Free · WCAG 2.2 AA · axe-core 4.11
WCAG checker — free WCAG 2.2 AA report
Free WCAG checker for any public URL. We use axe-core 4.11 — the same ruleset Microsoft Accessibility Insights, plaintiff-firm scanners, and Google Lighthouse use. Coverage maps directly to WCAG 2.1 / 2.2 Level AA and EN 301 549 (the harmonised standard the EU EAA references).
What “WCAG 2.2 AA” actually means
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 (W3C, October 2023) are organized into four principles — Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust — each with success criteria at three conformance levels (A, AA, AAA). AA is the practical legal target across EAA, ADA, and Section 508. WCAG 2.2 added 9 success criteria over 2.1, mostly mobile / cognitive-load improvements (target size, dragging alternatives, focus-not-obscured).
Automated checkers like this one cover roughly 57% of WCAG criteria objectively — contrast, missing alt text, label-input mismatch, ARIA misuse. The remaining 43% — meaningful alt text, sensible heading order, cognitive-load issues — require human judgement.
Why a one-time check isn't enough
Most teams run a WCAG check, fix the violations, and ship. Within a quarter the regressions accumulate: a designer changes a button colour, a form gets a new field without a label, a marketing page gets a hero image without alt text. By the next compliance touchpoint — audit, demand letter, EAA market surveillance — the violations are back.
The sustainable model is continuous: a CI pipeline that runs WCAG checks on every PR and blocks merges on serious-severity regressions. axle ships exactly that — same checker, just running on every commit instead of once a quarter. Free for one repository.
Other free WCAG tools
For completeness — other widely-used free WCAG checkers:
- WAVE (WebAIM) — browser extension, single-page focus.
- Microsoft Accessibility Insights — Chromium devtools-style flow.
- Lighthouse (Google Chrome) — built into Chrome devtools.
- Pa11y — open-source CLI, similar to axle-cli.
- Tenon — has a free tier.
All of these (including axle) use a similar core ruleset; the differentiator is delivery surface. axle is built for CI integration with PR comments + AI-generated source-code fixes.