Can assistive tech read your pages?

Accessibility overlaps SEO more than people expect: alt text, link text and headings serve screen readers and crawlers at the same time. This checks the gaps a crawler can see in your raw HTML, with no browser needed.

Reads the raw HTML of a set of your pages for the common accessibility gaps. Saved to your account if you are signed in to a paid plan.

How this check works

Shipwork parses a set of your pages for the accessibility problems visible in raw HTML: images with no alt attribute, form fields with no label, links with no useful text, iframes with no title, duplicate id attributes, a missing lang attribute and positive tabindex values. It is the static subset: contrast and focus order need a rendered browser.

What the accessibility checker inspects

The accessibility checker reads the raw HTML of the pages it samples, up to 20 in a free run, and counts a specific set of issues: images with no alt attribute, links with no useful text, form fields with no label, iframes with no title, duplicate id attributes, pages with no language set on the html element, and elements given a positive tab order.

These are the checks that need no browser and that overlap with SEO, which is why they are grouped here. The tool counts them across the sample and names the totals. It does not render the page, so it cannot see anything that scripts add after load.

How to read an accessibility result

The warnings cover the issues most likely to block a screen-reader user: missing alt text, links announced only as 'click here', unlabelled inputs and untitled frames. The information-level items, such as duplicate ids, a missing page language or a positive tab order, are still worth fixing but are lower priority. All of them are counts over the pages read.

The checker cannot test colour contrast, keyboard focus order, focus traps, motion, or whether a page is understandable when read aloud in sequence. Those need a rendered browser and human judgement. A clean result means the raw-HTML subset it looks at was clean; it is not a conformance claim and not proof a page is fully accessible.

Common causes and why they matter

Most of these issues are template defaults. A logo or decorative image is inserted with no alt, an icon button has no accessible name, every page renders the same iframe without a title, and a component library repeats an id across a page. A theme update or a new block can reintroduce them across hundreds of pages at once.

The impact falls on people first: a screen-reader user cannot tell what an image shows, which field to fill, or where a link goes. Several of the same fixes help search engines, which read alt text, link text and heading structure as signals. Fixing the template once improves both at the same time.

How to fix accessibility gaps

Give every informative image a short accurate alt value, and use an empty alt for images that are purely decorative. Add a label or an aria-label to each form field. Replace vague link text with a phrase that names the destination. Give each iframe a title that describes its content, and make every id unique on the page.

Set the language on the html element, and remove positive tab order values so the natural document order is used. In a CMS, these are usually fixed in the image field, the form builder, the menu component or the theme template, so one edit covers every page it renders. Re-run the checker afterwards and confirm the totals fall.

When to use related checks

Use image check for alt text and image dimensions together, and JavaScript check when content or controls only appear after scripts run, which this raw-HTML check cannot see.

The website audit checklist places accessibility among the other first-pass checks. Accessibility and SEO share several signals, but they are not the same test, so a clean result here does not replace a rendered accessibility review.

Questions

Why check accessibility for SEO?

Alt text, descriptive link text and a correct heading order help screen readers and search engines alike. Fixing one usually fixes the other.

What does this not check?

Colour contrast, focus order and keyboard traps need a rendered browser and human judgement. This covers the static HTML subset only.

What is the most common problem?

Missing or vague link text ("click here", "read more") and unlabelled form fields, both trivial to fix and both harmful to screen-reader users.

How do I check accessibility on my website?

Run the checker on your domain. It reads the raw HTML of the pages it samples and counts missing alt text, vague link text, unlabelled form fields, untitled iframes, duplicate ids and a few structural issues. A rendered review is still needed for contrast, keyboard use and reading order.

Does accessibility help SEO?

Several accessibility fixes are also SEO fixes: alt text, descriptive link text and a correct heading structure help assistive technology and search engines. Other accessibility work, such as keyboard focus and contrast, is about people using the page and is not an SEO signal. Do it because it helps users.

What does an accessibility checker not catch?

It cannot test colour contrast, keyboard focus order, focus traps, animation, or whether the reading order makes sense. Those require a rendered browser and human review. This check covers only the static HTML subset that needs no browser.

Why is 'click here' bad for screen readers?

Screen-reader users can list every link on a page out of context. A list of 'click here' and 'read more' entries tells them nothing about where each link goes. A short phrase naming the destination fixes it for them and gives crawlers a topic at the same time.

What is a duplicate id and why does it matter?

An id should appear once per page because labels, aria references and in-page links point at it by name. When two elements share an id, those references can resolve to the wrong element, so a label or control may not work as intended for assistive technology.

Keep reading

What this reads

Reads public pages from outside your network, the way a crawler does.
No signup, and nothing is stored on the free checks.
One of 83 checks across discovery, content, markup, trust and catalogue data.

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0stored on free checks

Cool, just ran an audit and got some insights! Let’s see if I can fix them :)

Tenta Dev, @DevTenta

Whoah! this site is crazy, nothing to roast at all

Ainreek, @AinreekAI

cool as heck, tried it on my blog and the insights it gave are helpful and not bluff.

Refaat 🍉 (Mouse), @1Mouse__