Accesswell

Accesswell checks your pages for common accessibility problems the way visitors see them: on the real page, with your theme, menus and widgets. It points at each problem, explains it in plain words with the WCAG rule it relates to, and helps fix the most common one, missing image descriptions, in bulk.

Accesswell is a checker for site owners and editors. It does not add an “accessibility overlay” or widget for visitors, and it does not change how the site looks.

Three places to check

• On any page: an “Accessibility” item in the admin bar opens a panel listing the problems on that page. “Show on page” scrolls to the element and highlights it. Each problem has a “How to fix” note and a link to the WCAG explanation.

• The whole site: “Scan the site” visits your pages one by one and builds a report by page and by problem, with a CSV download.

• While writing: an Accessibility panel in the block editor checks the content as you type and again before publishing, with a button that selects the block concerned.

What it checks

• Images without alternative text, and alternative text that is only a file name

• Links and buttons with no text, and link text such as “click here” or “read more”

• Form fields without labels (placeholder text alone is not a label)

• Text contrast below 4.5:1 (3:1 for large text), measured on the page; text over images is flagged for a person to check

• Empty headings, skipped heading levels and a missing main heading

• Tables without header cells, list items outside lists, frames without titles

• Page language, page title, zoom blocked by the viewport tag, a main landmark and a skip link

• Media that plays sound by itself, positive tabindex, focusable elements hidden from screen readers, duplicate ids used by labels and ARIA, and SVG images without a text alternative

Each problem is marked as an error (fails the WCAG rule), a warning (very likely a problem) or a notice (worth a look). Problems that turn out to be fine after checking can be marked as reviewed on one page or on every page, and are then left out of the counts.

Automatic checks find many problems but not all of them. Keyboard use, focus order and what a screen reader says still need a check by a person.

Fix missing alt text

• Alt text: every Media Library image without alternative text on one screen, to fill in many at once.

• Images in content: WordPress copies an image’s alternative text into a post only when the image is inserted, so text added to the Media Library later never reaches existing posts. Accesswell lists those images and copies the text in, one post at a time or all at once. Each change is saved as a revision.

WP-CLI

• wp accesswell report and wp accesswell problems

• wp accesswell images <library|content> [--fix]

Privacy

Accesswell makes no requests to other sites and sends no data anywhere. The checks run in your own browser, on your own site, and only for signed-in editors. Visitors never load any of it.