Website Accessibility Checker: WCAG 2.2 & EAA Audit (axe-core)

Check web pages, or whole websites, for WCAG accessibility problems with axe-core, the open-source engine used by most accessibility tools, running in a real headless Chrome browser.

For every page you get:

• an accessibility score (0-100) and the number of failed rules and failing elements
• issues by severity: critical, serious, moderate, minor
• the WCAG success criteria that fail (e.g. 1.1.1, 1.4.3, 2.4.4) and their level (A / AA / AAA)
• each violation with a plain explanation, a link to the fix guide, and the offending elements (CSS selector, HTML snippet and what to fix)
• "needs review" items that a human should check (e.g. text over images)
• a site summary (average score, worst issues across pages) when you audit several pages of the same site

Pick WCAG 2.0, 2.1 or 2.2, level A, AA or AAA, desktop or mobile viewport, and optionally axe-core best practices.

What does Website Accessibility Checker do?

Website Accessibility Checker audits web pages or whole sites for WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 accessibility issues with axe-core in a real browser. Each violation comes with severity, WCAG success criterion, the offending element and how to fix it, plus a score and site summary, which helps with European Accessibility Act (EAA) compliance work. Automated checks find a part of WCAG issues, not all of them.

How to use Website Accessibility Checker

1. Click Try for free on this page (a free Apify account is enough to start).
2. Fill in the input (see the examples below) or keep the prefilled example.
3. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
4. Download the results from the Output tab as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them with the Apify API.
5. Optional: create a Schedule to run it daily or weekly, and connect a webhook or an integration (Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack).

Why now: the European Accessibility Act

Since 28 June 2025 the European Accessibility Act (EAA) requires many websites and online shops selling in the EU to be accessible, using EN 301 549, which points to WCAG 2.1 AA. This Actor lets agencies, developers and e-commerce teams find the issues that automated testing can detect, across many pages, in minutes.

Use cases

• Agencies: audit a prospect's or client's website and show concrete, prioritised issues
• E-commerce and SaaS: check key templates (home, category, product, checkout entry, signup) before and after releases
• Monitoring: schedule weekly runs and compare scores over time
• Lead generation for accessibility services: score a list of company websites

Input

{
  "urls": ["https://www.example.com/", "https://www.example.com/products/"],
  "wcagLevel": "wcag21aa",
  "crawlSameSite": true,
  "maxPagesPerSite": 10,
  "viewport": "desktop"
}

URLs can also come from an Apify dataset or a CSV / Google Sheet by URL (URL field = the column with the URL).

Output (one row per page, shortened)

{
  "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/demos/bad/before/home.html",
  "status": "ok",
  "title": "Welcome to CityLights! [Inaccessible Home Page]",
  "score": 27,
  "violationRules": 5,
  "violationElements": 44,
  "critical": 34,
  "serious": 10,
  "moderate": 0,
  "minor": 0,
  "failedWcagCriteria": ["1.1.1", "1.4.3", "2.4.4", "3.1.1", "4.1.2"],
  "violations": [
    {
      "id": "image-alt",
      "impact": "critical",
      "help": "Images must have alternative text",
      "helpUrl": "https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.14/image-alt",
      "wcagCriteria": ["1.1.1"],
      "wcagLevel": "A",
      "nodesCount": 33,
      "nodes": [
        { "target": "img[src$=\"border_left_top.gif\"]", "html": "<img src=\"./img/border_left_top.gif\">", "failureSummary": "Fix any of the following: Element does not have an alt attribute ..." }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "needsReview": [],
  "passedRules": 18,
  "axeVersion": "4.14.0"
}

Every row has the same keys. Pages that cannot be audited have status: "failed" or "blocked_by_robots" and an error, and are not charged. The SITE_SUMMARY record in the key-value store has one summary per site (pages audited, average score, totals by severity, top 15 violations with how many pages they affect); RUN_SUMMARY has the run totals.

Pricing

Pay per event: USD 0.005 per page audited (USD 5 per 1,000 pages) plus USD 0.001 per run start (per GB of memory; it covers launching the browser). Failed pages and pages blocked by robots.txt are free. Your "max charge per run" is respected: the Actor stops opening pages when the next one would exceed it. A real browser is used for every page, which is why this costs more than plain-HTTP tools.

Good to know

• Automated testing finds part of the problems, not all. axe-core reports no false positives by design, but issues like meaningful alt text, logical reading order or keyboard traps need a human review. A score of 100 does not mean a site is fully WCAG-compliant or legally compliant.
• The browser does not download images, video and fonts (not needed by the rules, faster and lighter). Colour-contrast checks on text over images therefore go to "needs review".
• robots.txt is respected: it is checked for every page and every redirect before the browser opens the page, with an identifiable user agent (AccessibilityAuditBot). Each site gets at most one page every 1.5 seconds. Login-protected pages are not audited.
• Memory: 1 GB (the minimum: heavy news and shop pages crash a browser with less) audits 2 pages in parallel; give 2-4 GB for 3-4 pages in parallel.

Credits and licences

Accessibility rules engine: axe-core by Deque Systems, Inc., used unmodified, licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (source: https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core). See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md in the Actor source. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by Deque Systems or the W3C.

FAQ

Can I call it from my own code or from an AI agent? Yes. Start runs and fetch results with the Apify API or the JavaScript / Python clients, or use it as a tool from Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients through the Apify MCP server (mcp.apify.com).

Can I run it automatically? Yes. Create a Schedule in Apify Console (for example every morning) and add a webhook or an integration to get the results where you need them.

Which export formats are available? JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, RSS and HTML table, from the Output tab or the API.

What does it cost? See the Pricing section above. You only pay for the events listed there.