Features

Editoria11y's core tests detect more than 50 common content accessibility problems; decisions that hurt legibility, mistakes that make screen readers less effective, and errors that reduce SEO.

Add-ons provide ~40 additional tests for developers and designers, custom tests and various site-wide quality assurance tools.

The content tests focus on issues that appear after sites are turned over to content authors. Sites need to be tested with manual auditing tools, keyboards and screen readers before launch, but even the most accessible site on day one tends to drift as edits bring in new problems.

What makes Editoria11y stand out among accessibility tools is that its tests run live, in browser, as authors edit and preview their work. Authors are more likely to react to immediate, inline feedback, notice alerts and make corrections, than they are to remember to visit a dashboard or run a manual check.

The author's experience

Screenshot of the Editoria11y toolbar, showing 4 errors.

Authors see the Editoria11y toolbar while editing content. When issues are detected, it becomes yellow or red, and displays an issue count. Clicking the count scrolls to the first alert and opens its tooltip.

Tip indicated a link is only named click here.

Tips appear inline, with a plain language description of the error, suggestions for correction, and notes on why the issue matters.

Heading outline visualizer overlaid on page

The toolbar contains additional tools for manual checks, including heading outline and alt text visualizers and readability scoring.

Site admin controls

Every visible aspect of the checker can be customized. Parameters and events allow for removing tests, rewriting tips, inserting custom tests and setting custom themes.

Plugins for Drupal and WordPress add additional features, such as synchronized dismissals, site-wide dashboards and CSV report exports.

Reporting dashboard showing recent issues and pages with the most issues.
The Drupal dashboard, which includes filterable lists of issues, pages with issues, and dismissals.

Tests

Editoria11y's tests focus on improving the experience of the Web for all users, as measured by humans, not just technical standards. While key tests are intended to help achieve Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2 AA), others are influenced by the work of the Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force, as well as general usability and design best practices.

Individual tests can be turned off by site admins.

Image alt text

  • Image missing alt attribute
  • Alt text is a filename
  • Alt text is a placeholder ("TBD")
  • Alt text is unpronounceable symbols
  • Alt text contains redundant words ("image of…")
  • Alt text is too long
  • Decorative image may have value
  • Carousel image marked decorative
  • Captioned image has no alt text
  • Alt text duplicates the caption

Linked images

  • Linked image has no alt text
  • Linked image alt is a URL or filename
  • Linked image alt is a placeholder
  • Linked image alt is unpronounceable symbols
  • Linked image alt describes the image, not the link
  • Linked image alt contains redundant words
  • Linked image alt is too long
  • Image in link with text has no alt attribute

Embedded media

  • Video needs captions
  • Audio needs a transcript
  • Data visualization needs an accessible alternative
  • Frame missing a title
  • Frame excluded from keyboard navigation
  • Frame content needs manual accessibility check
  • Linked document may not be screen-reader accessible
  • PDF lacks an accessible alternative
  • Nested interactive layout components

Meaningful links

  • Empty link
  • Link text is a URL
  • Link text is only a DOI number
  • Link text says "click here"
  • Link text is only generic words ("read more")
  • Different links share the same text
  • Linked icon or image has no text alternative
  • Link opens a new tab without warning
  • Link points to a file without warning
  • Link text is only symbols or emoji
  • Meaningful link text hidden from sighted users
  • Redundant link tooltip
  • Broken in-page anchor link
  • Duplicate ID attribute
  • Link may point to a development environment

Headings

  • Page is missing a Heading 1
  • First heading is a subheading
  • Heading skips a level
  • Heading is empty
  • Image used as heading needs alt text
  • Heading is very long
  • Bold paragraph might be a heading
  • Short blockquote might be a heading

Text legibility

  • Excessive uppercase text
  • Large block of bold or italic text
  • Text is too small
  • Non-link text is underlined
  • Text is justified
  • Subscript or superscript misused as formatting
  • Fake list using characters or symbols
  • List item outside a list

Color contrast

  • Text has insufficient contrast
  • Text contrast requires manual check
  • Icon or graphic has insufficient contrast
  • Icon or graphic contrast requires manual check
  • Input text has insufficient contrast
  • Placeholder text has insufficient contrast

