You know your website should be accessible. You've read about WCAG guidelines and the European Accessibility Act. You understand why it matters. But when you actually try to assess your own site's accessibility, the whole thing feels overwhelming. Where do you start? What tools do you use? How do you know what counts as a real problem versus a minor nicety?

The good news is that you can identify the majority of common accessibility issues using free tools and a bit of manual testing. You don't need to be a developer or an accessibility specialist to run a basic audit. This guide walks you through the best free tools available and gives you a practical step-by-step workflow for auditing your own website.

Before diving into the tools, set realistic expectations. Automated accessibility testing tools can find roughly 30-40% of WCAG issues. They're excellent at catching: missing alt text on images, colour contrast failures, missing form labels, broken heading hierarchies, missing language attributes, and empty links or buttons. These are the easy wins — the issues that are clearly defined and can be detected by scanning code.

What automated tools can't reliably detect includes: whether alt text is actually meaningful (they can tell it exists, not whether it's useful), whether the reading order makes sense, whether interactive elements behave as expected for keyboard users, whether the content is actually understandable, and whether complex widgets like carousels or accordions are properly accessible. These require human judgement and manual testing.

The combination of automated testing plus targeted manual testing catches the vast majority of real-world accessibility issues. Neither approach works well on its own, but together they give you a comprehensive picture.

WAVE (wave.webaim.org) is the most user-friendly accessibility testing tool available. You can either paste a URL into the web version or install the browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. WAVE overlays coloured icons directly onto your page, marking errors (red), warnings (yellow), and features (green) exactly where they occur. This visual approach makes it immediately obvious what needs fixing and where.

WAVE categorises issues into errors (definite accessibility problems that must be fixed), alerts (potential issues that need human review), and structural elements (showing your heading hierarchy, landmarks, and other structural features). Start by fixing all errors, then review each alert to determine if it's a real issue in your specific context.

The contrast checker built into WAVE is particularly useful. It identifies every instance where text doesn't meet the minimum 4.5:1 contrast ratio required by WCAG 2.1 AA and shows you both the current ratio and what you need to achieve.

axe DevTools (available as a free browser extension from Deque Systems) is the industry-standard accessibility testing engine used by many professional auditors. It integrates into your browser's developer tools and scans the current page for WCAG violations. The results are more technically detailed than WAVE, showing specific WCAG success criteria, the affected HTML elements, and suggested fixes.

axe is particularly good at detecting issues with dynamic content — elements that are loaded by JavaScript, opened via interaction, or changed dynamically. Since it tests the page as rendered in the browser rather than just the source HTML, it catches issues that some other tools miss.

Lighthouse is built into Chrome's developer tools (press F12, then click the Lighthouse tab). It includes an accessibility audit alongside its performance, SEO, and best practices checks. Lighthouse uses the axe engine under the bonnet, so its accessibility results are reliable and well-categorised.

The advantage of Lighthouse is that it gives you a single accessibility score out of 100, making it easy to track improvements over time. The disadvantage is that it only tests a sample of issues on each page, so it may miss some problems that WAVE or axe would catch. Use Lighthouse for quick, regular checks and WAVE or axe for thorough audits.

The single most revealing manual accessibility test is trying to navigate your entire website using only your keyboard. Put your mouse aside, go to your homepage, and press Tab repeatedly. Can you reach every interactive element (links, buttons, form fields, menus)? Can you see where the focus is at all times (is there a visible focus indicator)? Can you open dropdown menus and navigate within them? Can you submit forms? Can you play and pause videos? Can you close modal popups?

If you get stuck at any point — if focus disappears, if you can't reach a button, if a dropdown menu won't open, if you get trapped in a loop — that's a real accessibility barrier for anyone who navigates by keyboard, including many people with motor disabilities. These keyboard navigation issues are among the most impactful problems you can fix.

Pay particular attention to the focus order. Does Tab move through the page in a logical sequence? Does it skip any interactive elements? Does it jump around unpredictably? The focus order should follow the visual layout of the page, moving generally left-to-right and top-to-bottom.

Testing with an actual screen reader gives you the most authentic understanding of how your website works for blind and visually impaired users. NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) is a free, full-featured screen reader for Windows that you can download from nvaccess.org. On Mac, VoiceOver is built in — activate it with Command+F5.

You don't need to become a screen reader expert to do basic testing. Navigate to your homepage with the screen reader active and listen to how the page is announced. Does the page title make sense? Are headings announced with their proper levels? Are images described by their alt text? Do links and buttons have clear, descriptive labels? Can you understand the page structure from the audio alone?

The most common issues you'll discover are: images with missing or meaningless alt text ('DSC_0042.jpg'), links that say 'click here' or 'read more' without context, form fields without labels, and confusing page structure where headings are used for styling rather than to create a logical content hierarchy.

Here's a practical workflow for auditing your website's accessibility that combines automated and manual testing:

Step 1: Automated scan. Run WAVE on your homepage, your most important service pages, and a sample blog post. Fix all errors flagged by WAVE — these are definite problems. Review all alerts and fix those that are genuine issues.

Step 2: Contrast check. Use WAVE's contrast checker or the Colour Contrast Analyser (a free desktop tool from TPGi) to verify all text meets the 4.5:1 minimum ratio. Pay special attention to text on images, coloured backgrounds, and lighter-coloured body text.

Step 3: Keyboard navigation. Tab through each audited page. Note any focus traps, missing focus indicators, unreachable elements, or illogical focus order. Test all interactive components: menus, forms, accordions, modals.

Step 4: Heading structure. Use the HeadingsMap browser extension to visualise your heading hierarchy. Every page should have one H1 and a logical sequence of H2s, H3s, etc. No skipping levels (H2 to H4 with no H3). Headings should describe the content beneath them, not be used just for visual styling.

Step 5: Image alt text review. Manually review the alt text on your most important pages. Is it descriptive and meaningful? Does it convey the purpose of each image? Are decorative images properly marked so screen readers skip them?

Step 6: Screen reader spot-check. Use NVDA or VoiceOver to navigate your homepage and one service page. Listen for confusing announcements, missing labels, or content that doesn't make sense without visual context.

After your audit, you'll likely have a list of issues. Prioritise them by impact and frequency. Keyboard navigation problems that block users from completing tasks (like submitting a form) are critical. Missing alt text on key images is high priority. Contrast failures on body text are high priority. Minor contrast issues on decorative elements are lower priority. A missing language attribute is a quick fix worth doing immediately.

Don't try to fix everything at once. Start with the highest-impact issues, work through them systematically, and re-test after each round of fixes. Accessibility improvement is an ongoing process, not a one-time project.

A DIY audit using the tools and methods above will catch the majority of common issues. But for businesses that need formal compliance (particularly with the European Accessibility Act), a professional accessibility audit is the gold standard. A qualified auditor will test against the full WCAG 2.1 AA criteria, including the many checks that require human judgement, and provide a detailed remediation report.

Professional audits in Ireland typically cost €1,500-€5,000 depending on site size and complexity. If your site has complex functionality (ecommerce, booking systems, client portals), or if you're in a sector with specific accessibility obligations, the investment in professional auditing is worthwhile.

You don't need to be an accessibility expert to start improving your website today. The free tools are powerful, the manual tests are straightforward, and even fixing the basics — alt text, contrast, form labels, keyboard navigation — makes a meaningful difference for real people using your site. Start with an automated scan, follow up with manual testing, fix what you find, and repeat regularly. Accessibility isn't a destination; it's a practice. And the best time to start practising is now.