Accessibility Compliance Calculator

Color Contrast Score (1-100):

Images with Alt Text (%):

Keyboard Navigation Usability (1-100):

Form Labels & Instructions (%)

Worried About ADA Compliance? Use Our Free Accessibility Calculator to Check Your Website in 2025

An accessibility compliance calculator is a simple yet powerful tool that helps you check if your website is usable for everyone, including people with disabilities. In today’s digital world, making sure your website is accessible isn’t just a good idea; it’s often a legal requirement.

These calculators provide a quick, high-level look at your site’s health, spotting common issues that could prevent someone from navigating your content. Think of it as a first-aid kit for your website’s accessibility.

Why Accessibility Matters

Creating an accessible website means you’re building a welcoming and inclusive space for all users. This isn’t just about doing the right thing; it’s about reaching a wider audience and avoiding potential legal issues.

Expanded Audience: Over a billion people worldwide have some form of disability. By making your site accessible, you open your business to a massive, untapped market.
Improved User Experience (UX): Many accessibility best practices—like clear navigation and high-contrast text—benefit all users, not just those with disabilities. A website that’s easy to use for a screen reader is often easier for everyone.
SEO Benefits: Search engines like Google favor websites that are well-structured and easy to crawl. Many accessibility features, like proper headings and alt text for images, align perfectly with strong SEO practices.
Legal Protection: In many countries, accessibility is a legal mandate. Failing to comply with standards like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) can lead to lawsuits and fines. A calculator can help you understand your risk.

How an Accessibility Compliance Calculator Works

At its core, an accessibility calculator takes key metrics about your website and gives you an overall “score” or assessment. While it can’t replace a full-scale accessibility audit, it’s an excellent starting point.

The calculator you used for this page, for example, is based on four fundamental categories that represent some of the most common accessibility issues.

Color Contrast: This checks if the text on your site is easy to read against its background. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have specific contrast ratio requirements. A low score here might indicate that users with low vision or color blindness are struggling to read your content.
Images with Alt Text: Alternative text (or alt text) is a short, descriptive phrase for an image. It’s read aloud by screen readers, allowing visually impaired users to understand what’s on the page. A high score means your images are properly described, making your site more usable for everyone.
Keyboard Navigation: Many users, including those with motor disabilities, navigate websites using only a keyboard. A site that can’t be fully used with a keyboard—meaning you can’t tab through links, buttons, and forms—is a major accessibility barrier.
Form Labels & Instructions: When forms aren’t properly labeled, screen reader users can’t tell what information they’re supposed to enter. Ensuring every field has a clear label is a foundational element of accessibility.

By combining these scores, the calculator gives you a weighted average, providing a snapshot of your site’s overall health. A good score shows you’re on the right track, while a low score highlights urgent issues that need your attention.

Beyond the Calculator: A Deeper Dive into Compliance

While a calculator is a great first step, achieving true accessibility requires a more comprehensive approach.

Manual Testing: Automated tools can only catch about 30% of accessibility issues. Manual checks, performed by people, are essential to find problems like illogical heading structures, confusing link text, or a poor user flow.
Inclusive Design: Accessibility isn’t just a technical checklist; it’s a design philosophy. Building an inclusive digital experience from the ground up, with accessibility in mind from the very beginning, is far more effective than trying to fix a broken site later. This is part of a practice often called Universal Design.
Understanding WCAG: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the international standard for web accessibility. They have three levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA. Most governments and organizations aim for WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which strikes a balance between accessibility and practicality. To fully understand your compliance, you’ll need to learn about the WCAG success criteria and how they apply to your content.

The Role of AI and LLMs in Accessibility

With the rise of large language models (LLMs) and AI, the field of accessibility is evolving. While AI can’t replace human expertise, it’s being used to automate tasks that were once manual and time-consuming.

Automated Audits: Tools powered by AI can crawl millions of pages to identify patterns and flag accessibility issues at scale. This is much faster than a human team.
Automated Remediation: Some platforms are now using AI to automatically fix certain issues, like adding alt text to simple images or correcting minor code errors.
Content Generation: AI can help you write more accessible content. For instance, an LLM can be prompted to write clear, concise language or generate accurate transcripts and captions for video content.

However, relying solely on AI is risky. AI can be wrong, and it can miss subtle issues that a human expert would spot immediately. The best approach is a hybrid one: use automated tools for speed and efficiency, and rely on human expertise for complex issues and quality assurance.

Conclusion: Starting Your Accessibility Journey

Using an accessibility compliance calculator is the perfect way to begin your journey toward a more inclusive website. It gives you a clear, measurable snapshot of where you stand and what you need to focus on. Whether you’re a business owner, a developer, or a content creator, making your digital space accessible is a rewarding effort that benefits everyone. Start with a simple check, understand your score, and take the first step toward building a more inclusive web.

FAQs

1. What is a website accessibility checker?

An accessibility checker is an automated tool that scans a website for common accessibility issues. It evaluates content against standards like WCAG to identify problems such as missing alt text, low color contrast, and improper form labels. It provides a quick overview, but is not a replacement for a comprehensive manual audit.

2. Is a high score on the calculator a guarantee of full compliance?

No, a high score is a good sign but not a guarantee. Automated tools can only detect about 30% of accessibility issues. Many problems, such as logical navigation flow, link context, and proper heading structure, require a human to manually review and test the website to ensure it is fully compliant with standards like WCAG Level AA.

3. What is the difference between WCAG and the ADA?

The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) is a U.S. law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is a set of technical guidelines for making web content accessible. While the ADA is a legal requirement, WCAG provides the specific technical criteria and best practices used to achieve ADA compliance for digital content.

4. Why is keyboard navigation so important for accessibility?

Keyboard navigation is crucial because many people with disabilities, including those with motor impairments, rely on a keyboard or assistive technologies that emulate keyboard commands to navigate websites. A site that cannot be fully operated without a mouse is inaccessible to these users, creating a major barrier to content.

5. How often should I check my website for accessibility?

Accessibility isn’t a one-time fix; it’s an ongoing effort. You should check your website for compliance after any major design changes, when adding new features or content, and as part of your regular maintenance routine. Regular checks, both automated and manual, help ensure your site remains accessible over time.

6. Do accessibility tools work for all websites, including complex web applications?

Most automated accessibility tools, including basic calculators, work well for static websites and content pages. However, complex web applications with heavy JavaScript and dynamic content may require more advanced tools and manual testing. These tools are often more effective when integrated directly into the development process.