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Build up your accessibility toolbox

Digital accessibility tools can help ensure that the content you create is meeting accessibility guidelines. This page lists a variety of tools that designers, developers, and others can use to make web content more accessible. We have focused on open source tools, as they are the easiest to adopt and scale for most organizations.

Authoring Anchor link

An authoring tool is software that can be used to create or modify content for use by others. These tools should allow authors to create accessible content from the beginning, without having to come up with a workaround. Output should conform to WCAG Level A and Level AA Success Criteria and Conformance Requirements. These are some authoring tools we recommend.

  • Sa11y: This is an accessibility quality assurance assistant that visually highlights common accessibility and usability issues on a web page.
  • Editoria11y: This highlights common issues inline within the content editor.
  • Drupal: This is a content management system and has modules that can enhance its accessibility.

Automated testing Anchor link

Automated accessibility testing should occur at different stages when creating digital content, from design to development. We recommend getting started with these tools and learning more about how to implement automated testing.

  • Cypress with axe core: This combines the JavaScript testing framework of Cypress with the popular accessibility testing engine, axe core.
  • Pa11y CI: This is a continuous integration (CI) runner that can test a few pages or an entire site for accessibility issues.

Bookmarklets Anchor link

Bookmarklets provide quick, automated checks for accessibility issues. They can test for a wide variety of issues, such as testing interactive elements, focus, touch events, and reading order. These are some of the bookmarklets that we recommend, but there are many more out there!

  • Accessibility and Contrast Bookmarklet: Analyze the contrast of the text on a page and highlight elements which may have readability issues.
  • ANDI by SSA.gov: A free accessibility testing tool that offers detection of problems, checks for 508 compliance and shows what a screen reader will typically say for interactive elements. It also gives realistic recommendations to improve accessibility.
  • Sa11y: Is also available as a bookmarklet.
  • Reading Order Bookmarklet: Running this bookmarklet will visually number the reading order in which screen-reading software will announce different parts of the page to check to see that it matches the visual order.
  • W3C markup validator: Checking your HTML for errors catches a lot of accessibility issues, especially with forms and images.

Page level evaluation tools Anchor link

Browser extensions can provide powerful tools for analyzing page accessibility.

Color contrast checker Anchor link

Color contrast is an important part of accessibility. Text and background colors must have enough contrast so that the content on the page can be easily seen. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2 suggest a minimum contrast of 4:5:1. W3C has an Understanding SC 1.4.3 page that explains this in greater detail. These tools can help quickly check if the colors on a page meet these guidelines.

Design tool integrations Anchor link

Different design tools can be added to Figma, Sketch, and Storybook to ensure that accessibility criteria is being met. There are plenty of different integrations available, but these are the ones we recommend to start with.

Figma Anchor link

Sketch Anchor link

Storybook Anchor link

  • Storybook-addon-a11y: A Storybook addon which uses axe to improve the accessibility of UI components.
  • Aria Live: A utility tool for inspecting announcements of ARIA live regions

EPUB Anchor link

An electronic publication (EPUB) is an e-book file format and is a technical standard set by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). These are some helpful tools that can check for accessibility in this format.

  • EPUBCheck: The official conformance checker for EPUB publications, maintained by the DAISY Consortium on behalf of W3C
  • Ace, by DAISY: Assists with the evaluation of accessibility features of EPUB publications and is also maintained by the DAISY Consortium.

Evaluation Anchor link

Evaluation tools are software programs or online services that can help determine if your website content meets accessibility guidelines. These are the tools we recommend to help evaluate content at a site or page level.

Site level evaluation tools Anchor link

  • Domain Accessibility Audit: This web application by MSU College of Natural Science automatically crawls websites and checks for accessibility violations. It's based on axe by Deque Systems, Inc.
  • Pa11y: A popular command-line interface which loads web pages and highlights any accessibility issues it finds.

PDF Anchor link

A portable document format (PDF) is a file format that helps share and print documents. They can be opened and viewed on any device. Although PDFs should generally be avoided, it is possible to create files that meet section 508 compliance. These are some tools we recommend to make a PDF accessible.

  • PAVE: Automatically makes corrections to a PDF while leaving the visual representation unchanged.
  • VeraPDF: Will evaluate all parts of a PDF and conformance levels.
  • simplA11yPDFCrawler: Analyzes PDF documents and detects accessibility issues.

Simulators that help build empathy Anchor link

When working to make content accessible, it can be helpful to learn how people with disabilities experience the web. These simulators help develop an understanding of how to make content accessible.

Screen readers Anchor link

Screen readers help people who are blind or visually impaired read text on a screen. We recommend using these common screen readers and testing your content with multiple screen readers and devices. We are including both free and proprietary options, as it is important for compliance testing.

  • JAWS (Job Access With Speech): This is a popular, proprietary screen reader provides speech and Braille output for Windows. It requires a paid license to run.
  • NVDA: (Non-Visual Desktop Access): This is another common screen reader for Windows that's open source and available for free.
  • Microsoft Narrator Is a proprietary screen reader that is included with Windows.
  • VoiceOver: While not open source, VoiceOver is a screen reader that's a default on all Apple devices (desktop and mobile) and gives descriptions in braille.
  • Google Talkback: A Google screen reader included on Android devices. All Android devices come with this screen reader by default. It is also released with an open source license.

Learn more about screen reader testing.

Resources Anchor link

These are a few other lists that contain helpful accessibility tools.

Next Steps Anchor link

When you are ready to learn more, here are some further guides and resources that may help: