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How to Scan a Website for Accessibility Issues and WCAG Violations

Accessibility scans help surface potential issues, but they cannot prove a site is accessible or WCAG-conformant. Learn how to scope, scan, review, and document an evaluation.
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Use an accessibility evaluation tool to find potential problems, then investigate them with knowledgeable human review against the WCAG requirements that apply to your project. A scan is a starting point—not proof that a site is accessible or WCAG-conformant. W3C says evaluation tools “can not determine accessibility, they can only assist in doing so.”

What a website accessibility scan can—and cannot—tell you

Automated checkers can quickly flag issues worth investigating. Their results are leads for evaluation, not a complete assessment of a website. Tools may miss barriers or produce false or misleading results, and some accessibility questions require a person to assess the page in context. W3C’s tool-selection guidance makes that distinction explicit; its evaluation overview says knowledgeable human evaluation is required to determine whether a site is accessible.

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Consequently, a clean report, high score, or zero automated findings does not establish WCAG conformance. Treat the report as a work queue: confirm each finding, examine areas that automation cannot reliably judge, and record what you checked.

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How to scan your website for accessibility issues

This practical sequence is a way to organize an evaluation; it is not a W3C-mandated scan sequence. Adapt it to the site’s size, complexity, and evaluation purpose.

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  1. Define the scope. Identify the site or application, representative page types and states, content types, and authenticated areas that matter. Decide whether you need a quick check to prioritize work or a broader conformance evaluation.
  2. Choose a tool that fits that scope. Check what it evaluates—one page, samples, a whole site, or password-protected pages—and which standards, file types, platforms, and reporting features it supports. Consider how it fits your development workflow and whether your team has the skills to interpret its results.
  3. Run an appropriate automated check. Use the findings to identify potential issues and prioritize investigation. Do not present a scan as a pass/fail verdict on the entire site.
  4. Review the findings and evaluate beyond them. Confirm whether each reported issue is present and understand its context. Use human evaluation for accessibility aspects the tool cannot determine; guided or manual testing features may help your team work through those checks.
  5. Record the evaluation. Note the scope, method, findings, and how each finding was resolved, confirmed, or otherwise dispositioned. A report is more useful when readers can tell what was and was not evaluated.
  6. Repeat as the site changes. W3C recommends evaluating early and throughout design and development, when issues can be easier to address. For an existing site, use the initial scan to prioritize work and plan broader evaluation rather than treating it as the last check.

How to check a website for WCAG violations

First clarify what you mean by “violation.” A tool can report potential issues related to accessibility requirements, but its output alone does not establish that the site violates—or conforms to—WCAG. A conformance conclusion requires a defined evaluation, not just a scan result.

For a formal WCAG conformance evaluation, W3C describes the WCAG-EM methodology. Its conformance evaluation reporting tool helps structure evaluation steps and produce a report from information supplied by an evaluator; it does not perform the checks for you. Record the scope and method alongside findings so the conclusion is understandable and bounded by what was actually evaluated.

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How to choose an accessibility evaluation tool

There is no single tool choice that fits every site. W3C’s selection guidance identifies differences in evaluation purpose, product type, licensing, supported standards, file types, scope, platform, and reporting. Compare tools against your site and team rather than choosing by a score alone.

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  • Coverage and access: Does it handle the pages, page states, content types, and authenticated areas in scope? Is it meant for a single page, samples, or a whole site?
  • Evaluation approach: Is it automated, manual, or guided? What can it check, and which aspects still need a knowledgeable person?
  • Standards and workflow: Which standards does it support, and how does it fit your platform and development process?
  • Report usefulness: Does the report provide enough issue context for your team to investigate, prioritize, and record dispositions?
  • Team capability: Can the people doing the evaluation interpret results and carry out the required human review?

W3C’s Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List is a directory for discovering options, not a product endorsement. The page reported 119 tools when accessed in 2026; entries and vendor descriptions can change. W3C says it does not endorse specific products.

Can an accessibility checker tell you if your website is compliant?

No. A checker can assist an evaluation by surfacing potential problems, but it cannot by itself establish that a site is accessible or WCAG-conformant. A defensible conformance conclusion depends on a defined evaluation, appropriate human review, and a clear account of the scope and method. If your goal is formal reporting, use WCAG-EM as the evaluation methodology and treat W3C’s reporting tool as a way to structure the report—not as an automated evaluator.

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ScreenshotNeo is a website screenshot API and MCP server from Yorker Media. A GET request can return a PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF; it is useful for capturing pages, but a screenshot is not an accessibility evaluation and cannot identify WCAG violations. Before a capture, ScreenshotNeo can accept the cookie or consent banner like a visitor and remove more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets; each step can be turned off. Bot checks and CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits cost nothing, with the result stated in response headers. Its MCP server provides screenshot tools for AI agents using Claude, Cursor, or other MCP clients. The free plan includes 1,000 shots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots. See the ScreenshotNeo API documentation.

curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webp

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For accessibility work, use a capture as visual context alongside—not instead of—an evaluation tool and human review. Learn more at ScreenshotNeo, or sign up free for 1,000 screenshots a month with no card.

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