WCAG Accessibility Audit: axe-core Scan for EAA & ADA

What does WCAG Accessibility Audit do?

WCAG Accessibility Audit loads every page you list, or a whole site read from its sitemap, in a real headless Chrome and runs the complete axe-core rule set on it. axe-core is the open-source accessibility engine used inside most professional testing tools. For each page you get every WCAG violation, the success criterion it breaks (for example 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum), Level AA), its impact, the exact failing elements (CSS selector, HTML snippet and what to fix) and a link to Deque's guide on fixing it.

It is built for the European Accessibility Act (EAA, applying since 28 June 2025) and US ADA website claims. Both point to WCAG 2.1 Level AA: the EAA through the European standard EN 301 549, and the ADA through the US Department of Justice's 2024 rule for state and local government websites. This Actor tests WCAG 2.2 A and AA by default (2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 rules), with AAA and best-practice rules as options.

You only pay for pages that were checked. Pages that are missing, broken, blocked by robots.txt, not HTML, or invalid addresses are listed free with the reason.

To try it, paste your home page into Pages to check, tick Read the sitemap, and press Start.

Why use it?

• 🔎 The full axe-core rule set, not a subset. Lighthouse's accessibility score runs only part of axe-core. This runs every rule for the WCAG level you choose.
• 🎯 Exact failing elements. Each violation lists the CSS selector and HTML of the elements that fail, and the fix axe suggests. Content inside iframes is checked too.
• 📋 WCAG success criteria on every finding, by number and name, with the level (A, AA, AAA). Best-practice rules are labelled as "not a WCAG requirement" so they are never confused with legal requirements.
• 🧾 "Needs review" kept apart. Where axe can't decide (for example text over a background image), the item goes in a separate list for a person to check. It is never counted as a failure.
• 🌐 Whole-site audits from one address. Reads robots.txt and sitemap.xml, including sitemap indexes and .gz sitemaps.
• 🧭 A site summary: totals by impact, the worst pages, the most common violations and the WCAG criteria failed across the site.
• 📱 Desktop or mobile. Mobile emulates a phone screen with touch, which catches mobile-only problems such as small touch targets.
• 💸 Failures are free, and you can cap the cost of any run.
• 🤖 Agent-ready. Works as a tool in the Apify MCP server, so AI assistants can call it.
• ⏱️ Everything the Apify platform gives you: schedules (a monthly re-check), API access, webhooks, and exports to JSON, CSV, Excel or Google Sheets.

Who is it for?

• Web agencies and developers checking client sites before launch and after changes, or prospecting with an accessibility report.
• Online shops and service businesses selling into the EU that now fall under the European Accessibility Act.
• US businesses that want to find and fix the common, machine-detectable problems that ADA website claims cite.
• Accessibility consultants who want a fast automated first pass across a whole site before their manual review.

How to check a website for accessibility

1. Open the Actor and paste one or more page addresses into Pages to check.
2. To check the whole site, tick Read the sitemap and check the whole site and set Most pages to check.
3. Choose the WCAG level (AA is right for the EAA and ADA) and Desktop or Mobile phone.
4. Press Start. Most pages take a few seconds each; pages on the same site are loaded at most once every 2 seconds.
5. Open the Output tab: Pages for the overview, Violations for every problem with its elements, Needs review for the items a person should check, and Site summary for the roll-up. Download as CSV or Excel, or send it to Google Sheets.

How much does an accessibility audit cost?

You pay per page audit: one page checked once.

	Price
Page audit	$0.005 each ($5 per 1,000), lower on Apify's Silver and Gold plans
Run start	Apify's standard tiny start fee
Failed, blocked, non-HTML or invalid addresses	Free

Examples: a 50-page site is about $0.25. A 500-page site is about $2.50. Apify's free plan includes monthly credit, enough for many test audits.

You can set a maximum cost per run when you start it. The Actor stops cleanly before it would go over, and you keep every result it finished.

Input example

{
    "startUrls": ["https://www.abs.gov.au"],
    "crawlSitemap": true,
    "maxPages": 5,
    "wcagLevel": "AA",
    "includeBestPractices": false,
    "device": "desktop"
}

Output example

One row per page (shortened). This is the W3C's deliberately inaccessible demo page, checked on mobile:

{
    "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/demos/bad/before/home.html",
    "status": "ok",
    "pageTitle": "Welcome to CityLights! [Inaccessible Home Page]",
    "standard": "WCAG 2.2 AA + best practices",
    "issueCount": 69,
    "violatedRules": 8,
    "critical": 34,
    "serious": 12,
    "moderate": 23,
    "minor": 0,
    "failedCriteria": ["1.1.1 Non-text Content", "1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)", "2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context)", "2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum)", "3.1.1 Language of Page", "4.1.2 Name, Role, Value"],
    "needsReviewRules": 1,
    "needsReviewElements": 2,
    "passedRules": 23,
    "violations": [
        {
            "ruleId": "image-alt",
            "wcag": "1.1.1 Non-text Content (Level A)",
            "wcagCriteria": [{ "id": "1.1.1", "name": "Non-text Content", "level": "A" }],
            "wcagLevel": "A",
            "impact": "critical",
            "help": "Images must have alternative text",
            "helpUrl": "https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.14/image-alt?application=axeAPI",
            "elementCount": 33,
            "elements": [
                {
                    "selector": "img[src$=\"border_left_top.gif\"]",
                    "html": "<img src=\"./img/border_left_top.gif\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\">",
                    "failureSummary": "Fix any of the following: Element does not have an alt attribute ..."
                }
            ]
        }
    ],
    "needsReview": [
        { "ruleId": "color-contrast", "wcag": "1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) (Level AA)", "impact": "serious", "elementCount": 2 }
    ],
    "axeVersion": "4.14.0",
    "errorCode": null
}

A page that could not be checked comes back free, with the reason:

{ "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/demos/bad/this-page-does-not-exist.html", "status": "failed", "httpStatus": 404, "errorCode": "HTTP_404", "errorMessage": "The server answered 404. Not charged." }

The Site summary (key-value store record OUTPUT) holds totals by impact, the five worst pages, the ten most common violations with their WCAG criteria, every criterion failed with the number of pages, and a short note on what automated testing can and can't show.

Output fields

Field	Meaning
issueCount, critical, serious, moderate, minor	Failing elements in total and by axe impact
violatedRules, passedRules	How many axe rules the page fails and passes
failedCriteria	WCAG success criteria with at least one violation
violations	Every violated rule, most severe first: WCAG criteria and level, impact, help text, fix link, element count and the first failing elements
needsReview, needsReviewRules, needsReviewElements	Items axe could not decide. A person should check them. Not failures
standard, axeVersion	What was tested and with which axe-core version
status, errorCode, errorMessage	ok rows are charged; failed and skipped rows are not

FAQ

Is this a compliance certificate? No. Automated testing can check only part of WCAG. Many success criteria need a person to judge, such as whether alternative text is meaningful, whether everything works with a keyboard alone, and whether captions are accurate. Every violation this Actor reports is a real failure worth fixing, but a page with no violations has not been shown to conform. Use it to find and fix the machine-detectable problems fast, then have a person test the rest. It is not a conformance certificate, an accessibility statement or legal advice.

What is "needs review"? Places where axe-core found something it could not decide automatically, for example text on a background image whose contrast it can't measure. They are listed separately so a person can check them, and are never counted as failures.

How is this different from the accessibility score in Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights? Lighthouse runs a subset of axe-core's rules and turns them into a score. This Actor runs every axe-core rule for your chosen WCAG level and lists each failing element with its WCAG criterion. For speed and SEO scores, see the Lighthouse Actor under Related tools.

Which WCAG version does it test? WCAG 2.2, which includes all of 2.0 and 2.1. The EAA and the US Department of Justice rule reference WCAG 2.1 AA; WCAG 2.2 AA adds a few criteria on top (such as 2.5.8 Target Size), so a 2.2 AA run includes every axe-core rule for 2.1 AA as well.

Can it check pages behind a login? No. It checks public pages only.

Does it respect robots.txt? Yes. Pages a site's robots.txt asks bots not to load are skipped and not charged. Each site is loaded one page at a time, at most once every 2 seconds. A few sites block automated sitemap readers outright; the run then checks the addresses you gave and says so in the log.

Is it legal? The Actor loads each public page once, as a browser would, and checks it. Audit sites you own, manage, or have permission to test.

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes. Save your input as a task and add an Apify schedule, for example on the first of each month. Add a webhook or the Google Sheets integration to get the results where you work.

Something went wrong. Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab with the run link. Rows with status: "failed" include an error code that usually explains it: the page timed out, returned an error, or isn't a web page.

Related tools

• Bulk Lighthouse Site Audit: speed, SEO, accessibility and best-practice scores with Core Web Vitals, for a list of pages or a whole sitemap.
• Broken Link & Sitemap Health Checker: broken links, redirect chains, failing sitemap entries and pages missing from the sitemap.