Free WCAG checker
Paste in a page address and this free WCAG checker tests it against WCAG 2.1 Level AA in about fifteen seconds. No signup. You see how many issues it found, how many separate fixes they come down to, and the five that matter most.
One page per check · Runs axe-core in a real browser · Nothing is installed on your site
What the checker tests
The page is loaded in a real Chromium browser and given time to finish rendering, so scripts, fonts and client-side themes are in place before anything is measured. Then axe-core, Deque’s open-source accessibility testing engine, runs 69 rules mapped to WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 Level A and AA, plus 30 best-practice rules.
A raw axe-core run lists every failing element separately. This checker groups them first. Elements that fail the same rule in the same way are counted as one fix, because they usually share one piece of code. Across the 167 Shopify stores I scanned, the median store had 35 flagged elements that came down to 4 fixes.
Where axe-core can’t decide, for example text over a background image, the result is listed as “needs a human look” and never counted as a failure.
Free summary vs the full report
| What you see | Free summary | Full report (email) |
|---|---|---|
| Total issues and number of fixes | Yes | Yes |
| Issues by severity | Yes | Yes |
| The five issues that matter most | Named | Named and explained |
| Every issue, with the failing code | No | Yes |
| Exact passing colours for contrast failures | No | Yes |
| Checks that need a human look | Count only | Listed |
The full report is a link you can forward to whoever maintains your theme. It is not indexed by search engines.
Using it on a Shopify or any online store
It works on any public page, including Shopify stores. To get a fair picture of a store, check three pages: the home page, a collection page and a product page. Problems in shared theme code, such as the header, footer and product cards, show up on all of them and are fixed once.
If you want to know what to expect first, I’ve published the most common Shopify accessibility issues from real scan data. Low colour contrast, links with no readable text and images with no alt text lead the list.
What a free WCAG checker can’t tell you
- Whether you’re compliant. Automated testing covers part of WCAG. No tool, free or paid, can certify a site.
- Whether things make sense. It can check that a button has a label, not that the label is right.
- Whether a whole journey works. Adding to cart and checking out with only a keyboard or a screen reader needs a person to try it.
- Anything past this one page. Each check covers the page you enter. A few checks per site are allowed each day.
For the whole store scanned and fixed, get in touch.
Questions about the free checker
Yes. There is no account, no card and no trial. You paste one page address and get the summary. The full report costs an email address, and nothing is sent to that address unless you ask for it.
WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA, using 69 axe-core rules, plus 30 best-practice rules that are reported separately and never counted as failures. It does not yet test the success criteria added in WCAG 2.2.
No, and no automated tool can tell you that. Automated checks find a real but limited subset of WCAG failures. Things like whether a checkout can be completed with a screen reader, or whether alt text describes the image, need a person to test.
Yes, a few pages per site each day, one at a time. For a whole store, get in touch and I will scan every template and quote the fixes.
No. It opens the page in a normal browser, the same way a visitor would, and reads it. Nothing is added to your site, and the fixes it points to are edits to your own theme code, not an overlay widget.