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<p>reala11y is a WordPress accessibility checker and scanner that helps your site move toward WCAG 2.2 AA conformance by scanning for common issues and applying safe, code-level fixes — skip links, focus outlines, language attributes, form labels, target-size, link purpose, and more. Unlike accessibility overlay widgets, reala11y modifies the underlying HTML so screen readers and keyboard users encounter the corrected page.</p>
<h4>What reala11y does</h4>
<ul>
<li>Scans posts and pages against a WCAG 2.2 rule library.</li>
<li>Applies safe, automated fixes at render time (per-rule on/off, one-click rollback).</li>
<li>Generates a customizable accessibility statement.</li>
<li>Suggests image alt text with your own AI key (OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google Gemini) — you review every suggestion before it is applied.</li>
</ul>
<h4>What reala11y does NOT do</h4>
<ul>
<li>It does not guarantee WCAG, ADA, EAA, or Section 508 compliance. Automated tools detect approximately 30–40% of WCAG failures by criteria. Full conformance requires human review.</li>
<li>It is not an overlay widget. The Federal Trade Commission’s April 21, 2025 order against accessiBe affirmed that overlay claims of automatic WCAG conformance are not supportable.</li>
</ul>
<h4>External services</h4>
<p>reala11y is self-contained and contacts third-party services only as described below, and only when the relevant feature is used.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>WordPress.org — used for plugin update checks, as for any plugin hosted here. No personal data is sent beyond the standard update request.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>AI providers — OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini (optional, bring-your-own-key). The AI authoring features (for example, alt-text suggestions) stay off until you enter your own API key for a provider and run a feature. When you run a feature, reala11y uses your key to send that provider the input you selected — for example, the URL of an image or a block of your post’s text — together with a short instruction prompt. The response is shown to you for review and is never applied automatically. reala11y does not proxy or resell AI usage; the provider bills you directly. Remove a provider’s key to disable it.</p>
<ul>
<li>OpenAI — Terms: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use/ — Privacy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy/</li>
<li>Anthropic — Terms: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms — Privacy: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy</li>
<li>Google Gemini — Terms: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms — Privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>This free build does not bundle Freemius or any licensing or analytics service. See our privacy policy at https://reala11y.com/legal/privacy.</p>
<h4>Source code</h4>
<p>reala11y is open source (GPLv2 or later). The admin interface is written in React and TypeScript and bundled with Vite. The human-readable source for the compiled files in build/admin/ ships with the plugin under admin/src/. To rebuild it, run “npm install” and then “npm run build” in the plugin’s admin/ directory.</p>
<h4>Why reala11y</h4>
<ul>
<li>Code-level remediation, not an overlay widget.</li>
<li>WCAG 2.2 (including 2.5.8 Target Size and the focus criteria).</li>
<li>Bring-your-own AI key — no surprise quotas, no resold tokens.</li>
<li>Honest claims. We never tell you you’re “fully compliant.”</li>
</ul>
<h4>Links</h4>
<ul>
<li>Website and documentation: https://reala11y.com</li>
<li>How reala11y compares to overlay widgets: https://reala11y.com/vs/accessibe and https://reala11y.com/vs/userway</li>
<li>Our own accessibility statement: https://reala11y.com/accessibility-statement</li>
</ul>


reala11y — Accessibility Checker & WCAG Scanner

Accessibility checker for WordPress: scan for WCAG 2.2 issues, auto-fix them in the code, and add AI alt text. A real fix, not an overlay widget.

