Free Website Accessibility Checker Tools Compared: WAVE vs WebsiteLinter vs AudioEye

Website accessibility isn't optional anymore. With over 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits filed in 2025 alone, business owners need a reliable free website accessibility checker to catch WCAG violations before they become legal liabilities. The problem: most accessibility tools focus on one thing, and many require accounts, verification, or paid upgrades to show you anything useful.

This guide compares three leading accessibility tools — WAVE, AudioEye, and WebsiteLinter — so you can pick the right one for your workflow, budget, and compliance goals.

Run a free accessibility check now at websitelinter.com — no account required.

What a Free Accessibility Checker Should Look For (WCAG 2.2 Basics)

Before comparing tools, know what actually matters. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 define success criteria across four principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. A useful free website accessibility checker should flag these high-impact issues:

WCAG Principle	What It Means	Common Violations
Perceivable	Content must be presentable in ways users can perceive	Missing alt text on images, low color contrast, no text alternatives for videos
Operable	Interface components must be operable by all users	Missing keyboard navigation, broken focus indicators, auto-playing media with no pause control
Understandable	Information and UI operation must be understandable	Missing form labels, inconsistent navigation, complex language without definitions
Robust	Content must work with current and future assistive tech	Invalid HTML, missing ARIA landmarks, improper heading hierarchy

The six violations that drive 96% of ADA lawsuits are: missing alt text, insufficient color contrast, empty links, missing form labels, missing page language declarations, and missing keyboard accessibility. Any WCAG checker free tool you choose should flag at least these six.

WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool)

Best for: Visual, page-by-page WCAG spot checks with no login required.

WAVE is the most widely known free website accessibility checker on the market. Developed by WebAIM at Utah State University, it overlays visual icons directly onto your live page to highlight errors, warnings, and accessibility features.

What It Checks

WAVE evaluates pages against WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA criteria, flagging:

• Missing or empty alt text on images
• Low color contrast ratios (text vs. background)
• Empty links and buttons (common in icon-only navigation)
• Missing form labels and associated inputs
• Missing document language (lang attribute)
• Skipped heading levels and structural issues
• Missing or redundant ARIA roles and landmarks

Where WAVE Excels

The visual overlay is genuinely unique. Instead of reading a dense report, you see icons directly on your page: red icons for errors, yellow for warnings, green for features already present. This makes it immediately obvious where problems exist and what type they are.

WAVE is also completely free for basic scans with no account, no site verification, and no usage limits. You can test any public URL instantly.

Where WAVE Falls Short

WAVE is single-page only unless you upgrade to WAVE API (paid). For a 50-page site, you'd need to scan each page individually. It also doesn't check performance, SEO, or security — it's accessibility-only.

Some flagged "warnings" require manual judgment. A low-contrast warning might be a false positive if the text is decorative, or a legitimate issue if it's body copy. Non-technical users sometimes fix things that weren't broken or miss things that were.

Best used by: Designers, developers, and compliance officers doing targeted page reviews.

AudioEye

Best for: Ongoing monitoring and remediation for larger websites.

AudioEye is a commercial accessibility platform with a free trial tier. Unlike WAVE's single-scan approach, AudioEye provides continuous monitoring, automated fixes, and certified accessibility statements.

What It Checks

AudioEye scans your entire site (not just one page) and tests against:

• WCAG 2.2 Level A, AA, and AAA criteria
• Automated remediation for certain issues (e.g., adding missing ARIA labels via JavaScript)
• Screen reader compatibility testing
• Legal compliance documentation and accessibility statements
• Ongoing monitoring with alerts when new issues appear

Where AudioEye Excels

The ongoing monitoring and legal protection are the standout features. AudioEye provides a certified accessibility statement you can display on your site, which carries weight in legal defense. Their automated fixes can resolve some issues without developer intervention.

For businesses in lawsuit-prone industries — e-commerce, food service, healthcare, education — the legal documentation alone can justify the cost.

Where AudioEye Falls Short

AudioEye is not a free tool for ongoing use. The free trial gives you a snapshot, but continuous monitoring and remediation require a paid plan (typically starting around several hundred dollars per month depending on site size).

The automated JavaScript fixes can sometimes conflict with your site's existing code, causing unexpected behavior. And because it's a platform rather than a simple scanner, setup takes longer than pasting a URL into WAVE or WebsiteLinter.

Best used by: Mid-to-large businesses with compliance teams and budgets for ongoing accessibility management.

WebsiteLinter Accessibility Scan

Best for: Getting accessibility + SEO + performance + security context in one free scan with no login.

WebsiteLinter includes accessibility checking as one of four pillars in its all-in-one site health report. While WAVE goes deeper on pure accessibility and AudioEye offers monitoring, WebsiteLinter is the only free website accessibility checker that also tells you whether your slow load times, missing security headers, or broken SEO meta tags are compounding the user experience problem.

