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13 Best WordPress Accessibility Plugins in 2024 With ADA Compliance
Web page accessibility means everyone visiting your website can access it efficiently. Whether you own a WordPress website or plan to build a new one, making it accessible to as many people as possible should be your goal. Why? It helps you reach a broad audience & grow your business.
According to Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), it is crucial to make your website accessible to people with any disability. Here are some of the latest statistics regarding disability.
As per CDC, one in four people in the United States has some form of disability.
Moreover, over 409 million people access 20 billion pages built on WordPress every month. Out of which, many people would be with disabilities. Therefore, you need to focus on WordPress site accessibility.
However, creating an accessible website can be challenging, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the accessibility guidelines and best practices.
Surprisingly, many WordPress accessibility plugins help you make your website more inclusive and accessible to all. In this blog, we have compiled a list of the most popular WordPress accessibility plugins you can rely on for 2023.
Before we look into these plugins, we will explain how these plugins would be beneficial for your WordPress site.
So, let’s get started.
How would WordPress Accessibility Plugin be Beneficial for Your Website?
Here are some benefits of integrating WordPress accessibility plugins in your WordPress site.
Website Reputation
By making your website accessible, you demonstrate your commitment to social responsibility and inclusivity. In addition, if your website passes various accessibility tests & has better ratings, its reputation increases exponentially. It sets your website apart from other websites in the market.
Reach Wider Audience
Plugins help you to make your website accessible to all types of people. It increases your website’s traffic, ultimately increasing conversions and leading to higher revenue.
Improve SEO Rankings
Implementing accessibility on your WordPress site, such as integrating ALT text on images, offering to listen to content, closed captions for videos, etc., helps to improve SEO rankings. How?
Search engines give more importance to the pages that are highly accessible. It leads to improved search engine page results. Hence, it results in better SEO performance.
Meeting Legal Requirements
Various countries have laws and regulations that need websites to be accessible to people with disabilities. When you install WordPress accessibility plugins, you should check your website meets these legal requirements and avoid potential lawsuits or penalties.
After understanding how website accessibility plugins are beneficial, we will walk you through the 13 best website accessibility plugins. So, let’s start.
13 Most Popular WordPress Accessibility Plugins in 2023
Here, we have listed the 13 best WordPress accessibility plugins, along with their pros, cons, and pricing. All of these plugins help either enhance accessibility by adding features or analyzing your site for deficiencies. In addition, it consists of both free and premium plugins.
1. Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker
Accessibility Checker is a plugin for identifying accessibility problems on WordPress sites and checking for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliance.
The plugin removes the need to use the external WAVE tool and integrates similar functions directly into your WordPress dashboard. As a result, you can quickly assess accessibility for individual pieces of content, all without having to leave WordPress.
The plugin monitors your content’s performance against 40 different accessibility checks designed to fulfill the Web Content Accessibility (WCAG) 2.1 guidelines.
Furthermore, where the plugin identifies issues, it also suggests suitable fixes.
Please take a few moments to read WPLift’s full review of Accessibility Checker.
Pros
- Automatic scans on both published or draft content
- The free version allows you to scan unlimited posts and pages, with reports shown on the edit screen
- Paid versions add many extra scanning and reporting features
- Checks for ADA, Section 508, AODA, and WCAG compliance
- Detailed documentation to help any developer get started easily.
- 30-day moneyback guarantee on paid plans
Cons
- Entire site scans are only available with the paid versions
Price
- The core Accessibility Checker plugin is free. Prices of the paid version range from $60-$180 per month, depending on the number of sites you need to cover (a maximum of 25 site licenses is allowed.) If you purchase an annual plan, the monthly cost reduces to $12-$150.
2. One Click Accessibility
One Click Accessibility is one of the best WordPress accessibility plugins compatible with most WordPress themes. The plugin takes significantly less time to set up and doesn’t require knowledge of any coding language.
It offers some of the best features to enhance your site accessibility which it may otherwise lack. The most notable ones is the accessibility toolbar that you can add to your website. It allows you to resize the font, active high or negative contrast, link to a sitemap, underline links, make fonts readable, and more. Moreover, you can preview all the changes you want to make before making them live.
