Short answer
An AODA compliance checker is an automated scanner. It's a great first step and it finds real problems, like low contrast and missing alt text. But no scanner can tell you your site is AODA compliant, because a large share of WCAG 2.0 AA can only be checked by a person. A clean scan means "no machine-detectable errors", nothing more.
Free AODA compliance checkers are everywhere, usually offered by companies selling a widget or a monitoring subscription. We use automated tools every day, so this isn't a case against them. It's a case against treating their score as a verdict.
What an AODA compliance checker catches well
- Text and background colour combinations below the 4.5 to 1 contrast ratio
- Images with no alt attribute at all
- Form fields with no programmatic label
- Empty links and empty buttons
- A missing page language
- Some broken ARIA attributes
Those are exactly the problems that show up most often. WebAIM's annual study of the top million home pages keeps finding them on the vast majority of sites. More on that here.
5 things a free scan can't tell you
- Whether your alt text is right. "Image" passes a scan. So does the wrong product name.
- Whether a keyboard user can finish checkout. A scanner can't press Tab through your checkout, fail a field and see if the error is announced.
- Whether keyboard focus gets trapped. Popups, image galleries and chat widgets are common traps that scans don't experience.
- Whether your headings and links make sense. It can see that headings exist, not that they describe the page.
- Whether the page still works at 200% zoom. Layout problems at high zoom rarely show up in a scan.
Why a perfect score can still mean a failing site
Automated scores measure what was tested, not what wasn't. It's entirely possible to reach a perfect score in a browser audit tool while a menu is unusable without a mouse. Scanners also miss third-party content they can't see into, and can flag issues that aren't real, like a banner caught mid-animation.
On our recent industrial e-commerce project, scans told us where to start, but the work wasn't signed off until every template had also been tested by keyboard, with a screen reader, at 200% zoom and on a phone.
How to use a checker properly
- Run one before anything else. It's free and it shows you the obvious problems.
- Run two. WAVE and axe report differently. Together they're a stronger first pass.
- Then test by hand. Use our AODA website compliance checklist for the manual checks.
- Keep scanning after it's fixed. A content checker that flags issues as staff publish new pages is one of the few places an ongoing tool earns its keep.
Don't pay monthly to watch red numbers
If your checker has shown the same errors for months, the scanning isn't the problem. The fixing is. That's the part we do: every issue repaired in your site's code, re-tested by hand, at one fixed price. Here's how the different approaches compare.
Want a real answer about your site?
Send us your web address. We will test it by hand and reply with one fixed quote for real, code-level fixes. No overlay, no subscription.
This article is general information for Ontario organizations, not legal advice. For advice on your specific obligations, speak with a lawyer.