Automated Accessibility Scanning
Every page on your domain, checked with axe-core in a real browser against WCAG 2.2 — on a schedule, and on every deploy on Professional and Enterprise — with severity-ranked issues and the fix for each.
- Who it stops
- A blind user reaches the field and hears no label, so there is nothing to tell it from the three inputs beside it. The purchase ends here.
- Fix
- <input id="cc" type="text" />+ <label for="cc">Card number</label>+ <input id="cc" type="text" />
Example output, produced by Accessible on a test site. Not a customer site, and no customer data is shown.
What is scanned, how often, and against what
Every page on the domain
Discovery reads your sitemap and crawls the site, and routes found by real user monitoring are added too. Every URL is yours to accept or reject, and there is no page limit on any paid plan.
In a real browser
Each page loads in Chromium and is checked with axe-core against WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 at the level you choose — A, AA or AAA — plus axe-core’s best-practice rules.
On a schedule and on deploy
Every paid plan schedules scans weekly. On Professional and Enterprise, a deploy webhook re-scans the moment a release ships, so a regression is caught by the build that caused it.
WCAG is the technical standard the ADA Title II rule, Section 508 and the European Accessibility Act's harmonised standard all point to, in different versions. See which version each references.
What a scan can and cannot tell you
Automated scanning is the fastest way to find the failures a machine can decide, on every page, every time. It is also partial, and we would rather say so than let a clean scan read as proof of more.
When the UK Government Digital Service built a page with 143 deliberate accessibility failures and ran ten automated tools against it, the best single tool found 37% of them; all ten combined found 71%, and 29% were missed by every tool (UK Government Digital Service, 2017). Deque, which maintains axe-core, reports that its automated tests identified 57.38% of issues by volume across more than 2,000 audits — a vendor figure, counted by number of issues rather than by success criteria (Deque Systems, 2021).
The failures scans miss are rarely obscure. They are whether focus moves into a dialog, whether a status message is announced, and whether a checkout can be finished — the things that depend on someone using the page. The W3C is direct about it: evaluation tools “can not determine accessibility, they can only assist in doing so” (W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, 2024). That is why Accessible pairs scanning with journey testing and real user monitoring.
The full argument, with examples, is in why your site passes axe-core but fails real screen reader users, and the WCAG 2.2 checklist marks which criteria automated rules touch at all.
- 37%
- of 143 deliberate failures found by the best single toolGDS, 2017 · independent
- 71%
- found by all ten tools combined; 29% by none of themGDS, 2017 · independent
- 57.38%
- of issues by volume, across 2,000+ auditsDeque, 2021 · vendor-reported
From scan results to fixed issues
The WebAIM Million found detectable WCAG failures on 95.9% of the top million home pages in 2026 (WebAIM, 2026). Most sites start with a long list; the reporting is built to shorten it in the right order.
Severity-ranked issues
Violations ranked critical, serious, moderate and minor, grouped by how many pages share the same fault, so one broken component is one fix rather than four hundred rows.
A score that knows its limits
A 0–100 score per page, trended over time — and withheld when a page could not be fully evaluated, instead of reporting a perfect score for checks that never ran.
Fix guidance with code
Each issue carries the WCAG criterion, the element, and the markup change that fixes it, in React, Vue, Angular or plain HTML.
Out of the dashboard
Export issues to CSV, build a draft VPAT/ACR, and publish a public posture page.
Sources
- What we found when we tested tools on the world’s least-accessible webpage (opens in a new tab). UK Government Digital Service, February 24, 2017. Independent. One deliberately inaccessible test page, 143 failures, 10 tools.
- Deque Study Shows Its Automated Testing Identifies 57 Percent of Digital Accessibility Issues (opens in a new tab). Deque Systems, March 10, 2021. Vendor self-reported (Deque maintains axe-core). Measured by volume of issues, not by success criteria.
- Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools (opens in a new tab). W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, May 13, 2024.
- The WebAIM Million: The 2026 report on the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pages (opens in a new tab). WebAIM, March 30, 2026. Independent. Automated testing of home pages only.
Frequently asked questions
What is accessibility monitoring?
Usually, scanning a website for accessibility failures on a recurring schedule, so new problems are caught as the site changes. Accessible does that — scheduled and on-deploy scans of every page — and adds real user monitoring, which checks the pages real visitors load rather than only the ones a scanner visits.
Which version of WCAG does the scanner test against?
WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 at Level A, AA or AAA, with Level AA as the default. Every finding is mapped to the success criterion it fails.
How often are pages scanned?
Every paid plan schedules scans weekly. You can also scan any single page on demand on any paid plan. On Professional and Enterprise you can scan every URL on demand, and on Professional and Enterprise trigger a scan from your deploy pipeline with a webhook.
Is there a limit on how many pages I can scan?
No. Scanning is unmetered on every paid plan, with no cap on URLs per domain. Only journey runs draw on credits.
If my site passes an automated scan, is it accessible?
Not necessarily. Automated rules can decide some failures, like missing alternative text or low contrast, but not whether that text is accurate, whether focus goes to the right place, or whether a task can be completed. As WebAIM puts it, the absence of detected errors does not indicate that a page is accessible or conformant.
Scan every page you own.
Scanning is unmetered on every paid plan — no credits and no per-page charge.