WAVE

What is WAVE?

WAVE is an accessibility evaluation tool from WebAIM, a non-profit accessibility research group, that scans a page and visually overlays icons directly on the elements with issues, missing alt text, poor contrast, missing form labels, rather than handing back an abstract report you have to cross-reference against the page yourself. It's available as a web tool where you paste in a URL, or as a browser extension for pages behind auth or still in local development.

Key features

• Visual, in-page overlay of errors, alerts, and structural elements, so issues show up right where they occur on the page
• Contrast checker built in for quickly spotting text/background color combinations that fail WCAG thresholds
• Browser extension version works on local dev environments and pages requiring login, not just public URLs
• Run by WebAIM, a long-standing non-profit focused specifically on accessibility research and testing, not a commercial vendor upselling a bigger platform
• Free with no account or signup required for basic use

Who it's for

Anyone doing a manual accessibility pass on a site, from solo developers checking their own work to teams doing periodic audits. It's a point-in-time scanning tool, not a replacement for screen reader testing or an ongoing automated accessibility monitoring pipeline.

Pricing

Free to use, both the web tool and the browser extension.