About A11y Suite

A11y Suite started as a remediation tool for one university. It is now a
general-purpose product for any organization required to meet WCAG 2.1 AA,
ADA Title II, or Section 508 obligations.

Why this exists

In 2025 the FTC fined accessiBe $1 million for selling accessibility theater —
an overlay widget that pretended to make websites WCAG-compliant. The settlement
banned accessiBe from claiming its software made any website compliant or
protected customers from lawsuits.

Around the same time, an institution maintaining a WordPress site needed
an accessibility remediation system that fit a real organizational budget
and workflow. The off-the-shelf options were:

• Overlay vendors — same model the FTC just penalized.
  Not an option for a university with legal exposure.
• Siteimprove — enterprise-only, $10K+/year, designed
  for corporations not academic budgets.
• WebAIM audits — gold-standard but $2,500 per
  point-in-time audit. Doesn’t help with continuous remediation between audits.
• Free tools (axe-core, WAVE) — excellent but they only
  identify problems, not fix them.

So we built A11y Suite. WordPress plugin first because most universities,
non-profits, government sites, and small businesses run WordPress. The
plugin scans, proposes fixes, applies them safely (revertable), and produces
the paper trail courts and procurement officers actually want to see.

Who builds it

Principles

1. Real fixes, not theater. Every applied patch is real CSS,
   JS, or ARIA. No overlay widget pretending to fix things at runtime.
2. FTC-safe by default. The plugin actively blocks risky
   phrases (“100% compliant”, “lawsuit-proof”, “AI guarantees”) from your
   public statement. We learned from accessiBe so you don’t have to.
3. Your data, your server. All scan results, applied fixes,
   and audit log entries stay in your WordPress database. We don’t host
   customer data.
4. Open source, GPL-2.0+. Both Free and Pro ship as
   readable PHP. The Pro license validates support entitlement, not your
   right to read the code.
5. No dark patterns. Free tier is fully functional. No
   trial timers. No “limited to 5 issues per scan.” We make money when Pro
   is worth more to you than $49/year.
6. Audit-ready paper trail. Every fix logged with timestamp,
   user, and reason. Forward the Legal Defense ZIP to counsel and you have
   evidence of good-faith effort.

What we’re not

• We are not a certified WCAG audit. A credentialed third-party audit
  (WebAIM, Deque, Level Access) remains the gold standard for legal
  certification. We help you get ready for it.
• We are not lawyers. The Compliance Verification page and Legal Defense
  Package are tools for your General Counsel to use — not legal advice.
• We are not the only accessibility tool you need. axe DevTools for
  developers, WAVE for ad-hoc review, manual screen-reader testing for QA —
  all complement A11y Suite.

Roadmap (next 12 months)

• Q1: Public URL scanner (a11ysuite.com/scan?url=…) for
  one-click site auditing without installing the plugin.
• Q2: Universal JS SDK — works on Shopify, Wix, Drupal,
  custom React/Next, static HTML. One script tag, same backend.
• Q3: AI auto-adaptation engine — detects CMS, theme,
  brand colors, language, framework quirks; tailors fix strategy per site.
• Q4: Browser extension (Chrome / Firefox / Edge) for
  developers and ad-hoc auditors.

Contact

For sales, partnerships, press, security disclosures: go to the contact page.

For technical support — Pro license holders get priority email response within
1 business day. Free tier support goes through the WordPress.org plugin forum
(community-supported).