Around one in five Australians lives with disability, and the Disability Discrimination Act applies to websites the same way it applies to a physical shopfront. The Australian Human Rights Commission points to WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the standard, and complaints about inaccessible sites have been climbing steadily.
Most accessibility problems are not exotic. They are missing alt text, form fields with no label, buttons that are only an icon, and headings chosen for their size rather than their structure. This tool finds the ones a machine can find, tells you which WCAG rule each maps to, and explains the fix in plain English.
Check accessibility- Image alt text and decorative images
- Form fields with associated labels
- Heading structure and order
- Link and button names, including icon-only ones
- Language, landmarks, skip links and pinch zoom
Is my business legally required to have an accessible website?
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 has no small-business exemption, and it applies to digital services as much as physical premises. The Australian Human Rights Commission points to WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the benchmark, and its guidance now explicitly covers websites, apps and SaaS platforms. In practice, complaints tend to follow visible businesses and government suppliers, but the obligation is broad and the fixes are inexpensive compared with the alternative.
Why does automated testing only find a third of the problems?
Be sceptical of any tool promising full compliance, including this one. Automated checks reliably catch the structural, machine-readable issues: missing alt text, unlabelled fields, broken heading order, links with no accessible name. Whether your focus order makes sense, whether a keyboard user can escape your menu, whether your error messages are actually understandable, all need a human. A clean automated result means the obvious barriers are gone, which is a genuine and worthwhile milestone.
What are the most common accessibility problems?
Four, over and over. Form fields with no associated label, so a screen reader announces "edit text" and nothing else. Icon-only buttons and links with no accessible name, announced as "link" or skipped entirely. Headings picked for their size rather than their level, which destroys the structure people navigate by. And images with no alt attribute, where the screen reader falls back to reading the file name out loud.
Does accessibility help my SEO?
Substantially, because it is the same work. A clean heading hierarchy, descriptive link text, alt attributes, a declared page language and proper landmarks all help search engines and AI assistants exactly as they help screen readers. You are describing your page clearly to software, and screen readers and crawlers are both software. Teams that frame accessibility as an SEO and AI-visibility investment tend to actually get it done.
Should I install an accessibility overlay widget?
We would advise strongly against it. Overlays have a poor reputation among the people they claim to help, they have not reliably prevented legal action, and they do not fix the underlying markup, they paint over it. Fixing the code costs less over time, works with every assistive technology, and is the only thing that stands up to scrutiny.
The WCAG rules behind each check
Level AA is the Australian benchmark. These are the criteria this tool can measure automatically.
| What we check | WCAG criterion | Level |
|---|---|---|
| Images have alt text | 1.1.1 Non-text Content | A |
| Headings in a logical order | 1.3.1 Info and Relationships | A |
| Pinch zoom is not disabled | 1.4.4 Resize Text | AA |
| Skip link and landmarks | 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks | A |
| Link text makes sense alone | 2.4.4 Link Purpose | A |
| Page language declared | 3.1.1 Language of Page | A |
| Form fields have labels | 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions | A |
| Buttons and links have names | 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value | A |
How to make your website accessible
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1
Test your main templates
Run this on your homepage, a content page, a form page and a product page. Problems live in templates, not individual pages.
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2
Label every form field
A visible label tied to the input, or an aria-label where the design will not allow one. Placeholder text is not a label.
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3
Name your icon-only controls
Give every icon button and icon link an aria-label describing what it does.
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4
Fix the heading structure
One h1 per page, then h2 and h3 in order, chosen for structure rather than font size.
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5
Write real alt text
Describe the purpose of the image. Decorative images get alt="" so screen readers skip them.
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6
Then test with a human
Tab through the site with no mouse, and try a screen reader. That is where the remaining two thirds live.
Fair questions.
Does passing this mean I am legally compliant?
No, and we will not pretend otherwise. This covers the automatable subset of WCAG 2.2 AA, roughly a third of the standard. It is a genuine first step that clears the most common barriers, but a compliance claim needs a human audit including keyboard and screen-reader testing.
Is my small business really required to do this?
The Disability Discrimination Act does not exempt small businesses. In practice complaints follow visible businesses and government suppliers, but the obligation applies broadly and the common fixes are inexpensive.
Why does it only check one page?
Each run tests a single page. Accessibility problems usually live in templates, so run it on your homepage, a content page, a form page and a product page. If those four are clean, most of your site will be.
Can I just install an overlay widget?
We would advise against it. Overlays do not fix the underlying markup, are widely disliked by the people they claim to help, and have not reliably prevented legal action.
What is the difference between WCAG A, AA and AAA?
A is the minimum, AA is the standard almost everyone is measured against including in Australia, and AAA is an aspirational level that is impractical for most sites to meet in full. Target AA.
Does this check colour contrast?
Not yet. Contrast depends on rendered CSS rather than HTML, so it needs a browser-based test. It is one of the most common real failures, so check your palette separately.
Will fixing accessibility change how my site looks?
Rarely. Most of these are invisible: labels, alt attributes, heading levels, accessible names. The exceptions are colour contrast and focus indicators, which are usually small adjustments rather than a redesign.
We sell to government. Does this matter more?
Yes. Accessibility conformance is increasingly a procurement gate rather than a preference. Tenders and enterprise vendor reviews ask for it, and being unable to answer costs you the opportunity before anyone reads your pricing.
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