What We Test

What it does

Axe DevTools runs the full axe-core engine (~96 rules) inside the browser against the live DOM. It catches violations like missing alt text, invalid ARIA attributes, poor color contrast, broken form labels, and more. Every issue it reports is a real, confirmed violation, no guesswork.

Results are grouped by impact level (critical, serious, moderate, minor) and linked to the specific HTML elements that fail, along with fix suggestions and WCAG success criteria references.

What it does

WAVE categorises every accessibility finding into errors, alerts, contrast issues, structural elements, features, and ARIA usage. It's especially useful for spotting missing alt text, empty links, empty buttons, and structural problems that other tools may overlook.

When a WAVE API key is configured, results come from the official WAVE API. Otherwise, a local fallback analysis runs directly in the browser.

What it does

Lighthouse is Google's open-source auditing tool built into Chrome. It runs a subset of axe rules (~57) and produces a single accessibility score out of 100. It also scores your page for performance, best practices, and SEO, giving you a holistic quality picture alongside accessibility.

Its audit results are categorised into violations, passes, not-applicable, and manual checks that require human review (e.g. logical tab order, focus management).

What it does

Many users don't use a mouse. They rely on keyboard (Tab, Enter, Space, Arrow keys) to navigate. This scanner checks every interactive element (buttons, links, inputs, custom widgets) to ensure they're reachable via Tab, have visible focus indicators, and don't create keyboard traps.

It flags elements with tabindex issues, missing focus styles, interactive elements that aren't natively focusable, and potential focus traps that could lock keyboard users.

What it does

Screen reader users navigate by headings. A proper <h1> → <h2> → <h3> hierarchy acts as a table of contents. This scanner checks for skipped levels (e.g. jumping from h2 to h4), missing h1 elements, multiple h1s, and empty headings.

A correct heading structure also helps search engines understand your page content, so fixing these issues benefits both accessibility and SEO.

What it does

Links that say "click here" or "read more" make no sense out of context, and screen reader users often navigate by listing all links on a page. This scanner checks for empty links, generic link text, missing accessible names, links that open in new windows without warning, and duplicate link text pointing to different URLs.

What it does

Forms are one of the most common accessibility failure points. This scanner checks every <input>, <select>, and <textarea> for associated labels, proper <fieldset>/<legend> grouping for related controls, autocomplete attributes for personal data fields, and required field indicators.

What it does

Images without alt text are invisible to screen readers. Videos without captions exclude deaf and hard-of-hearing users. This scanner audits all <img>, <video>, and <audio> elements for missing alternative text, absent caption tracks, autoplay behavior, and whether media controls are provided.

What it does

Low contrast text is hard to read for everyone, especially users with low vision, color blindness, or in bright sunlight. This scanner samples text elements and computes the contrast ratio between text and background colors. It flags elements that fail the AA threshold (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text) and optionally the stricter AAA threshold (7:1 / 4.5:1).