University IT teams and web accessibility coordinators face a hard problem: you're responsible for accessibility compliance across an institution with hundreds or thousands of web pages, dozens of third-party integrations, and a constant stream of new content from faculty and departments.
Manual audits are slow and expensive. Hiring an outside accessibility firm for a full audit can cost $10,000–$50,000 or more. And OCR complaints don't wait for your audit schedule.
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View the 2026 ReportThis guide explains how to use a free WCAG 2.1 checker to identify violations on your .edu site, how to prioritize what you find, and how to integrate automated scanning into your web operations workflow.
Automated WCAG checkers work by loading a webpage, parsing its HTML, and testing it against a set of rules derived from the WCAG 2.1 success criteria. They check things like:
A good automated checker catches roughly 30–40% of all WCAG violations — the objective, machine-verifiable ones. The remaining 60–70% require human judgment: Is the alt text actually descriptive? Does the page make sense to a screen reader user navigating by headings? Is the reading order logical?
1 Go to accessalyze.com — the scanner runs entirely in your browser, no signup required.
2 Enter a .edu URL — start with your institution's homepage, or go directly to a high-traffic page like admissions, financial aid, or course registration.
3 Review your results — the report shows every detected violation, grouped by WCAG criterion, with the specific HTML element that failed and a plain-English explanation of the issue.
4 Export or share — download your results or share the report URL with your web team or accessibility coordinator for remediation tracking.
Free WCAG 2.1 AA scan — instant results, no login required. Works on any URL, including .edu domains.
Start Free Scan →| Check | WCAG Criterion | What It Tests |
|---|---|---|
| Alt text on images | 1.1.1 | Every non-decorative image has meaningful alt text |
| Color contrast | 1.4.3 / 1.4.11 | Text and UI components meet contrast minimums |
| Form labels | 1.3.1 / 4.1.2 | Inputs are programmatically labeled |
| Heading structure | 1.3.1 | Headings are used semantically, not just visually |
| Page language | 3.1.1 | lang attribute is set on <html> |
| Page title | 2.4.2 | Each page has a unique, descriptive <title> |
| Link text | 2.4.4 | Links are distinguishable by text alone (no "click here") |
| ARIA usage | 4.1.2 | ARIA attributes are valid and not contradictory |
| Keyboard focus indicators | 2.4.7 | Focused elements are visually distinguishable |
| Skip navigation | 2.4.1 | Page has a skip-to-main-content link |
Running the scanner on your homepage is a start — but a major university site might have thousands of pages. Here's a systematic approach to get the most impact from automated scanning:
Scan these first. They affect the most students and are most likely to appear in an OCR investigation:
Each academic department and administrative unit typically has its own website or section. Scan the homepage of each major department — these vary widely in quality and are often managed by non-technical staff.
Identify content types that appear frequently (news articles, event pages, faculty profiles) and test one or two of each. If your CMS template for news articles has a color contrast problem, fixing the template fixes all news articles at once.
Scan your LMS login page, library catalog, student information system portal, and any other third-party tools accessible from your main domain. These are often the most severe failure points — and the hardest to fix (you'll need to engage vendors).
When Accessalyze returns results, you'll see violations categorized by severity. Here's how to read them:
These completely block access for some users — for example, a form with no labels means a screen reader user cannot complete it at all. Fix these first regardless of page tier.
These create significant barriers but don't necessarily block access entirely — for example, low color contrast makes text hard to read but doesn't make it invisible. Prioritize these after critical issues.
These reduce the quality of the experience but have lower impact. Address these in your regular content maintenance cycle.
Be aware of what automated tools cannot catch:
<track> element on a video, but not whether the captions are accurate.After automated scanning, conduct keyboard-only testing (tab through every interactive element on key pages) and screen reader testing (use NVDA + Firefox or JAWS + Chrome) on your Tier 1 pages.
Accessalyze gives you a free, instant WCAG 2.1 AA report for any university or college URL. See exactly what's failing and get actionable guidance on fixes — right now, no cost.
Scan Your University Site Free →No signup · No download · Works on any .edu URL
The most efficient universities treat accessibility as a publishing requirement, not a post-launch fix. Practical steps:
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