What they catch and what they miss.
WHAT THEY FIND
Missing alt text Insufficient contrast Missing form labels Heading structure problems Missing language declaration Duplicate identifiers
Genuinely useful, and fast.
WHAT THEY CANNOT FIND
Whether alt text is meaningful or nonsense Whether the heading structure makes logical sense Whether keyboard focus order is sensible Whether error messages are helpful Whether content is understandable
Roughly a third of issues are detectable automatically. The rest require judgement.
HOW TO USE THEM
Run one, fix what it finds, then do the manual checks.
Not as the whole process.
WHAT NOT TO CONCLUDE
That a clean automated report means the site is accessible.
A site can pass every automated check and remain unusable by keyboard.
WHICH TO USE
Several browser extensions do this well. Any established one is adequate.
FREQUENCY
After any significant change, and periodically.
THE PRACTICAL APPROACH
Automated first, because it is quick. Manual second, because it finds what matters.