Tables

  • Table missing a header row or column
  • Table header cell is empty
  • Content heading used inside a table

Forms & interactive elements

  • Button has no accessible label
  • Button has an invalid ARIA label
  • Button label includes the word "button"
  • Visible label doesn't match accessible name
  • Input has no associated label
  • Input uses only an invisible label
  • Input uses only a placeholder as a label
  • Reset button may cause accidental data loss
  • Element hidden from screen readers but still keyboard-focusable
  • Positive tabindex breaks reading and tab order

Page metadata

  • Page title missing
  • Page language not declared
  • Viewport prevents text scaling
  • Page auto-refreshes

CSA features

Editoria11y promotes accessibility in a unique way. Its tools are highly effective at helping non-technical authors prepare content that can be enjoyed equally by disabled Web users. We consider this a public good, so Editoria11y will always be free to use.

Editoria11y is not, however, free to develop or support.

The CSA fills the gap: project members fund the development of the Editoria11y library, its CMS plugins, and the CSA suite: a rapidly growing set of open source quality assurance tools that provide similar functionality to commercial products, at a much lower price point. The CSA suite for Drupal is currently free in beta, and will arrive for WordPress in Q3 2026.

Site crawl in progress
CSA crawler refreshing a dashboard.

Tests & Tools

  • Developer, readability and contrast tests.
  • Role-based split configuration for developers and content creators.
  • Custom-test builders.
  • One-click site-wide dismissals
  • Dashboard maintenance tools and crawlers
Color picker in test tooltip

Community benefits

  • Priority support.
  • Weighted influence on the project roadmap.
  • Automatic access to new features on the roadmap.
  • Direct setup assistance (depending on level).
  • Public supporter credit (depending on level/by request; terms apply).

Contribute-what-you-can licensing

After the Beta, the CSA suite will be made available through a contribute-what-you-can model. Editoria11y core, both the library and the plugins, will remain free.

View licensing options and alternatives

CSA sponsored projects

Active

Q2 2026: Launch the Editoria11y CSA community

Work remaining:

  • Create a fiscal entity to process subscriptions and sponsorships.
  • Set up a licensing system.
Q2 2026: Custom rule builder
  1. Finished for Drupal.
  2. Todo: port builder to WordPress.
Q3 2026: Port 3.x library to WordPress
  1. Create CSA submodule with community supported features
    • Create dashboard maintenance tools to drop outdated results and recrawl existing content.
    • Allow for marking certain tests OK site-wide, rather than just on one page.
    • Allow for split configuration, with separate settings and tests for developers and content editors.

Recently finished

Q1 2026: Library 3.x rewrite
  • Merge Editoria11y and Sa11y rulesets. Since the fork, Sa11y wrote ~50 additional tests and adopted ESM tooling, and Editoria11y implemented performance improvements and added parameters to enable real-time checking. Sa11y 4.2.2 and Editoria11y 3.0.0 will begin our shared future.
  • Add "split configuration" support to allow separate rulesets for developers and content creators.
  • Add machine translations for Chinese, Danish, Dutch, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian as templates for human refinement.
  • Current status: coding work is finished; will tag release after updating documentation and demos.
Q1 2026: Drupal module 3.x rewrite
  1. Expand the dashboard with more robust reporting and filtering tools.
  2. Add machine translations for Chinese, Danish, Dutch, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian as templates for human refinement.
  3. Make the CSV export functions customizable
  4. Create CSA submodule with community supported features
    • Create dashboard maintenance tools to drop outdated results and recrawl existing content.
    • Allow for marking certain tests OK site-wide, rather than just on one page.
    • Allow for split configuration, with separate settings and tests for developers and content editors.

Under discussion

Discuss and vote on these ideas in the Editoria11y library forums.

Ideas are tagged with difficulty/priority estimates based on current community chatter.

  • Multi-site monitoring dashboard
  • Broken link detection
  • PDF scanning
  • Tooltip code location tab
  • Tooltip page report export
  • Flagged words
  • CLI developer tools
  • Bookmarklets/Browser plugins
  • ACT rule validation
  • Expand name/role/value validation