11 Open Source Accessibility Tools

A curated list of open source accessibility tools that will enable automation of web accessibility testing more affordable & easier.

1. IBM Equal Access Toolkit
   The IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker is an open source tool for web developers and auditors that utilizes IBM’s accessibility rule engine, which detects accessibility issues for web pages and web applications. The extension integrates into the browser development tools, providing an integrated checking experience, helping users quickly identify the source of accessibility issues and try fixes.
2. NAB/UBKAccessibilityKit: An iOS framework to help with accessibility development and testing.
   UBKAccessibilityKit allows you to audit your iOS app on device, removing the need to stop and inspect each element via Xcode. UBKAccessibilityKit can be added to your exisiting project and includes the following features.
   • Change text, tint and background colours live in app.
   • Warnings & Validations
   • Check colour contrast on text, tint and background colours
   • Add in custom colours using the colour hex code.
   • Swap foreground (Text & tint) colour with the background colour.
   • Brand colours;
   • Minimum size
   • Missing accessibility label
   • Missing accessibility traits
   • Missing accessibility hints
   • Missing accessibility value
   • Missing isAccessibilityElement
   • Dynamic text sizes supported
   • Show touch points on screen, handy for when you’re doing presentations or recording a video and want to show touches and swipes on screen.
   • Highlight warnings as they are detected using the “Outline warnings” feature
   • Custom the foreground or background colours. Custom the foreground or background colours.
3. Domain Accessibility Audit
   This web application automatically crawls websites and checks for accessibility violations. It can crawl within subdomains of the initial domain it starts with. It reports statistics of violations for the whole audit, domains and pages.
4. Accessibility Insights
   Assess your websites for 100% WCAG 2.0 AA coverage with the latest Trusted Tester guidelines.
5. The A11Y Machine
   The A11y Machine (or a11ym for short, spelled “alym”) is an automated accessibility testing tool which crawls and tests pages of any Web application to produce detailed reports. It validates pages against the following specifications/laws:
   • W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, including A, AA and AAA levels (understanding levels of conformance),
   • U.S. Section 508 legislation,
   • W3C HTML5 Recommendation.
6. axe Accessibility Rules Engine by Deque Systems
   The Accessibility Engine for automated testing of HTML-based user interfaces. Drop the aXe on your accessibility defects!
7. tota11yAn accessibility visualization toolkit.
8. Automated Accessibility Testing Tool (AATT)
   Browser-based accessibility testing tools and plugins require manually testing each page, one at a time. Tools that can crawl a website can only scan pages that do not require login credentials, and that are not behind a firewall. Instead of developing, testing, and using a separate accessibility test suite, you can now integrate accessibility testing into your existing automation test suite using AATT.
9. Tanaguru
   Tanaguru is an open source (AGPL license) website assessment tool. It is dedicated to accessibility (a11y) audits, and focuses on reliability and high level
   of automation.
10. Quail
    QUAIL is a jQuery plugin for checking content against accessibility guidelines. It provides a flexible way to test for certain problems (say, images missing
    an alt text) and a collection of over 200 tests to get you started. Defining your tests is easy, and you can pick-and-choose tests to focus on the needs of your app.
11. Pa11y – Your automated accessibility testing pal
    Monitor the accessibility of your websites with pa11y-dashboard, and protect against accessibility errors creeping into your codebase*.

Please check our other accessibility tools list

• Color Contrast Tools
• Browser Extensions for Accessibility
• Accessibility Bookmarklets
• Mobile Accessibility Tools
• Enterprise Accessibility Tools