John Jameson

Jason Partyka

<p>Editoria11y (“editorial accessibility ally”) is a quality assurance tool built for an author’s workflow:</p>
<ol>
<li>It provides instant feedback in the post and page editors. Authors do not need to remember to press a button or visit a dashboard to check their work.</li>
<li>It checks in context on pages, not just within the post editor, allowing it to test content edited in widgets or theme features.</li>
<li>It focuses exclusively on <strong>content</strong> issues: assisting authors at improving the things that are their responsibility.</li>
</ol>
<p>This plugin is the WordPress adaptation of the open-source <a href="https://editoria11y.princeton.edu" rel="nofollow ugc">Editoria11y library</a>. Tests run in the browser and findings are stored in your own database; nothing is sent to any third party. It is meant to <strong>supplement</strong>, not replace, <a href="https://webaim.org/resources/evalquickref/" rel="nofollow ugc">testing your code and visual design</a> with developer-focused tools and testing practices.</p>
<h3>The authoring experience</h3>
<p>Check out a <a href="https://editoria11y.princeton.edu/next" rel="nofollow ugc">demo of the checker itself</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>When <strong>logged-in authors and editors</strong> are viewing pages, Editoria11y inserts tooltips marking any issues present on the current page. Issues are also highlighted while editing in the Block Editor (Gutenberg) and Classic Editor (TinyMCE).</li>
<li>Tooltips explain each problem and what actions are needed to resolve it. Some issues are “manual checks,” which have buttons to ignore the check or mark the content as OK.</li>
<li>Clicking the main toggle shows and hides the tooltips.</li>
<li>The main toggle also allows authors to jump to the next issue, restore previously dismissed alerts, visualize text alternatives for images on the page (“alts”), view the document’s heading outline, and view site-wide detection lists.</li>
</ul>
<h3>The admin experience</h3>
<ul>
<li>Filterable reports let you explore recent issues, which pages have the most issues, which issues are most common, and which issues have been dismissed. These populate and update when published content is viewed by logged-in authors.</li>
<li>Various settings are available to constrain checks to specific parts of the page and tweak the sensitivity of several tests.</li>
</ul>
<h3>The tests</h3>
<ul>
<li>Text alternatives for visual content
<ul>
<li>Images with no alt text</li>
<li>Images with a filename as alt text</li>
<li>Images with very long alt text</li>
<li>Images with fake alt text to get around field validation (e.g. “TBD”)</li>
<li>Alt text that contains redundant text like “image of” or “photo of”</li>
<li>Images in links with alt text that appears to be describing the image instead of the link destination</li>
<li>Embedded visualizations that usually require a text alternative</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Meaningful links
<ul>
<li>Links with no text</li>
<li>Links titled with a filename</li>
<li>Links only titled with generic text: “click here,” “learn more,” “download,” etc.</li>
<li>Links that open in a new window without warning</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Document outline and structure
<ul>
<li>Skipped heading levels</li>
<li>Empty headings</li>
<li>Very long headings</li>
<li>Suspiciously short blockquotes that may actually be headings</li>
<li>All-bold paragraphs with no punctuation that may actually be headings</li>
<li>Suspicious formatting that should probably be converted to a list (sequences of sentences that start with asterisks, emoji or incrementing numbers/letters)</li>
<li>Tables without headers</li>
<li>Empty table header cells</li>
<li>Tables with document headers (“Header 3”) instead of table headers</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>General quality assurance
<ul>
<li>LARGE QUANTITIES OF CAPS LOCK TEXT</li>
<li>Links to PDFs and other documents, reminding the user to test the download for accessibility or provide an alternate, accessible format</li>
<li>Video embeds, reminding the user to add closed captions</li>
<li>Audio embeds, reminding the user to provide a transcript</li>
<li>Social media embeds, reminding the user to provide alt attributes</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://editoria11y.princeton.edu/configuration/#customtests" rel="nofollow ugc">Custom results</a> provided by your JS</li>
</ul>
<h3>Credit</h3>
<p>Editoria11y’s WordPress plugin is maintained by Princeton University’s <a href="https://wds.princeton.edu/" rel="nofollow ugc">Web Development Services</a> team:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/itmaybejj" rel="nofollow ugc">John Jameson</a>: Editoria11y JS and CMS integrations</li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/jasonpartyka" rel="nofollow ugc">Jason Partyka</a>: Devops</li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/bkosborne" rel="nofollow ugc">Brian Osborne</a>: Code review</li>
<li><a href="https://www.drupal.org/u/notmike" rel="nofollow ugc">Michael Muzzie</a>: Wapuu photos</li>
</ul>
<p>Editoria11y began as a fork of the Toronto Metropolitan University’s <a href="https://sa11y.netlify.app/" rel="nofollow ugc">Sa11y Accessibility Checker</a>, and our teams regularly pass new code and ideas back and forth.</p>


Editoria11y Accessibility Checker


My agency has been installing the Editoria11y javascript as part of a custom theme on every client site for months. I was delighted to discover it's now available as an official plugin in the repository. We build sites and train clients on how to enter and update content. Editoria11y Accessibility Checker is a fantastic training tool - it helps content editors see where accessibility problems exist in their content, and helps them figure out solutions and alternatives. Using the plugin is a no-brainer; editors see the alerts right in the web page next to the problem.



Even if you're not concerned about accessibility (you should be), you can use this plugin to highlight issues that affect SEO, since accessibility is closely related to SEO. We're going to be using this plugin on every site for the foreseeable future.  Thanks for building this!


A great tool for content editors


I've experimented with installing similar tools like Tota11y, Sa11y, and the Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker, but this is the tool that has stuck for me because it feels the most approachable to less-experienced editors and it provides suggestions for fixing things.



The errors are helpfully focused on issues that editors can actually do something about, and I think it mostly gets the right balance of making errors appear urgent but not overwhelming.



Each error includes an explanation of why the issue is important and how to resolve it, so that editors can actually take action. And the ability to track issue resolutions overtime in the dashboard is fabulous!


Great tool for helping editors

Content accessibility checker written to be intuitive and useful for non-technical authors and editors.

reala11y — Accessibility Checker & WCAG Scanner vs Editoria11y Accessibility Checker