatedly pointed to one external standard to define what "accessible" means on the web: WCAG.
What is WCAG 2.2 AA?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the international technical standard for accessible web content, published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WCAG 2.2 is the current version, and AA is the conformance level that most legal settlements, government policies and procurement contracts treat as the practical benchmark. (There are three levels — A is the minimum, AA is the common target, AAA is the most stringent.)
Everything in WCAG hangs off four plain principles, remembered as POUR: content must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust. Those four words are the backbone of what an accessibility audit checks — and we walk through each one below.
Who has to comply?
This is the question with the most nuance, and the honest answer is: it depends on your organization and where you operate. As a general guide — not legal advice — coverage has historically reached:
- Businesses open to the public (retail, hospitality, healthcare, professional services, e-commerce) — under the ADA in the United States.
- U.S. federal agencies and many state, education and government-contractor sites — under Section 508, which itself references WCAG.
- Organizations serving the EU and UK — under standards such as EN 301 549 and the European Accessibility Act, which also build on WCAG.
If your website helps customers find you, learn about you, buy from you or contact you, accessibility is very likely relevant to your business. Where it is legally required is a question for a qualified attorney — but where it creates risk and lost customers is a question we can measure today.
The fastest-rising source of web litigation.
Inaccessible sites draw ADA demand letters and lawsuits every week. We frame every finding as business risk, not jargon — what's exposed, how severe, and the exact fix. So you can act before it's a legal problem. (Not legal advice.)
Over the past decade, web accessibility has become one of the most active areas of civil-rights claims in the United States. Businesses of every size — not just large brands — have received demand letters and complaints alleging that their websites are not usable by people who rely on screen readers, keyboard navigation or sufficient color contrast. Many of these matters are resolved through settlements and remediation agreements rather than trials, which is part of why they recur so often.
The pattern is consistent: the barriers most frequently cited are the same handful of machine-detectable WCAG failures — missing image descriptions, text that is too low-contrast to read, forms that screen readers can't interpret, and interfaces that can't be operated with a keyboard. These are precisely the issues an automated audit is good at finding. The upside is real, too: an accessible site reaches more customers, ranks and converts better, and removes friction for everyone — not only people with disabilities.
Important
This assessment does not constitute legal advice. We surface accessibility risk against the WCAG 2.2 AA standard and explain it in plain language. For your specific legal obligations, consult a qualified attorney.
Four principles. Every check mapped to WCAG.
Every WCAG success criterion lives under one of four principles. Here's what each means in everyday terms — and the common violations we look for under it.
Perceivable
Text alternatives, contrast, captions — information must be presentable to every sense. People can see it, hear it, or read it with a screen reader.
Operable
Keyboard access, focus order, targets, timing — every control works by keyboard alone, not just a mouse.
Understandable
Clear labels, predictable navigation, helpful error messages — content and controls that make sense.
Robust
Valid markup, name/role/value, ARIA — content assistive tech can parse reliably, across browsers and after the next update.
The four issues below — missing alt text, low contrast, keyboard traps and unlabeled forms — are among the most frequently cited in ADA web-accessibility complaints, and among the most reliably caught by automated testing. They are the first things our checker looks for.
Missing alt text
Images with no description, so screen-reader users hear nothing where the picture should be. WCAG 1.1.1
Low color contrast
Text too faint against its background for low-vision users to read comfortably. WCAG 1.4.3
Keyboard traps
Focus gets stuck in a control and a keyboard-only user can't move on. WCAG 2.1.2
Unlabeled form fields
Inputs with no programmatic label, so assistive tech can't say what to type. WCAG 3.3.2
How accessibility results are labeled: Measured automated checks (axe-core — live scan rolling out) · Estimated expert judgment where automation cannot decide.
Prioritized — biggest risk first.
Accessibility work pays off fastest when you fix the high-risk, high-frequency issues before the edge cases. That's how we order a remediation plan — most exposure and most affected users first, lowest-effort wins surfaced early:
- Add meaningful alt text to images. Describe what each informative image conveys; mark purely decorative images so screen readers skip them. Low effort, high impact, and one of the most-cited gaps.
- Fix color contrast. Bring body text and interactive elements up to the WCAG 2.2 AA contrast ratios so low-vision users can read them. Often a small palette adjustment.
- Label every form field. Give each input a programmatic label and clear, specific error messages. Critical for any contact, checkout or sign-up flow.
- Make everything keyboard-operable. Ensure all controls are reachable and usable by keyboard, focus order is logical, the focus indicator is visible, and nothing traps focus.
- Clean up structure and ARIA. Use correct headings, landmarks and valid, minimal ARIA so assistive technology interprets your pages reliably across browsers.
- Test with real assistive technology. Automated checks catch a lot, but finish the job with manual review and testing alongside people who use screen readers and keyboards. This is the part no tool can replace.
Each finding in your report is mapped to its WCAG 2.2 success criterion and labeled by confidence, so your developer knows exactly what to change — and you know exactly what it buys you. Run the checker to see your own list, or browse a sample report first.
We surface the risk. We don't sell certainty.
A green badge that promises "ADA compliant" is marketing, not a measurement. We give you something more useful: a clear, prioritized view of the accessibility barriers on your site, mapped to WCAG 2.2 AA — and a straight answer about the limits of any automated test.
Accessibility, answered.
What is WCAG?
WCAG — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — is the international standard for making web content usable by people with disabilities. It's organized around four principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) and three conformance levels: A, AA and AAA. WCAG 2.2 AA is the level most courts, settlements and procurement policies treat as the practical benchmark for the web.
Is my site legally required to be accessible?
It may be. In the United States, the ADA has historically been applied to the websites of businesses that serve the public, and U.S. government and many state and contractor sites are covered by Section 508. Comparable laws exist elsewhere, such as the EU's EN 301 549 and the European Accessibility Act. Whether a specific site is covered depends on your organization and jurisdiction. This is general information, not legal advice — confirm your obligations with a qualified attorney.
What does an accessibility audit cost me in risk?
An audit is a risk-reduction step, not a risk in itself. It surfaces the accessibility barriers on your site so you can decide what to fix and in what order. The barriers it finds — missing alt text, low contrast, keyboard traps, unlabeled forms — are the kinds of issues historically associated with ADA web-accessibility demand letters and complaints. Knowing about them, and prioritizing them, is how you reduce exposure. We surface risk; we don't provide legal advice or guarantee any legal outcome.
Can you guarantee my site is compliant?
No. No tool or vendor can guarantee legal compliance, and anyone who promises it should be treated with caution. ADA web-accessibility expectations are shaped by statute, regulation and evolving case law, and real conformance also depends on testing with assistive technology and people with disabilities. What we do is measure your site against WCAG 2.2 AA, surface the violations that carry the most risk, and prioritize the fixes — we surface risk, not legal advice. This assessment does not constitute legal advice.
How do you test for accessibility?
Our target engine runs the open-source axe-core rules engine against your live pages to detect machine-checkable WCAG failures, then maps each finding to its WCAG 2.2 success criterion and POUR category and labels it by confidence. Automated testing reliably catches a meaningful share of issues — missing alt text, contrast failures, unlabeled fields — but it cannot catch everything. Judgment-based criteria still require manual review and testing with assistive technology, which we flag rather than score.
What is axe-core?
axe-core is a widely used open-source accessibility rules engine, maintained by Deque Systems, that programmatically tests web pages against WCAG success criteria. It's engineered to report only high-confidence violations to keep false positives low, which makes it a trustworthy automated layer in an audit. We use it as the measured backbone of our accessibility checks and combine it with manual review for the criteria automation cannot judge.