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A11y Content Checker

WordPress plugin that checks content accessibility while it is written, with rules mapped to WCAG 2.2 and ABNT NBR 17225.

by Anderson Canale Garcia · github.com/andersongarcia/a11y-content-checker · website

★ 0stars

Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/andersongarcia/a11y-content-checker/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
No built-in updater. New versions won't appear under Dashboard → Updates. Install new releases yourself, or let Git Updater track the repository.
Readme github.com/andersongarcia/a11y-content-checker ↗

Português

A WordPress plugin that checks the accessibility of content while it is written and shows authors what to fix. Its rules are mapped to WCAG 2.2 and to ABNT NBR 17225:2025, the Brazilian web accessibility standard.

Status: early prototype (0.1.0). Tested on a local multisite with WordPress 7.1, PHP 8.2 and Elementor 4.3.

Why

Automated audits of a theme usually come back clean after the first round of fixes. What degrades over time is the content, published every day by different people. Auditing page by page does not scale; checking at publishing time does.

Editoria11y and Sa11y already offer front-end checks for logged-in users and are worth a look. This plugin focuses on what they leave out:

  1. Content rules tied to WCAG success criteria and NBR 17225 items, such as links to files without format, posters published as images and all-caps text.
  2. A stored result per post, so you can list the issues of the whole site and report on a whole multisite network from the command line.
  3. A link to a human checklist, which covers what a machine cannot decide.

How it works

Author saves ──► Checker (PHP, content rules) ──► post meta
                                                     │
     ┌─────────────────────────┬─────────────────────┤
     ▼                         ▼                     ▼
"Accessibility" column   Tools › Accessibility   wp a11ycc check
in post lists            (site-wide report)      (batch, CSV, whole network)

Author views the page ──► toolbar › "Check accessibility"
                          └─ axe-core on the rendered page + stored issues
Layer What it checks Why
Server (PHP) Content rules on the rendered HTML of the post Runs on save and in batch, without a browser. This is what scales.
Browser (axe-core) WCAG A and AA rules on the real page, including contrast Only a browser computes styles. Works with any editor, including Elementor.

Design decisions:

  • It informs; it does not block. Blocking publication breeds workarounds. An optional block for errors may come later.
  • Nothing is loaded from third parties. axe-core is bundled in vendor/, with its pt-BR and Spanish translations.
  • Content only. Theme problems (landmarks, menus, header contrast) belong to a per-template audit.

Content rules

Rule Level WCAG
img-missing-alt: image without an alt attribute error 1.1.1
alt-is-filename: alt such as "IMG_2034.jpg" or "photo" error 1.1.1
link-no-name: link without text (e.g. image with empty alt inside a link) error 2.4.4
link-generic: "click here", "read more" (English and Portuguese) warning 2.4.4
link-file-no-info: link to a PDF or DOCX without the format in its text warning 2.4.4
heading-skipped: H2 followed by H4 warning 1.3.1
heading-multi-h1: more than one H1 warning 1.3.1
heading-fake: bold paragraph used as a heading warning 1.3.1
text-all-caps: long passage in capital letters warning 3.1.5
table-no-header error 1.3.1
iframe-no-title error 4.1.2
video-captions: embedded video, reminder to check captions warning 1.2.2
image-little-text: image with fewer than 30 words of text (a poster?) warning 1.1.1

Extending

Hook Use
a11ycc_rules Change levels and messages, or register new rules
a11ycc_issues Add issues from your own checks
a11ycc_post_types Post types to check (default: post, page)
a11ycc_first_heading_level Heading level the content starts after (default: 1)
a11ycc_axe_scope CSS selector axe-core checks (default: main)
a11ycc_checklist_url Link to your publishing checklist 
add_filter( 'a11ycc_checklist_url', fn() => 'https://example.org/publishing-checklist/' );

Command line

wp a11ycc check
wp a11ycc check --post_type=page --format=csv > pages.csv

# Every site of a multisite network
wp site list --field=url | xargs -I{} wp --url={} a11ycc check --format=csv

Development

The dev/ folder has a local WordPress multisite in Docker (WordPress on PHP 8.2, MariaDB 11.4, WP-CLI) with the plugin mounted and a demo site with test content.

  1. npm install: installs axe-core and copies it to vendor/.
  2. Copy dev/.env.example to dev/.env and set the passwords.
  3. Optional: unzip Elementor from wordpress.org into dev/plugins/elementor/.
  4. npm run dev:up, then npm run dev:install.
  5. Open http://localhost:8888/demo/wp-admin/ and log in with the user from .env.
  6. npm run check checks the content; npm run i18n regenerates the translation files.

Requirements: WordPress 6.0+, PHP 7.4+ with the mbstring extension.

Roadmap

  • [ ] Fill in the NBR 17225 item of each rule.
  • [ ] Show checklist questions the machine cannot answer in the editor panel.
  • [ ] Network Admin page summarising every site.
  • [ ] Measure false positives on a sample of real posts.
  • [ ] Optional blocking of errors in the block editor.
  • [ ] Publish on the WordPress.org plugin directory.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. Bundles axe-core (MPL-2.0).

Built by Anderson Canale Garcia as part of his research on digital accessibility.