How we scan websites

Accessibility findings are mapped to WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria, the technical standard most widely referenced for web accessibility. Where a check relates to a Level AAA criterion (such as reading level) we say so on the finding.

We report technical conditions against that standard. We do not determine whether any law applies to your organisation, or whether you meet it. Legal obligations depend on the entity, the service, the circumstances and the jurisdiction. Authoritative guidance is published at ADA.gov, which itself notes that its guidance is not a binding substitute for the underlying law.

These conditions can be detected reliably by software, so we report them as detected findings.

• Is the site online, and how fast does it respond
• HTTPS, security certificate validity and expiry
• Domain registration and expiry
• Broken internal and external links, and redirect problems
• robots.txt, sitemap.xml, canonical tags and indexability
• Page titles, descriptions, headings and duplicate metadata
• Mobile viewport and responsive layout signals
• Page weight, caching and load time
• Missing image text alternatives (WCAG 1.1.1)
• Form fields with no label (WCAG 3.3.2)
• Controls with no accessible name (WCAG 4.1.2)
• Missing page language (WCAG 3.1.1)
• Heading structure and landmarks (WCAG 1.3.1)
• Skip links and focus order (WCAG 2.4.1, 2.4.3)
• Untitled embedded frames, uncaptioned media (WCAG 1.2.2)
• Auto-playing, moving or self-refreshing content (WCAG 2.2.1, 2.2.2)
• Reading grade level and sentence length (WCAG 3.1.5)

Automated testing covers only part of accessibility. These items are surfaced as manual review recommended. They are never counted as failures and never affect your score.

• Whether image descriptions actually describe the image
• Whether the heading structure is meaningful, not just valid
• Whether the whole site can really be operated with a keyboard
• Whether the screen-reader experience makes sense end to end
• Whether instructions, forms and error messages are genuinely understandable
• Whether custom widgets work with assistive technology
• Colour contrast in content rendered by scripts or images

• High — an automated test directly detected the condition, and we can show you the markup.
• Medium — a strong automated indication, but context could change the conclusion. Verify before acting.
• Low — a possible issue, or something only a person can judge.

Every detected finding carries the pages it was found on, how many times it occurred, and the snippet or measurement that triggered it. If we cannot show you evidence, we do not report it as detected.

Each category earns points out of a fixed maximum: availability 20, security certificate 15, page speed 15, search visibility 15, mobile 10, links 10, accessibility 5, domain 5, search engine access 3, sitemap 2. Findings deduct points within their own category, weighted by severity. Your overall score is the total points earned as a percentage of the total available, so a category that could not be checked is never counted as a pass.

Paid plans get an availability and certificate check every day at 06:00 UTC. Starter runs a full health scan every Monday at 06:00 UTC; Business and Pro run one every day at 06:00 UTC. Each scan follows links from your homepage within the same domain, up to your plan's page budget, with concurrency limits and timeouts so we never overload your server. We identify ourselves in our requests, skip binary files, and stop at your page cap.

We read the HTML your server returns. Content that only appears after a visitor interacts with the page, content rendered entirely by scripts in the browser, and anything behind a login are outside what we can see. Timings are measured from our servers, not from your visitors' devices.

Automated scans identify technical conditions and potential accessibility issues. They do not constitute legal advice, an ADA certification, or a guarantee that a website or document complies with all applicable laws or accessibility requirements. Some barriers can only be found by a person testing the page.