WordPress accessibility audit and fixes

An accessibility audit checks a site against a published standard for whether people with disabilities can use it. The standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

We check pages of your WordPress site against the success criteria of WCAG 2.2 at Level AA, with automated checks and by hand, by keyboard and with a screen reader. Each finding is written up: the page, the success criterion, what happens, and what would fix it. What can be fixed in the site itself, we fix and check again.

Both parts are sold as developer time: by the hour, in blocks, quoted before work starts. This page is not legal advice, and whether a law applies to your site is a question for a lawyer. It promises no compliance with any law and no conformance claim. Nobody can honestly promise that a site will never draw a complaint.

Who it is for, and who it is not

An audit fits a working WordPress site in one of these situations.

• You have been told the site must be accessible.
• You have had a complaint or a letter. The audit shows what is wrong on the pages. What the letter means is a lawyer's question.
• You ran an automated checker and have a list you cannot act on.
• You want people who use a keyboard or a screen reader to be able to use the site.

A different page fits better in these cases.

• You want a new design. See design and development.
• You want a small change, such as new text or a replaced image. Those are website edits.
• You want code that is not about accessibility. That is custom development.
• You want a video captioned, a PDF made accessible, legal advice or a certificate. This page offers none of them.

What an audit is, and what it is measured against

WCAG 2.2 is a W3C Recommendation. W3C published it on 5 October 2023, and an update on 12 December 2024. It has 13 guidelines, each with success criteria that can be tested, at three levels: A, AA and AAA. For Level AA, a page satisfies every Level A and Level AA criterion, or offers an alternate version that does.

WCAG says conformance is for full web pages only, and cannot be achieved with part of a page left out. So a finding names its page and its criterion. W3C says content that conforms to WCAG 2.2 conforms to 2.1 and 2.0, which matters if you were given an older version to meet.

What an automated checker can and cannot find

W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative says no tool alone can determine whether a site meets accessibility standards: knowledgeable human evaluation is required. Its page on choosing tools adds that tools cannot check every aspect automatically and can produce false or misleading results.

So a checker's list holds only what a machine could test. An audit adds checks by hand.

A widget or plugin that promises compliance

In January 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission announced an order against a company that sells a web accessibility plug-in, and approved it as final in April 2025. Its complaint alleged that the company claimed the plug-in could make any website compliant with WCAG, that it did not make all users' websites compliant, and that the claims were false, misleading or unsubstantiated. The final order bars the company from saying its automated products can make any website WCAG-compliant, or keep it so, unless it has the evidence.

The Department of Justice's 2022 guidance says checkers and overlays "can be helpful tools" but "need to be used carefully", and that a clean report "does not necessarily mean everything is accessible".

What WordPress itself holds to

WordPress's accessibility coding standards expect code in WordPress core and official plugins to conform to WCAG 2.2 at Level AA. WordPress.org says the project cannot guarantee that all themes are compliant.

A theme with the "Accessibility ready" tag passed a manual review against the theme review team's own requirements. The theme handbook says that does not mean it meets WCAG at Level AA.

So WordPress holding to a standard does not make your site meet it. Your theme, plugins and content decide.

Where problems come from on a WordPress site, and who can fix each

The route to a fix depends on where the problem sits. Ask anyone who quotes for fixes which of these four a finding belongs to.

Embedded content still counts toward the page. W3C's guidance calls a statement that a page conforms apart from such content a statement of non-conformance.

What the law says, in brief

Each line is from the legal text or the agency's own page on 10 October 2026.

• United States, state and local governments. The Department of Justice's rule under Title II of the ADA, 28 CFR 35.200(b), requires a public entity's web content and mobile apps to "comply with Level A and Level AA success criteria and conformance requirements specified in WCAG 2.1". That begins on April 26, 2027 for a public entity with a total population of 50,000 or more (§ 35.200(b)(1)), and on April 26, 2028 for a smaller one or a special district government (§ 35.200(b)(2)). Both dates are still to come, after an interim final rule of April 20, 2026 extended them.
• United States, businesses open to the public. The Department's guidance of March 18, 2022 says it "has consistently taken the position" that the ADA's requirements apply to what such businesses offer on the web, and that it "does not have a regulation setting out detailed standards". The guidance says of itself that it has no legally binding effect.
• European Union. Directive (EU) 2019/882 covers the products and services listed in its Article 2, among them "e-commerce services" in Article 2(2)(f). Under Article 31(2), member states apply their measures from 28 June 2025, a date now past. Article 4(5) exempts microenterprises that provide services: under Article 3(23), fewer than 10 persons and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than EUR 2 million. Each member state has its own law, not described here.

What you get

• A quote for the audit first, in hours. The pages and templates it covers are agreed in the quote.
• Each finding written up. The page, the success criterion, what happens, and what would fix it.
• A quote for the fixes. We fix what is fixable in the site itself: the theme, the site's own code, its content and its settings.
• Each fix checked again.
• Nothing started without your yes. If the job grows, the extra hours are quoted first.

The hourly price is shown on this page. A job too large to price as a few hours gets a written quote.

How it works

What we need from you to start

The contact form asks for your name, an email address and your message. We reply by email. Put these in the message:

• the site's address
• the pages people use to buy, book, apply or get in touch
• the standard and level you were asked to meet, if someone named one
• what a person said they could not do, and on which page, if you had a complaint
• what an automated checker reported, if you ran one
• what the site is built with. The platform and theme detector shows its theme, its page builder and the plugins that show.
• your deadline, if there is one

What it does not cover

• Compliance with any law. Whether the work satisfies a law is not ours to say.
• A conformance claim, statement or certificate, a VPAT or an Accessibility Conformance Report.
• Legal advice.
• Fixes inside another company's embedded service, or in a plugin's own files.
• Captions, transcripts and audio description, and PDFs and other documents.
• Testing with people with disabilities. This audit is not that. W3C says such testing finds usability problems that checking against a standard alone does not. See its page on involving users with disabilities.
• A delivery date.
• Upkeep afterwards. New content and updates can bring problems back. Updates, backups and monitoring are a care plan: WordPress maintenance.

Before you buy: do it yourself, or check first

• Easy Checks – A First Review of Web Accessibility. W3C's first checks, such as alternative text, headings, contrast and keyboard focus. It warns that a page can seem to pass them and still have significant barriers.
• Use the site with the keyboard alone. Press Tab through a page. See whether you can tell where you are, and reach the menu, every link and every form field.
• Read what the block editor tells you. WordPress's documentation says the editor warns you when text may be hard to read against its background color. The "Outline" tab of the "Document Overview" shows a page's heading structure.
• Choosing a theme or a plugin? WordPress.org's theme directory lists "Accessibility ready" among its features. For plugins, see how to choose one.
• How to add custom CSS and how to create a child theme. A faint text color may be a few CSS rules.
• How to set up a staging site. Try a change on a private copy first.