Apart from this, the plugin comes with some great accessibility features. It consists of skipping to content, adding landmark roles to all links, omitting target attributes for links, skipping links, outlining the focus for focusable elements, etc.
The plugin ensures that your website complies with all the accessibility standards and is SEO-friendly.
Pros
- Quick to set up & install.
- Users have more control over the accessibility options.
Cons
- Some find the enable/disable interface rather confusing.
- Might not provide necessary accessibility options and can potentially overlook individual user needs.
Price
- One Click Accessibility is a free plugin with no premium options available.
3. WP Accessibility
WP Accessibility is a plugin that allows you to detect and rectify any common accessibility issues present in WordPress themes, content, or the core. In simple words, the plugin fills some of the accessibility ‘gaps’ inherent in WordPress themes without any expert knowledge.
This free plugin has extensive features, each of which can be individually enabled or disabled with the help of a series of checkboxes. For example, it is possible to add skip links that only appear when triggered by the keyboard or an assistive device, thus allowing users to bypass irrelevant content.
Other great features include adding post titles to ‘read more’ links, a tool to pinpoint images with missing alt attributes, plus a facility to add an outline to the keyboard focus state for focusable elements to enhance their visibility.
Pros
- A no-cost way of adding several accessibility features to themes that do not have them out of the box.
- Detailed reports.
- A proactive and supportive development team.
- You can customize the appearance and behavior of the plugin to match their website’s design.
Cons
- Plugin might not work with other plugins or themes installed on the website.
- It has a limited number of accessibility features.
- Bulk changes in the website can lead to undesired errors.
Price
- WP Accessibility is entirely free.
4. WP Accessibility Helper
WP Accessibility Helper is a freemium WordPress plugin with great functionality. It includes a Document Object Model (DOM) scanner to check your posts and pages for accessibility issues, plus an impressive array of tools to help you fix them.
The free and Pro versions include font resizing, skip links, animation removal, link underlining, sortable widgets, keyboard navigation, high contrast mode, accessible form fields, and an accessibility toolbar. The best thing about the WAH is that all the things can be controlled using a series of toggle switches and text entry fields.
The Pro upgrade adds plenty more, including visibility settings, Polylang support, shortcodes, a small bar with settings for contrast and greyscale, web speech API, a logo customizer, and more.
Pros
- Both the free and Pro versions scan for accessibility issues.
- Includes web speech API for text-to-speech (Pro only).
- ADHD, vision impaired and cognitive disability profiles (Pro only).
- Good documentation, including video tutorials.
- A wide range of color contrast options.
Cons
- Some complaints of poor support for the Pro version.
- No free trial or moneyback guarantee with Pro plans.
- No support for video & audio content.
Price
- The WP Accessibility Helper core plugin is free. However, Pro upgrades cost $199 per year for one domain, rising to $1,819 per year for ten sites.
5. AccessibleWP Toolbar
AccessibleWP Toolbar is a simple WordPress plugin that allows you to add an accessibility toolbar to your website. From that, users will have access to a range of accessibility options, including keyboard navigation (with enhanced keyboard functionality), disabling animations, resizing fonts, dark contrast, marking titles and links, and more.
Even though the plugin doesn’t have all the guidelines needed for WCAG, it helps you resolve various accessibility issues to reach there. To make your site fully accessible according to the regulations, you need to take the help of a WordPress developer.
Pros
- Easy to set up and use.
Cons
- AccessibleWP Toolbar has limited accessibility options.
- The plugin requires regular updates and maintenance to ensure it continues to function properly.
Price
- AccessibleWP Toolbar is free.
Get AccesZeno Font ResizersibleWP Toolbar
6. Zeno Font Resizer
With Zeno Font Resizer’s help, website owners can integrate font resizing functionality into their sites. It is one of the best WordPress accessibility plugins that allows visually impaired users can adjust the font size of text on your WordPress site.
