When someone asks us to take a look at their website, the first thing Tyler does is open Chrome DevTools and start running accessibility checks. Not because he's looking for something to sell them on. Because the results speak for themselves.
Most sites fail. Badly. And the business owner has no idea.
Here are the exact tools we use and what you can expect to find when you point them at your own site.
The Tools We Actually Use
Google Lighthouse (Our Starting Point)
This one is already on your computer if you use Chrome. Right click anywhere on your page, click Inspect, then click the Lighthouse tab. Run an accessibility audit.
Lighthouse scores your page from 0 to 100 and flags specific violations with explanations. Tyler runs this on every client site and every prospect site we evaluate. It's fast, it's free, and it doesn't lie.
What we typically find on a prospect's site: scores in the 40s to 60s. Missing alt text on most images. Form fields with no labels. Color contrast failures on buttons and links. Heading levels that jump from H1 to H4 with nothing in between.
axe DevTools (The Deep Scan)
This is a free browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, built by Deque. It scans your page and lists every accessibility violation with a clear explanation of what's wrong and why it matters.
axe is what Tyler uses when he needs to get granular. Lighthouse gives you the big picture. axe gives you the line by line breakdown. If you're a developer or you work with one, this is the tool that turns "your site has accessibility problems" into a specific punch list of things to fix.
WAVE (The Visual One)
Go to wave.webaim.org and paste in your URL. WAVE overlays icons directly on your page showing errors, alerts, and structural elements. It's the most visual of the three, which makes it great for showing a client or a team member exactly where the problems are.
Limitation: it only checks one page at a time. But for a quick "how bad is it?" check, WAVE tells the story fast.
Accessibility Insights for Web (The Manual Testing Guide)
This is a browser extension from Microsoft that does two things: quick automated scans and guided manual testing. The guided testing is what makes it special. It walks you through the manual checks that automated tools can't do on their own.
We use this when we're doing a thorough review, not just a quick scan.
Color Contrast Checkers
Color contrast failures are one of the most common issues we find. The text looks fine to you, but for someone with low vision or color blindness, it's unreadable.
WebAIM Contrast Checker (webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker): Plug in your text color and background color and it tells you instantly whether you pass WCAG AA and AAA requirements.
Coolors Contrast Checker (coolors.co/contrast-checker): Same idea but with a more visual interface. Lets you adjust colors until you find combinations that work.
When Tyler picks colors for a client site, contrast ratios get checked before anything else. Not after the design is approved. Before. Because redesigning a whole site because the brand blue fails contrast is a problem nobody wants.
Screen Reader Testing (This Is Where It Gets Real)
You can run every automated tool in the world and still miss the biggest problems. Because automated tools can't tell you what it feels like to use your site with a screen reader.
Melissa's OT training gave her direct experience with people who rely on screen readers, voice control, and switch devices. She knows what these tools are supposed to do. And she knows what it looks like when a website breaks the experience.
You have free screen readers available right now:
VoiceOver is built into every Mac and iPhone. Go to System Settings, then Accessibility, then VoiceOver. Turn it on and try navigating your own website.
NVDA is free and open source for Windows. Download it, launch it, and try to fill out your contact form without touching your mouse.
TalkBack is built into every Android device.
Even 10 minutes of navigating your own website with a screen reader will teach you more than any automated report. You'll hear your page the way a blind user hears it. And most of the time, what you hear is a mess: "image," "image," "image," "link," "link," "link," "button" with no context for any of it.
The Honest Truth: Tools Only Find 25 to 35 Percent
Here's the number that matters most. Automated accessibility tools, even the best ones, typically catch only 25 to 35 percent of accessibility issues.
They're great at catching:
Missing alt text on images. Color contrast problems. Missing form labels. Broken heading structure. Duplicate IDs. Missing ARIA attributes on interactive elements.
They cannot evaluate:
Whether your alt text is actually helpful or just says "image1.jpg." Whether your keyboard navigation flows in a logical order. Whether your error messages actually tell someone what went wrong and how to fix it. Whether your content is written clearly enough for someone with a cognitive disability. Whether your dropdown menus trap keyboard focus and never let go.
That's why Tyler doesn't stop at automated scans. After Lighthouse and axe, he tabs through every page with just a keyboard. No mouse. Can he reach every link? Every button? Every form field? Can he see where the focus is at all times? Can he open and close menus without getting trapped?
Then he tests with a screen reader. Does the page make sense when you can only hear it? Do the headings tell a logical story? Do the links make sense out of context?
This is the manual testing that separates a real accessibility review from a Lighthouse score screenshot.
What We Typically Find on a Prospect's Site
We've checked dozens of sites at this point. Here's what shows up almost every time:
Images with no alt text, or alt text that says "IMG_4382.jpg." Every single image on a page needs a description that tells a screen reader user what the image shows. Decorative images need an empty alt attribute so screen readers skip them entirely.
Zero heading structure. The entire page is styled text with no H1, H2, or H3 tags. Google can't parse it. Screen readers can't navigate it. It looks fine visually but the underlying structure is nonexistent.
Forms with no labels. The placeholder text disappears when you start typing, and there's no label element associated with the field. A screen reader user lands on the field and hears "edit text" with no idea what they're supposed to enter.
Color contrast failures on the most important elements. Light gray text on white backgrounds. Brand colored buttons where the text is unreadable. Links that are indistinguishable from body text.
No skip navigation link. A screen reader user has to listen to the entire navigation menu on every single page before they can get to the content. On a site with 15 nav items, that's 15 announcements before they hear a single word of what they came for.
Keyboard traps. Modal popups that open but can't be closed with a keyboard. Dropdown menus that can be opened but never escaped. Cookie consent banners that steal focus and won't give it back.
Your Quick Start Testing Plan
Run Lighthouse on your homepage and your top five pages. Screenshot the results.
Check your color contrast on your most important text. Headlines, buttons, calls to action.
Try navigating your entire site using only Tab, Enter, and arrow keys. Can you reach everything? Can you see where you are? Can you submit your contact form?
Spend 10 minutes with a screen reader. Just 10 minutes. You'll learn more about your site's accessibility than any report can tell you.
Document what you find. Then decide: is this a site that can be fixed, or is it a site that needs to be rebuilt from the ground up?
When we build a site, accessibility is baked in from line one. Semantic HTML, proper headings, ARIA attributes, keyboard navigation, skip links, and our custom AccessibilityToolbar. Not as an add on. As the foundation. See what that looks like.