How to check website accessibility for free

Why checking is worth an hour

Around one in six people worldwide lives with a significant disability, and many more have temporary or age-related limitations: a broken arm, tired eyes, a phone in bright sunlight. When a website only works with a mouse, has text that is too faint, or a form a screen reader cannot read, these visitors leave.

Accessibility is also a legal topic in more and more places. The European Accessibility Act applies to many online shops and services in the EU since June 2025, and in the United States websites are regularly the subject of ADA demand letters and lawsuits. The technical yardstick almost everywhere is the same: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), level AA.

Step 1: Run a free automated scan

Start with a scanner. It loads the page in a real browser and tests the code against the WCAG rules that a machine can check reliably. In under a minute you get a list of problems with the exact elements affected.

Automated tests are good at finding:

• Images, icon buttons and image links without a text alternative
• Text and controls with too little colour contrast
• Form fields without a label
• Links and buttons with no name, such as a bare icon
• A missing or wrong page language, and pages without a title
• Skipped heading levels, missing landmarks and duplicate IDs
• Zoom being blocked on phones

Scan your most important pages, not just the home page: a typical article or product page, the contact or sign-up form, and the checkout if you have one. Problems in a shared template, such as the header or footer, appear on every page, so fixing them once helps everywhere.

Scan a page for free

Step 2: Put the mouse away and use the keyboard

Many people navigate with a keyboard or a device that acts like one: switch users, people with tremors, screen reader users, and power users. Click into the address bar, then press Tab repeatedly to move through the page, and Shift+Tab to go back.

• Can you see where you are at every moment? There should be a clear focus outline around the current link or button.
• Does focus move in a logical order, top to bottom and left to right, without jumping around?
• Can you reach and use everything: the menu, drop-downs, sliders, the cookie banner, tabs, and the form's submit button? Enter activates links and buttons; Space toggles checkboxes and buttons.
• Can you close pop-ups and menus with Escape, and does focus go back to where you were?
• Do you ever get stuck somewhere you cannot Tab out of?
• Is there a skip link at the top that jumps past the navigation to the main content?

Step 3: Zoom in to 200% and 400%

People with low vision enlarge text. Press Ctrl and + (Cmd and + on a Mac) until the browser shows 200%, then 400%. At 400% a desktop page behaves like a narrow phone screen.

• All text should still be readable without scrolling sideways, except for things like tables and maps.
• Nothing should be cut off or overlap, and no content should disappear.
• Sticky headers and cookie banners should not cover most of the screen or the element that has focus.

Step 4: Listen with a screen reader

Every computer and phone has a free screen reader. You do not need to be an expert; five minutes tells you a lot.

• Mac and iPhone: VoiceOver. On a Mac press Cmd+F5 to turn it on and off.
• Windows: NVDA is free to download. Windows also includes Narrator (Ctrl+Windows+Enter).
• Android: TalkBack, under Settings, Accessibility.

With the screen reader running, move through the page with Tab and with the arrow keys. Listen for links that only say "click here" or "read more", buttons that are announced as just "button", images that are read out as a file name, and form fields that do not say what to type. Most screen readers can also list all headings on the page; the list should read like a table of contents.

Step 5: Check colour, media and content

Some problems are visible once you know what to look for.

• Contrast: normal text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, large text and icons 3:1. Test brand colours, light grey text, placeholder text and text on images.
• Colour alone: links, required fields and error messages should not be shown by colour only. Add an underline, an icon or text.
• Video and audio: videos need captions, and auto-playing sound must be easy to stop.
• Errors: submit a form with mistakes. The message should say what went wrong and how to fix it, next to the field.
• Plain language: clear headings, short paragraphs and descriptive link text help everyone.

Free colour contrast checker

Step 6: Test the journeys that matter

Finally, try to complete your site's most important tasks using only the keyboard and then with a screen reader: sign up, search, add a product to the basket and check out, book an appointment, or send the contact form. A page can pass every automated rule and still be impossible to use if one step in the journey fails.

Step 7: Fix in order of impact, then check again

Not every problem is equally serious. A good order is:

1. Blockers first: anything that stops someone from completing a task, such as an unreachable button, a keyboard trap or an unlabelled checkout field.
2. Shared templates next: the header, navigation, footer and product template. One fix there improves every page.
3. Then content: alt text, link text and headings, page by page.
4. Re-scan after each round of changes, and keep scanning regularly, because new content and plugin updates bring new problems.

AccessibilityBrief shows the exact fix for every issue it finds, with the code before and after, steps for your platform, and a prompt you can paste into ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor or Lovable.

What an automated checker cannot tell you

No tool can test everything. A scanner can tell that an image has alt text, but not whether the text describes the image well. It can find a form label, but not whether the error messages make sense. Keyboard order, readable language and whether a video has accurate captions also need a person. That is why the manual steps above matter, and why no honest tool can promise that a site is fully accessible after a scan.

Questions and answers