Free WCAG 2.2 Compliance Checker

Enter any URL to instantly scan for WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA violations. CompliaScan uses axe-core, the industry-leading accessibility engine, to test your pages against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and deliver actionable results in seconds.

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What WCAG Rules We Check

WCAG is built on four foundational principles known as POUR. Every success criterion falls under one of these principles. Our scanner tests against rules across all four areas to give you a comprehensive accessibility picture.

Perceivable

Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. This includes providing text alternatives for non-text content, captions for multimedia, and ensuring content can be presented in different ways without losing meaning.

Image alt text and decorative image handling
Video captions and audio descriptions
Color contrast ratios (4.5:1 for text, 3:1 for large text)
Content structure and reading order
Text resizing up to 200% without loss of functionality

Operable

User interface components and navigation must be operable by all users. Every function available by mouse must also work with a keyboard alone. Users must have enough time to read and use content, and content should not cause seizures or physical reactions.

Full keyboard accessibility for all interactive elements
Visible focus indicators on focusable elements
Skip navigation links and bypass blocks
Descriptive page titles and link purposes
No keyboard traps in interactive components

Understandable

Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable. Text should be readable, pages should behave in predictable ways, and users should receive help avoiding and correcting mistakes in forms and other inputs.

Page language declared in HTML
Consistent navigation across pages
Descriptive form labels and instructions
Error identification and suggestions
Input purpose identification for autofill

Robust

Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. This means using valid, semantic HTML and ensuring ARIA attributes are used correctly when needed.

Valid HTML and proper nesting of elements
Correct use of ARIA roles, states, and properties
Unique IDs across the page
Name, role, and value for all UI components
Status messages communicated to assistive technologies

How WCAG Compliance Works

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and form the international standard for web accessibility. Most accessibility legislation worldwide, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the European Accessibility Act (EAA), and Section 508, reference WCAG as the technical benchmark for compliance.

WCAG defines four conformance levels that determine how thoroughly your website meets accessibility standards:

Level A (Minimum)

The most basic requirements. Without meeting Level A, some users will find it impossible to use your site at all. This includes providing text alternatives for images and ensuring keyboard access to all functionality.

Level AA (Recommended)

The standard most regulations target. Level AA addresses the most common barriers, including sufficient color contrast, consistent navigation, and clear error handling. This is the level CompliaScan scans against by default.

Level AAA (Enhanced)

The highest level of conformance. Level AAA criteria include sign language for multimedia, extended audio descriptions, and a 7:1 color contrast ratio. Full AAA conformance is not required by any regulation and is not feasible for most websites.

Conformance Statement

To claim conformance at any level, every success criterion at that level (and all lower levels) must be met across entire pages. A single failure on a page means that page does not conform at that level. Conformance is always per-page, not per-site.

Important: The Limits of Automated Testing

Automated tools like CompliaScan can reliably detect approximately 30-40% of WCAG success criteria. Issues like missing alt text, incorrect ARIA attributes, color contrast failures, and invalid HTML are caught automatically. However, many criteria require human judgment -- for example, whether alt text is meaningful, whether content order is logical, or whether interactions are intuitive for screen reader users. A comprehensive compliance strategy combines automated scanning with manual expert review and testing with real assistive technology users.

WCAG 2.2 vs WCAG 2.1: What Changed

WCAG 2.2, published as a W3C Recommendation in October 2023, builds on WCAG 2.1 with nine new success criteria and one removed criterion. Here are the key additions and changes that CompliaScan tests for:

New in WCAG 2.2

2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) (AA)
When a user interface component receives keyboard focus, it must not be entirely hidden behind other content such as sticky headers, footers, or modal overlays.
2.4.13 Focus Appearance (AAA)
Focus indicators must have sufficient size and contrast to be clearly visible. The focus indicator area must be at least as large as a 2px perimeter of the unfocused component.
2.5.7 Dragging Movements (AA)
Any functionality that uses dragging must also be achievable with a single pointer without dragging, unless dragging is essential to the underlying activity.
2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) (AA)
Interactive targets must be at least 24x24 CSS pixels, or have sufficient spacing from adjacent targets. This helps users with motor impairments avoid accidental activations.
3.2.6 Consistent Help (A)
If a website provides help mechanisms (such as contact information, chat, or FAQ links), those mechanisms must appear in the same relative order on every page.
3.3.7 Redundant Entry (A)
Information previously entered by the user in the same process must be auto-populated or available for selection, rather than requiring the user to re-enter it.
3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum) (AA)
Authentication processes must not require cognitive function tests (like remembering a password or solving a puzzle) unless an alternative method or assistance is provided.

Removed from WCAG 2.2

4.1.1 Parsing (removed)
The Parsing criterion from WCAG 2.1, which required valid HTML markup, was removed because modern browsers and assistive technologies now handle parsing errors gracefully. Valid markup is still best practice but is no longer a formal WCAG requirement.

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