Home / Blog / WordPress Accessibility Checker

WordPress accessibility checker: free plugin vs paid scanner

WordPress powers 43% of the web. Most WordPress sites fail basic accessibility. Here's how to check yours and which tool to use.

Why WordPress sites have accessibility problems

WordPress itself has made significant accessibility improvements in its core. The problem is everything built on top of it: themes, page builders, and plugins. A study of the WebAIM Million found that WordPress sites have slightly more accessibility errors on average than non-WordPress sites — not because the platform is bad, but because the ecosystem prioritizes visual design over semantic HTML.

Common WordPress-specific issues include: page builders (Elementor, Divi, WPBakery) generating bloated, non-semantic HTML; themes with decorative elements lacking alt text; contact form plugins with unlabeled inputs; slider and carousel plugins that are completely inaccessible to keyboard users; and popup plugins that create focus traps.

Free WordPress accessibility plugins

Several free plugins can help identify accessibility issues directly in your WordPress admin:

WP ADA Compliance CheckFree

Strengths: 82 individual error checks, auto-corrects 28 error types. Scans content as you edit. Good for catching basic issues during content creation.

Limitations: Limited to content-level issues. Doesn't catch theme/template problems, CSS contrast issues, or JavaScript-dependent violations.

Starter (accessibility-ready themes)Free

Strengths: WordPress marks certain themes as 'accessibility-ready' in the theme directory. These pass a basic set of accessibility requirements.

Limitations: The 'accessibility-ready' tag only means the theme passed review at submission. Updates, customizations, and added content can break compliance.

WAVE browser extensionFree

Strengths: Not a plugin, but a Chrome/Firefox extension that overlays accessibility annotations on any page. Excellent for visual feedback.

Limitations: Manual process — you check one page at a time. No monitoring, no automation, no historical tracking.

What free plugins miss

Free plugins catch content-level issues — missing alt text, empty headings, broken links. But they typically can't detect: color contrast failures in CSS (the #1 violation at 79.1% of sites), keyboard navigation problems, focus management in modals and dropdowns, ARIA attribute errors in theme templates, or dynamic content accessibility issues from JavaScript.

Automated scanners that test the rendered page (not just the WordPress database) catch these because they evaluate your site the same way a browser does — with CSS applied, JavaScript executed, and interactive elements tested.

Paid scanners: what they add

Full rendered-page scanning — Tests CSS, JavaScript, and interactive elements, not just HTML content in the database.

Multi-page crawling — Scans your entire site, not one page at a time. Catches template-level issues that affect every page.

AI-generated code fixes — Not just "add alt text" but the exact corrected HTML you need to paste.

Continuous monitoring — Automated daily/weekly scans catch regressions from plugin updates, theme changes, and new content.

Legal risk scoring — Issues ranked by lawsuit likelihood, not just technical severity.

The recommended approach for WordPress

Use both. Free plugins during content creation (catching issues as you write), plus a paid scanner for comprehensive auditing and monitoring. The free plugin is your first line of defense; the scanner is your safety net.

Step 1: Install WP ADA Compliance Check (free) for content editing.

Step 2: Run a full site scan with ADAScanner to find everything the plugin misses.

Step 3: Fix critical issues using the AI-generated code diffs.

Step 4: Set up weekly monitoring ($29/mo) to catch regressions from updates.

Scan your WordPress site — free

See what your plugins are missing. 60 seconds, no signup.

Scan my WordPress site →

WooCommerce ADA Compliance: Avoid Getting Sued →ADA Compliance Checklist 2026: The Complete WCAG Guide →