reala11y – Accessibility Checker & Auto-Fix: WCAG 2.2 Scanner, AI Alt Text, ADA & EAA Audit

reala11y is a WordPress accessibility plugin that audits your posts and pages for WCAG issues and fixes them at the code level — a skip link, a visible focus outline, minimum target size, a main landmark, rel=”noopener” on new-tab links, duplicate-id and positive-tabindex cleanup, restored pinch-zoom, and redundant image and tag-cloud title removal. Unlike accessibility overlay widgets, reala11y modifies the underlying HTML, so screen readers and keyboard users encounter the corrected page. It helps your site move toward WCAG 2.2 AA conformance and helps you prepare documentation for ADA and European Accessibility Act (EAA) compliance efforts — honestly, without pretending any tool can do the whole job.

What reala11y does

• Scans posts, pages, and same-site URLs against a 26-rule WCAG library, grouped by severity with the exact success criterion and code snippet for each finding.
• Builds a site-wide work list — findings grouped by rule rather than by page, so one missing skip link in your theme reads as a single job affecting twelve pages, not twelve separate issues. Rules found on every page scanned are called out as likely coming from your theme or a template.
• Applies safe, automated fixes at the code level (per-rule on/off, every change logged, one-click rollback).
• Exports findings as CSV — one row per issue with the page it is on, ready to hand to a developer or track in a spreadsheet.
• Lets you mute rules you have judged — muted rules leave the work list but stay in every scan and in the CSV export, listed separately. Triage, not denial.
• Checks content while you write — a block-editor sidebar runs the same rules against the post you are editing.
• Inspects the live page — an author-only inspector overlays findings on the actual front end. Visitors never see it, and logged-out visitors receive zero reala11y code.
• Suggests image alt text with your own AI key (OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google Gemini) — you review every suggestion before it is applied.
• Tests colour contrast — a built-in checker for any foreground/background pair against WCAG AA and AAA.
• Generates documentation — a customizable accessibility statement, a VPAT starter, and a conformance report to document your remediation work.

WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 support

The rule library spans success criteria introduced across WCAG 2.0 (alt text, form labels, language of page, colour contrast), WCAG 2.1, and WCAG 2.2 — including 2.5.8 Target Size, new at level AA in 2.2. The free plugin scans against the full, current WCAG 2.2 AA profile. reala11y Pro adds version-targeted scan profiles — WCAG 2.0 AA (the level referenced by Section 508) and WCAG 2.1 AA (referenced by EN 301 549, the technical standard behind the European Accessibility Act) — for teams that need to report against a specific version.

Help with ADA, EAA and Section 508 compliance efforts

Courts and regulators reference WCAG when they evaluate website accessibility. reala11y detects those WCAG issues, fixes the ones automation can fix safely, and generates the paperwork your compliance effort needs: an accessibility statement template, a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) starter for Section 508, a conformance report, and a CSV of findings for your developer or auditor. It reduces the volume of issues a human auditor must triage — it does not replace the auditor.

What reala11y does NOT do

• 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.
• 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.
• It does not run your site’s JavaScript. reala11y checks the HTML your server sends, so anything a script adds after the page loads — a cookie banner, a slider, a modal, content in a single-page app — is not checked. If a page’s content is built in the browser, the scan says so on that page rather than reporting a low issue count as if it were good news.

External services

reala11y is self-contained and contacts third-party services only as described below, and only when the relevant feature is used.

• WordPress.org — used for plugin update checks, as for any plugin hosted here. No personal data is sent beyond the standard update request.

• 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.

  • OpenAI — Terms: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use/ — Privacy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy/
  • Anthropic — Terms: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms — Privacy: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy
  • Google Gemini — Terms: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms — Privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

• Freemius — the licensing service for the optional, separately sold reala11y Pro add-on. The SDK ships in this plugin so the add-on can license itself, but it sends nothing anywhere unless you explicitly opt in on the one-time screen shown after activation — choosing “Skip” keeps everything local, permanently, and every feature of this free plugin works identically either way. If you do opt in, Freemius receives basic diagnostic data (site URL, WordPress/PHP versions, admin email, and this plugin’s activation state) to power update notices and, for Pro customers, license checks.

  • Freemius — Terms: https://freemius.com/terms/ — Privacy: https://freemius.com/privacy/

See our privacy policy at https://reala11y.com/legal/privacy.

Source code

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.

Why reala11y

• Code-level remediation, not an overlay widget.
• A work list that answers “what should I fix first?” instead of drowning you in per-page findings.
• WCAG 2.2 rules (including 2.5.8 Target Size and the focus criteria), with WCAG 2.0 / 2.1 scan profiles in Pro.
• Bring-your-own AI key — no surprise quotas, no resold tokens.
• Honest claims. We never tell you you’re “fully compliant.”

Links

• Website and documentation: https://reala11y.com
• How reala11y compares to overlay widgets: https://reala11y.com/vs/accessibe and https://reala11y.com/vs/userway
• Our own accessibility statement: https://reala11y.com/accessibility-statement