AuditWand Accessibility went live on WordPress.org this week. I built it because every accessibility plugin I tried either locked the useful fixes behind a paid tier or injected a floating "accessibility widget" that changes nothing in the actual HTML. This one does neither: everything that runs on your own site is free, and nothing is added to your visitors' pages except the fixes you switch on.
**Why this matters, in practical terms**
About one in six people lives with a disability.
**Websites that don't take care of there accessibility concerns can get sued.**
On a typical WordPress site they hit walls the rest of us never notice:
- A screen reader hits an image with no alt text and says nothing, or reads out "IMG_4032.jpg".
- A link that only differs from the text by colour is invisible to someone who can't see that colour.
- A form field with only a placeholder has no name once you start typing in it, so a screen reader user doesn't know what it's for.
- Someone who can't use a mouse presses Tab and can't see where they are, or can't get past the menu at all.
- A phone user who needs to zoom can't, because the theme disabled pinch-zoom.
It's also now the law in most markets: the European Accessibility Act has applied to most businesses selling into the EU since June 2025, US web accessibility lawsuits run into the thousands every year, and Ontario's AODA applies to larger organisations. And the same fixes help everyone, including search engines, which read pages the way a screen reader does.
**What the free version does (no account, nothing leaves your site)**
*Check while you write*
- A "Check this page" button in the editor, drafts included. It runs 89 automated checks (the axe-core engine, the same one professional auditors use) and shows each problem next to your content with a plain-English explanation of what's wrong, who it affects, and how to fix it. 54 of the most common issues have explanations written specifically for WordPress users.
- 3 "worth reviewing" checks for things a machine can't decide alone: vague link text like "click here", images marked decorative that might not be, and text that may actually be an image.
- Optional automatic check on every save.
- Dismiss any finding with a recorded reason (kept in an Ignore Log you can reverse), and a "send to developer" handoff that copies a finding as a ready-to-paste ticket.
- History of your page checks on your own site.
*Fix in one click, all 16 free, each reversible and logged*
- Skip-to-content link for keyboard users
- Visible keyboard focus outline
- Underlined links in content (no colour-only links)
- "(opens in a new tab)" announced to screen readers
- Or stop content links opening new tabs at all
- A real label on the search field, and no empty searches
- A label on the comment box
- Page language and text direction declared, so screen readers use the right voice
- Pinch-zoom re-enabled on mobile
- Forced tab-order overrides removed
- Redundant title-attribute tooltips removed
- Fallback page titles for pages that have none
- Labels for form fields that only have a placeholder
- "(PDF, 1.2 MB)" appended to document links
- Block new PDF uploads (existing files untouched)
- An "Accessibility statement" link in the footer
These are server-side changes to the HTML your site sends. No front-end script, no overlay, nothing slowing the page.
*Audit your media*
- Media Library Audit: every image in your library with its alt-text status and where it's used, in one list. Edit alt text inline, mark decorative images in one click, filter to "missing alt text" and work through them in order. As far as I can tell nothing else does a whole-library alt text view.
*Show your work*
- A downloadable accessibility statement template.
- An "accessibility monitored" badge and a public status page where visitors can report a barrier.
**What the paid plans add (only things that need a server)**
Pro ($19/mo): scans every page of your live site in the cloud (500 pages per scan), monthly scheduled scans that run whether or not anyone opens WordPress, regression alerts by email that say what broke and where, full history with trends and scan-to-scan comparison, a hosted accessibility statement that updates itself from scan data, dated PDF reports mapped to EN 301 549 / EAA clauses, an accessibility column in your Posts and Pages lists, "view on page" with element screenshots, bulk review, weekly summaries. Business ($49/mo): the same across 5 sites, weekly scans, 2,000 pages per crawl, reports in English, German and French, 3 team seats.
Scan data is stored in the EU (Frankfurt), a DPA is included on every plan, and your site is verified before every scan so results always describe your site and not a stranger's.
**On "all 16 free"**
The most popular checker plugin in the directory ships 16 fixes too and keeps four behind its paid tier. I don't think the difference between free and paid should be which four fixes you're allowed, so all sixteen are free here. Paid is for the cloud work.
**What it will never claim**
That it makes your site "compliant". No automated tool can: automated checks find a subset of the barriers, and the rest need a person. It finds the mechanical problems, fixes the ones it can, and tells you what to do about the rest.
**Try it in your browser first**
The listing has a Live Preview button that spins up a WordPress site with the plugin installed, no download needed, about a minute:
- Free plugin (WordPress.org, with the Live Preview button): https://wordpress.org/plugins/auditwand-accessibility/
- What Pro and Business add, and pricing: https://auditwand.com/pricing
- Documentation, including a page for every issue and every fix: https://auditwand.com/docs
- Try a single page of any site, no install, no account: https://auditwand.com/scan
Disclosure: I'm the developer. Feedback welcome, especially anything confusing, missing, or wrong.