WordPress accessibility plugins, compared honestly
We make one of the tools below, so read this knowing that. Every fact here comes from the vendor's own site or from the WordPress.org listing — install counts, version numbers and star averages — checked on 14 October 2026, with the links so you can verify it yourself. Prices and features change; check before you buy.
| Tool | What it is | Cost | On WordPress.org |
|---|---|---|---|
| AccessAudit (ours) | Reads your pages' HTML and reports the problems it can prove, quoting the exact markup. Editor panel, draft check, image alt-text screen. | Free for your own site. $299–$2,499 a year for agencies monitoring many client sites, three free. | Not listed yet — awaiting review, download it here meanwhile. |
| Accessibility Checker (Equalize Digital) | Real-time checks inside the editor, a full-site scan, and reports. The most complete in-WordPress option, and the closest thing to what we do. | Core plugin free. Paid plans from $190 to $2,250 a year for full-site scanning and history. | v1.51.0, updated days ago, 10,000+ installs, 4.9 stars. |
| Web Accessibility (formerly Ally, by Elementor) | A free plugin with guided fixes plus a front-end widget that visitors can toggle (larger text, contrast, and so on). | Free. | v4.1.4, updated 2 months ago, 500,000+ installs, 2.9 stars. |
| WP Accessibility (Joe Dolson) | Theme-level fixes: skip links, contrast tools, removing title attributes, and so on. It changes your site rather than only reporting on it. | Free. | v2.4.3, updated days ago, 60,000+ installs, 4.8 stars. |
| Overlays (UserWay, AccessiBe and others) | A script that sits on top of your site and offers visitors a toolbar. It does not fix your markup. | Subscription, typically monthly per site. | Usually not listed; delivered as a hosted script. |
What we would tell a friend
One site, and you work in the editor all day: install Equalize Digital's Accessibility Checker. It is genuinely good, it is maintained, its users rate it 4.9, and the free version will do a great deal. We would rather you used a tool that works than ours out of loyalty.
You want the widget experience — a toolbar your visitors can toggle: Elementor's free plugin gives you that, and it is free. Understand what it is, though: a widget changes how the page looks for the person who finds the button. It does not add the alt text, labels or heading order that the same person needed before they went looking for the button.
You look after other people's sites: that is the gap we built for. The in-WordPress plugins check one site each, which means one licence, one scan, and one log-in per client. Our Station runs on your own server on any host, watches a list of client sites on a schedule, shows what changed since last time, emails you when a scan could not read a site at all, and prints a report under your name — priced per agency, not per site, with three sites free so you can judge it on real work.
Two things no tool in that table does
- Colour contrast, keyboard order, screen reader experience. The first needs a rendered browser image; the others need a person. Any plugin claiming to certify these from HTML is guessing.
- Deciding whether your alt text is any good. A machine can prove an
altattribute is missing. It cannot know whether "IMG_2043" or "our Leeds office" is the right description — only somebody looking at the page in its context can. Long version here.
That is why none of our findings come with a score, a percentage or a badge. A line of markup that is wrong is a fact you can check in ten seconds. "87% accessible" is a number nobody can act on, and it is the reason people stop believing accessibility tools.
The one question that decides it
Not "which plugin is best" — but where do you want the findings to live. If you want them inside WordPress, next to the content, choose from the first four rows. If you want them on your own server, covering every client site in one place, with your own retention and no account anywhere, that is what we built. Neither is wrong; they are different jobs.