ADA compliance checker
The ADA doesn't publish a technical standard for websites — regulators and courts use WCAG instead. Paste a URL and we'll audit the page against WCAG 2.2, rank what's wrong by severity, and explain each fix in plain English.
What "ADA compliance" means for a website
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires places of public accommodation to be usable by people with disabilities, but the law itself never names a technical spec for the web. In practice the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines fill that gap: US Department of Justice settlements, the 2024 Title II rule for state and local government, and Section 508 for federal agencies all point at WCAG Level AA.
That's why this checker measures your page against WCAG 2.2 Level AA success criteria rather than inventing an "ADA score". Clearing the critical and serious failures it reports is the most direct way to reduce both barriers for real users and legal exposure.
What the scan looks at
- Text alternatives
- Images, icons and buttons that carry meaning must have a readable name. We flag missing alt text and controls with no accessible name.
- Forms and labels
- Every input needs a visible label that is programmatically linked to it, so screen reader users know what to type.
- Colour contrast
- Body text needs a 4.5:1 contrast ratio and larger text or UI components need 3:1. We audit contrast with axe-core, including external stylesheets.
- Structure and landmarks
- Heading order, a single H1 and proper landmarks let assistive technology skim your page the way a sighted visitor does.
- ARIA usage
- Broken roles, invalid attributes and duplicate IDs often make a page less accessible than plain HTML. We catch those.
- Page basics
- A descriptive page title and a declared language are two of the cheapest WCAG wins, and two of the most commonly missed.
Where automated checks stop
No scanner makes a site ADA compliant on its own. Automated rules catch the machine-detectable subset of WCAG — typically around a third of real failures. Judgement calls still need a person:
- Whether alt text actually describes the image.
- Whether keyboard focus order matches the visual order.
- Whether error messages and status updates are announced.
- Whether video captions and transcripts are accurate.
Use the report as your first pass, then test with a keyboard and a screen reader.