A11yInspect vs Pa11y

A11yInspect is a browser extension that works with the Inspect tool in DevTools to assess web-page accessibility against WCAG 2.2. Automated checks cover more than 600 issues across 30 Success Criteria, with a stated false-positive rate below 1%. Results classify findings as Fails, Validates, or Suggestions and map them to criteria and severity. Supported standards include WCAG, Section 508, EN 301 549, GIGW 3.0, and IS 17802. Manual review tools include bookmarklets for headings, tab order, grayscale, target size, text spacing, and forms, as well as a color contrast checker. The extension is available for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox and can examine a page or a specific element. Pages can be tested in any language, although the interface is English-only; the extension is for desktop browsers and cannot be used on mobile. The Free plan allows unlimited webpage testing without login or a credit card. Pro costs $120.00 per year and includes a 30-day trial without a card; users move to Free if they do not subscribe when it ends.

Pa11y is a free, open-source set of tools for checking website accessibility. Its command-line interface loads a page for a one-off test and highlights issues, while Pa11y CI checks a list of pages in continuous-integration workflows. Pa11y Dashboard tests pages daily and graphs improvements or regressions over time. Pa11y Webservice supplies JSON data for the Dashboard or a custom dashboard-style front end. The package runs from the command line or Node.js, uses HTML_CodeSniffer by default, and can also use the axe test runner. WCAG2AA is the default CLI standard, with WCAG2A and WCAG2AAA selectable. Reports can be human-readable CLI output, CSV, HTML, JSON, or TSV. Configuration uses command-line options or JSON and JavaScript files, and local HTML files can be tested with an absolute path. Pa11y provides API access, scheduled scans, site-level scanning, and CI/CD integration across Linux, macOS, Windows, web, API, and self-hosted setups. Pa11y 10 requires Node.js 22.13.0 or newer on an even-numbered release.