Since the European Accessibility Act came into force, the usual responses have been: install an overlay widget, run pages through a free online checker, or commission a manual audit. Here's the honest breakdown against all three.
Overlay widgets inject JavaScript that tries to patch symptoms in the visitor's browser — the underlying HTML stays broken, and overlays now appear in accessibility complaints more often than they prevent them. Free checkers test one URL at a time, in someone's spare tab, and leave nothing on file. Manual audits are the gold standard and priced like it — thousands per site, stale within months. WP Accessibility Auditor (this site) sits in WordPress itself: it scans every page for the auditable WCAG basics, hands your team plain-English fixes, and documents the work in a branded, dated report — audit after audit.
| Feature | WP Accessibility Auditor | Overlay widgets | Free online checkers | Manual audit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issues fixed at source | ✓ Findings with fixes | ✗ Patched in JS only | ◐ Found, not tracked | ✓ Recommendations |
| Whole site covered | ✓ Every page, one scan | ✓ Script on every page | ✗ One URL at a time | ◐ A sample of pages |
| Evidence on paper | ✓ Branded, dated report | ✗ Nothing | ✗ A browser tab | ✓ The report is the product |
| WCAG 2.1 AA criterion refs | ✓ On every finding | ✗ | ◐ Varies by tool | ✓ |
| Ongoing, not one-off | ✓ Weekly rescans + trend (Pro) | ◐ Runs, fixes nothing | ✗ Whenever someone remembers | ✗ Stale in months |
| Human judgement included | ✗ Automated checks only | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ The whole point |
| Front-end footprint | ✓ None | ✗ Third-party JS, every load | ✓ None | ✓ None |
| Legal optics | ✓ Documented ongoing work | ✗ Named in complaints | ◐ Undocumented effort | ✓ Strong, while fresh |
| Client-ready branding | ✓ Your logo & colours | ✗ Their logo, on your site | ✗ | ◐ The auditor's brand |
| Cost | From $49/yr · $599 lifetime | $490+/yr per site | Free — plus the hours | $2,000–$10,000 per site |
You're facing litigation or a formal conformance claim — commission a manual audit with real assistive-technology testing; automated checks are the preparation for that, not the substitute. Or you maintain one small site, check it by hand quarterly, and keep your own notes.
You look after WordPress sites that the European Accessibility Act now touches, and you need the practical middle ground: find the auditable WCAG issues on every page, fix them at source, and keep dated, branded evidence of the work — at a price that works across a whole client fleet. That's us.
Automated checks cover the auditable subset of WCAG 2.1 AA — the criteria a machine can test. Full conformance also needs human testing with real assistive technology. The auditor is honest about that line, on the report itself.