Automated testing tools help you understand the basics of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) with suggestions for correcting issues and links to in-depth information for each WCAG success criteria.
Website scanning with Siteimprove
All UCSF websites should be scanned in Siteimprove, our approved website accessibility testing tool. When a UCSF-hosted website is created at UCSF, it is automatically added to Siteimprove.
If your site is not showing in Siteimprove, please submit a Digital Accessibility Consultation Request with your site URL(s), and we'll get you associated with your site(s) in 5-7 business days.
Note: This is the best automated tester because it will test the whole site (except for pages that require a login or VPN).
Single-page checkers
To check pages that require a login or VPN, use these browser extensions to get real-time feedback on issues and how to fix them.
Note: These are called "single page checkers" because you can only test one page at a time.
- Lighthouse Accessibility Tool
- Silktide Accessibility Checker
- Siteimprove Accessibility Checker
- WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
Limitations of automated testing
- False positives are common and take time to weed out.
- The accessibility score in Siteimprove does not include issues in PDFs or videos on your site;
- The number of PDFs with issues is reported separately from the accessibility score.
- You get a list of audio / video files to check for missing video captions and transcripts.
- Even the best testing tools catch no more than 30% of the WCAG guidelines.
Do manual testing, too
Because of the limitations of automated tools, you need a combination of automated and manual testing:
- Visit the manual testing page to learn the basics.
- For an introduction to combining automated and manual testing, check out Siteimprove's Accessibility 101 webinar.