This free plugin uses JavaScript and jQuery to set the font size. One cool feature is the visitor’s font size settings are saved in a cookie, so if they revisit, the fonts will automatically resize to their preference. Just be sure that your site complies with the cookie laws!
The plugin consists of a contrast adjustment tool that enables visitors to increase or decrease the contrast of the website. It can benefit visitors with visual impairments who have difficulty reading low-contrast text.
Pros
- Customize the font size and ensure it looks consistent & professional across the website.
- Users can adjust the font size as per their preference.
Cons
- Design issues happen when users increase or decrease the font size.
- It is not compatible with various WordPress themes.
- The plugin is not optimized for mobile devices. Hence, it is challenging for users to adjust font size on small screens.
Price
- Zeno Font Resizer is a free plugin.
7. BIALTY Bulk Auto Image Alt Text
Many people add images to their websites without adding ALT text. For those who don’t know, ALT text is what screen readers use to tell blind or visually impaired users what an image contains. That’s important when it comes to improving accessibility for visually impaired users. It is also essential for SEO as search engines can understand the content of an image and enhance the chances of an image appearing on search engines.
If you only have a few images on your website, it’s not a huge deal to go back and add the necessary ALT text. However, it will be a significant headache if you have tons of pictures to do. That is where BIALTY Bulk Auto Image Alt Text can help.
BIALTY Bulk Auto Image Alt Text is a free WordPress accessibility plugin with one sole purpose – automatically generate and add ALT attributes to images that don’t have them. For the same, the plugin uses post titles and focus keywords. Moreover, the plugin supports 6 languages: English, French, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, and German.
The plugin supports various image file types like JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Besides this, it enables users to customize the alt text generation settings, such as the length of the ALT text, the language used, and the level of detail included in the descriptions.
Pros
- It provides a fast way of adding missing ALT attributes to images. Thus, the plugin saves a lot of your time.
- The plugin can analyze and generate alt text for hundreds or thousands of images simultaneously.
Cons
- One downside of this plugin is that the machine-generated texts may not be as good or detailed as those written by humans. But they are better than nothing.
- The generated ALT text may not be perfect, although it will be sufficient until you get around to writing better, more detailed texts.
Price
- BIALTY Bulk Auto Image Alt Text is free. No premium option is available.
Get BIALTY Bulk Auto Image Alt Text
8. Screen Reader
Screen Reader is another popular WordPress accessibility plugin that benefits visually impaired individuals. It is a powerful and lightweight plugin that offers a wide range of accessibility features for reading and enhancing content quality for visually impaired people. It is one such text-to-speech plugin for WordPress that verbally reads screen content.
You can easily install the plugin on your WordPress website. Once installed, the plugin provides a highly intuitive interface that allows you to customize the audio narration settings to suit their needs. Users can adjust the speed & volume of the narration and even choose from various voices.
One of the plugin’s key features is identifying and reading out the ALT text of images on the website. Due to this, visually impaired people can get a good understanding of the content on the website, even if they cannot see the images themselves.
Besides this, the plugin offers a round of features such as an enlarged cursor, a Dyslexic font, text spacing, skip the contents, focused elements highlighter, and more.
Pros
- Make your website accessible to people with visual impairments or other disabilities.
- It offers an easy-to-use interface for users who cannot read the content of your website visually.
- It is highly customizable and allows users to adjust the speed, volume, and pitch of the voice that reads the website’s content.
Cons
- The free version is virtually useless, with few features and a 100-character text-to-speech limit.
- Users can only read text-based content, which means they cannot read images, videos, or audio files
Price
- Screen Reader costs 49.90 Euros per year. A free version is available, although it’s rather pointless.
9. WP ADA Compliance Check Basic
WP ADA Compliance Check Basic is a freemium WordPress ADA compliance plugin. It is developed to identify accessibility issues on your website.
The free version is ideal if you only have a small, low-traffic site and no budget available. It allows you to scan for 51 error types, although you can only do fifteen pages or posts. A detailed report is generated once the scans are complete. The plugin mainly looks after the violations of section 508 and WCAG 2.1 LEVEL A/AA Web Accessibility Standards.