What It Checks

Accessibility:

• Image alt text coverage and missing alt attributes
• Color contrast issues
• Basic ARIA landmark detection
• Form label associations
• Page language declaration

Performance (context that matters for accessibility):

• PageSpeed scores and Core Web Vitals (slow sites are harder to use with assistive technology)
• Time to First Byte and total page weight

SEO:

• Title tags, meta descriptions, canonical URLs
• robots.txt and XML sitemap detection
• Open Graph and Twitter Card tags

Security:

• HTTP security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, and more)
• SSL certificate validity
• Weighted security grade (A–F)

Where WebsiteLinter Excels

The combination of accessibility + broader site health is the key differentiator. A page with perfect WCAG compliance but a 6-second load time is still inaccessible to users on slow connections or older devices. WebsiteLinter surfaces this context automatically.

It's also completely free, instant, and requires no login or site verification. Paste any URL and get results in under two minutes. This makes it ideal for:

• Agencies auditing client sites during pitches
• SMB owners who want a quick health check without technical setup
• Developers who need to compare accessibility scores across multiple pages rapidly

Where WebsiteLinter Falls Short

WebsiteLinter's accessibility checks cover the high-impact WCAG violations but don't go as deep as WAVE's visual overlay for complex ARIA debugging. If you're debugging a custom React component's screen reader behavior, WAVE or axe DevTools will give you more granular detail.

Like WAVE, the free tier scans one page at a time rather than crawling an entire site.

Best used by: Freelancers, agencies, SMBs, and anyone who wants accessibility context alongside performance and security data.

Which Tool Should You Use? Decision Table

Factor	WAVE	AudioEye	WebsiteLinter
Cost	✅ Free unlimited	Free trial only; paid for ongoing	✅ Free unlimited
Login required	❌ No	✅ Yes (trial)	❌ No
Site verification	❌ No	✅ Yes	❌ No
WCAG depth	✅ Deep (visual overlay)	✅ Deep + certified	✅ Core violations
Multi-page crawl	❌ No	✅ Yes	❌ No
Performance data	❌ No	❌ No	✅ Full PageSpeed + CWV
SEO signals	❌ No	❌ No	✅ Full meta + crawlability
Security checks	❌ No	❌ No	✅ Full header audit
Legal documentation	❌ No	✅ Certified statement	❌ No
Automated fixes	❌ No	✅ Yes (some)	❌ No
Best for	Developers, designers	Compliance teams, large orgs	Agencies, SMBs, quick checks

My Recommendation

Choose WAVE if: You need to debug specific accessibility issues on individual pages and want the visual overlay to see exactly what's wrong where.

Choose AudioEye if: You have budget for ongoing monitoring, need legal protection documentation, and want automated remediation for a large site.

Choose WebsiteLinter if: You want accessibility checked alongside performance, SEO, and security in a single free scan — especially useful when pitching clients or doing competitive analysis.

These tools aren't mutually exclusive. Many professionals use WebsiteLinter for the initial broad scan, then open WAVE for deep accessibility debugging on problem pages.

How to Run Your First Accessibility Check

Here's a step-by-step walkthrough using WebsiteLinter to check your site's accessibility in under two minutes:

Step 1: Go to WebsiteLinter

Navigate to websitelinter.com. No account creation, no email, no credit card — just a URL input field.

Step 2: Enter Your URL

Paste the full URL of the page you want to check (e.g., https://yourdomain.com or https://yourdomain.com/contact). Include the https:// prefix for accurate results.

Step 3: Start the Scan

Click Scan. WebsiteLinter will analyze your page across performance, security, SEO, and accessibility simultaneously. The scan typically completes in 30–90 seconds.

Step 4: Review the Accessibility Section

In your report, scroll to the Accessibility section. Look for:

• Alt text coverage: Percentage of images with proper alt attributes. Anything below 100% on content images is a fixable issue.
• Color contrast flags: Any text/background combinations that fail WCAG AA ratios (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text).
• ARIA landmarks: Whether your page has proper structural regions (<main>, <nav>, <header>, <footer>).
• Form labels: Any <input> or <select> elements missing associated <label> tags.

Step 5: Fix the Quick Wins

Start with these high-impact, low-effort fixes:

1. Add missing alt text to all informational images. Decorative images can use empty alt (alt="").
2. Fix color contrast by darkening light text or lightening dark backgrounds. Use a contrast checker to verify.
3. Add form labels using the for attribute linked to each input's id.
4. Ensure keyboard navigation works — tab through your page and confirm all interactive elements are reachable and visible.

Step 6: Re-Scan to Verify

After making changes, run another WebsiteLinter scan to confirm the issues are resolved. Accessibility is iterative — scan, fix, verify, repeat.

The Bigger Picture: Why Accessibility Is a Business Issue

Beyond the legal risk, accessible websites perform better. Pages with proper alt text rank better in image search. Sites with good color contrast have lower bounce rates. Fast, keyboard-navigable forms convert better across all user segments — including the 26% of U.S. adults living with a disability.

Accessibility isn't a separate initiative. It's part of delivering a high-quality web experience.

Run your free accessibility check now at websitelinter.com — get WCAG insights plus performance, SEO, and security data in one report. No signup, no verification, no waiting.