Website accessibility checker
A website accessibility checker loads a live page and flags WCAG failures a machine can see. Complience.app runs axe-core inside Playwright, keeps the dated findings, and can recrawl on a schedule. It is evidence of what failed on that crawl — not a certificate.
Free website accessibility checker
Paste a public URL. axe-core flags WCAG 2.2 failures a machine can see. Sign in for a PDF and a re-crawl.
What does a website accessibility checker do?
It opens a real page, looks at the rendered DOM, and lists accessibility problems a machine can prove. Complience.app does that with axe-core inside Playwright against WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA.
You get a dated negative: this rule failed on this URL on this crawl. That is useful. Calling the site “done” is not.
Free website accessibility checker
Paste a public URL above. No account for the teaser. You see axe-core findings for what the machine can catch on that load.
Sign in when you want a PDF, history, or a weekly re-crawl. The trial does not need a credit card. Prefer the standalone tool URL? Use the free website scan.
How the scan works
Playwright starts with a clean browser profile and loads the public page. Once JavaScript has run, axe-core evaluates the live DOM — including content that only appears after scripts.
The report shows rule id, severity, selector, and often a snippet plus a fix hint you can hand to a developer. Cookie and header evidence ride along in the same pack. That is the difference from a one-off browser extension: the result can sit in history and come back next month.
What the checker usually finds
The same failures that dominate large automated samples. The 2026 WebAIM Million still found detectable WCAG 2 failures on 95.9% of home pages, with low-contrast text on 83.9%. Figures live on our accessibility statistics page.
- Images without alternative text
- Buttons, links, and form fields without accessible names
- Contrast that fails a numeric threshold
- Empty or duplicate landmarks, missing document language or title
- Invalid ARIA roles and states
Pair a suspicious color with the color contrast checker. Two colors are not a live-page scan.
What a WCAG 2.2 checker covers
A WCAG 2.2 checker is this same scan with the version named. axe-core maps rules to WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA. WCAG 2.2 added 9 success criteria on 5 October 2023 and removed 4.1.1 Parsing.
Focus not obscured and target size are partly machine-testable. The 24 CSS pixel limit is written up in WCAG target size. Accessible authentication and dragging alternatives still need a person on the flow. What the engine skips is in what a WCAG 2.2 checker actually covers.
Why use this alongside WAVE or Lighthouse?
Keep WAVE and Lighthouse for design QA. They are excellent microscopes. Complience.app uses the same class of engine, then adds a schedule, stored scores, and cookies that fired before Accept.
That matters when a theme update reintroduces empty buttons three weeks later. A one-off extension will not email you. Comparisons: WAVE vs Complience.app, Lighthouse vs Complience.app, Sigentra vs Complience.app, and AccessibilityChecker.org vs Complience.app. Longer write-up: WAVE vs scheduled monitoring.
If the CMS is WordPress, start at the WordPress accessibility checker. Same engine. Theme and plugin framing.
Free checker vs overlay widget
A checker finds problems in the HTML you ship. An overlay adds a visitor toolbar and often claims to “fix” the site. Different products. Complience.app does not inject a widget.
The FTC ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over deceptive WCAG-compliance claims (final order, 22 April 2025 — cited with the original URL on accessibility statistics). If you were sold a toolbar, read accessiBe alternatives and UserWay alternatives. Source scan vs overlay: overlay widgets vs source scans.
What the schedule adds
Most free checkers stop at one screenshot of the score. The gap is the next crawl. Sign in, keep the domain on a weekly or monthly schedule, and get email when the accessibility score drops. Agencies put a client name on the PDF via white-label accessibility reports.
The W3C Understanding Conformance page does not list “run a widget” as a conformance method. Conformance is about the content. Dated scans of that content are the boring, useful loop.
ADA, EAA, and the same engine
Same axe-core pass. Different search intent. People who typed ADA land on the ADA compliance checker. The product they leave running is ADA compliance software. EU-facing sites use the EAA checker. None of those URLs certify the law. If you need the human document, that is an accessibility audit, not this checker. Manual remainder: WCAG checklist.