If you need tools to help you fix issues identified by the scans, you will need to upgrade to the Pro version. With that, you can run unlimited scans for 76 error types. What’s more, it continuously monitors your entire site and will inform you by email if any errors occur.
Finally, it also includes a good selection of tools to help you fix many accessibility problems. These include landmark checker, language attribute checker, heading order checker, missing ALT text checker, and more.
Pros
- The free version is an excellent way of running accessibility scans on your posts and pages.
- Pro is worthwhile as it adds full-site and continuous scans, plus lots of tools to help you fix issues.
- Excellent documentation, including video tutorials and an eight-hour online accessibility training course
- 30-day moneyback guarantee on Pro.
Cons
- Even though the plugin performs automated checks, they may not be accurate. You still need to check the website manually to ensure it meets ADA guidelines.
- The basic version doesn’t come with any support. Hence, you need to deal with any issues on your own.
- Using this plugin doesn’t guarantee that your site will be ADA-compliant. It is essential to consult with an ADA compliance expert to ensure that your website meets all necessary standards.
Price
- The core WP ADA Compliance Check plugin is free. Pro upgrades begin at $179 per year for one domain or $565.99 for a lifetime license.
Get WP ADA Compliance Check Basic
10. Accessibility New Window Warnings
Many people are confused about whether the link will open in a new tab or the existing window while accessing any page or post. In addition, it is more challenging for people with visual impairments.
The Accessibility New Window Warnings WordPress Plugin is specially created with the intent to enhance the accessibility of websites by alerting users whenever they click on the link. The plugin warns users whether the link will open in a new window or tab to avoid confusion or frustration for users who might not expect a new window to open. Additionally, the plugin advises users that hitting the ‘back’ button may not work from the new tab or window.
The plugin is designed with accessibility in mind and is fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 guidelines. It is easy to install and configure and can be customized to suit the needs of individual websites.
The plugin offers customization to suit the need of individual websites. It consists of the ability to customize warning messages and exclude certain links from the warning.
Pros
- It makes the website user-friendly by clearly mentioning when a new window or tab is open.
- The plugin can increase user confidence in the website by providing precise and concise information about the link they click.
- It improves the accessibility of a website by offering warning messages to users who might not be able to distinguish between multiple windows or tabs.
Cons
- Warning message interrupts the flow for users already familiar with the links on the site.
- The plugin requires users to enable JavaScript in their browser, which may not always be available.
Price
- Accessibility New Window Warnings is available in the WordPress plugin directory free of charge.
Get Accessibility New Window Warnings
11. Web Accessibility By accessiBe
accessiBe is one of the best WordPress ADA compliance plugins. The plugin is AI-powered and maintains ADA & WCAG compliance to target the 15% of the world’s population with disability and ensures to reduce the risk for many businesses & industry leaders.
It uses AI to daily scan the website for accessibility on both the front-end and the back-end. It further helps to resolve the errors by adjusting the Alt Tags, State Controls, ARIA Attributes, Icons & Buttons, Roles & Landmarks, Forms & Validations.
Apart from this, the plugin understands the structure and behaviors of your site by integrating keyboard-only functionality. These include dropdowns, menus, popups, forms, skip links, and more.
Along with that, with the help of OCR AI technology, the plugin analyzes various images and instantly generates ALT text.
The plugin supports 12 languages and is used by some of the best companies worldwide on their website. These include British Airways, UCLA, Patek Philippe, and more.
Pros
- It scans new content every 24 hours to ensure no change in the accessibility settings of the old & new content.
- The plugin setup is quick & smooth.
- The users can adjust color & contrast to enhance their experience.
- It offers a built-in dictionary to get word meanings for people with disabilities.
Cons
- It has potential limitations for specific disabilities. For instance, the plugin doesn’t offer customization when customizing screen reader settings or specialized keyboard navigation.
- The plugin alone does not guarantee full compliance with all accessibility requirements.
- It depends on AI, which may not always be accurate.
Price
The plugin price starts from $49 per month and goes up to $349 per month. All the plans come with a 7-day free trial.
GET WEB ACCESSIBILITY BY ACCESSIBE
12. UserWay
UserWay is another well-known WordPress accessibility plugin you can consider in 2023. Like accessiBe, the plugin utilizes Artificial Intelligence to scan the entire website and provide suggestions accordingly.
Using this plugin, you can provide a better browsing experience by enhancing compliance using WCAG 2.1, ATAG 2.0, European EN 301 549, ADA, and Section 508.
The plugin comes with free & premium options. The free version has limited features and offers 20% ADA compliance. On the other hand, the paid version provides 90% ADA compliance.
It comes with a free widget to control various things on your website. These include keyboard navigation, smart contrast, highlight links, screen reader, pause animations, dyslexia friendly, and more.
The plugin stops you from using any of the hard colors on the site unsuitable for visually impaired persons.
Lastly, the plugin supports 40 languages to provide accessibility to a wide range of people.
Pros
- The plugin is easy to install with just a few clicks.
- It is fully customizable and can be tailored to fulfill the specific needs of your website and its users.
Cons
- You need to pay to access some of the advanced features.
- UserWay can help address many accessibility issues, but not all.
- It is not compatible with several WordPress themes.
- You need to signup on to the website to use the plugin.
Price
The price of the paid plan starts at $490 per year and goes up to $3290 per year. Purchase a suitable plan as per your needs.
13. Accessibility Widget
Want to integrate an accessibility widget into your website in a super effective manner quickly? Then you should consider Accessibility Widget.
The plugin integrates a sidebar panel on your WordPress site. Further, it allows users accessing the website to change the font size according to their needs.
The plugin functions well on both desktop and mobile screens. Moreover, it enables you to select the text sizes and page elements on which the plugin should work.
Pros
- The plugin is user-friendly. It can be activated with a few clicks and requires minimal configuration.
Cons
- Support may not be well as a single individual maintains it.
Price
It is absolutely free to download and use.
Final Words
We hope that you liked our list of the best WordPress accessibility plugins. Accessibility is one of the most crucial things you should look after during any stage of WordPress website development.
You can rely on any of the accessibility plugins we have shared to enhance the accessibility of your site, reach a wider audience, boost-SEO rankings, and generate revenue.
If you want a free option, you can rely on One Click Accessibility or WP Accessibility. If you want to integrate a paid plugin for accessibility, consider Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker or WP Accessibility Helper.
Ultimately, choose a plugin that best suits your WordPress website according to your budget.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the ADA plugin?
Accessibility plugins are software tools that help to enhance accessibility and offer a better browsing experience to people with disabilities. The plugins cater to users with visual, cognitive, auditory, or motor impairments.
The WordPress accessibility plugins offer some of the best features like text-to-speech, screen readers, changing font size, letter spacing, adding alternative text, keyboard shortcuts, high-contrast mode, and closed captioning.
What is your recommended WordPress plugin for ADA compliance?
Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker is the recommended WordPress plugin for ADA compliance. The plugin scans various posts and pages and ensures the website complies with ADA compliance.
Does WordPress have an accessibility checker?
Various WordPress plugins allow you to check the accessibility of your website. You need to install the plugin and perform desired accessibility checks on it.
How do I make my website ADA-compliant?
The best way to make your website ADA-compliant is to utilize WordPress accessibility plugins. Further, the plugins help you with various things as follows.
- Provide alternative text descriptions for all images and non-text content.
- Ensure that website can be navigated using a keyboard.
- Provide closed captions or transcripts for any audio or video content.
- Use proper heading tags and structure to organize content.
- Ensure that all forms and fields are labeled clearly and accessible.
- Use proper colors.
- Ensure the website is compatible with screen readers and voice recognition software.
Hi Ahmad,
This is a good introduction to accessibility, and I appreciate having such a resource to refer clients to. But please, PLEASE don’t use the offensive term “abnormal” when referring to people with disabilities! How about just removing that word entirely from the sentence, “The more abnormal people can use your site…”? I’m assuming that was just an oversight when you were trying to convey “differently-abled.” Thanks!