What is WCAG 2.2 and why does it matter?

WCAG 2.2 is the international standard for web accessibility. It defines how to make websites usable for people with disabilities. Compliance is legally required under the ADA in the US and the European Accessibility Act in the EU. Non-compliance can lead to lawsuits, fines, and lost customers.

What does the full report include?

A branded PDF with your compliance score, every violation grouped by severity, fix instructions with code examples, WCAG criteria mapping for each issue, affected HTML elements, and a list of passed checks. Hand it to your developer or attach it to compliance records.

How is the compliance score calculated?

Score = passes / (passes + Σ(violation_nodes × severity_weight)) × 100, rounded and clamped to 0–100. Each axe-core rule pass earns 1 point. Each failing element (node) is multiplied by a severity weight: critical 10×, serious 5×, moderate 2×, minor 1×. Severities come from axe-core's own impact classification — we don't reweight rules ourselves. Multi-page audits aggregate by averaging per-page scores for pages that scanned successfully. Full worked example and caveats at /methodology.

What's in the audit report?

Every $49 Audit Report is a 4–8 page branded PDF with these sections: (1) Cover Page — your URL, scan date, compliance score, and a verification block with the report ID and Ed25519 signature. (2) Executive Summary — score gauge, severity breakdown, and contextual analysis. (3) What This Audit Does Not Cover — an honest breakdown of what automated scans miss (keyboard navigation, screen reader UX, alt-text meaningfulness, focus management) and require manual review. (4) Violations by Severity — every detected issue with description, affected HTML elements, WCAG criteria, and fix instructions. (5) Passed Checks — list of all WCAG rules your site passes. View a real example at /sample-report.pdf.

How is this different from free browser tools?

Free tools flag issues inline but produce no exportable documentation. You cannot share the results with stakeholders, attach them to compliance records, or hand them to a developer with fix instructions. ScanAble produces a professional PDF that serves as both an audit record and a remediation plan.

Do I need to create an account?

No. Enter your URL, see your free preview, pay $49, and your report is ready to download. We only ask for an email to deliver the PDF link.

What if the scan fails or the report is wrong?

If our scanner cannot reach your website, you are not charged. If you receive a report you believe contains errors, contact us within 7 days for a full refund.

How long does the scan take?

Most scans finish in 30 to 60 seconds. Pages with heavy JavaScript may take up to 90 seconds. Your PDF is ready to download the moment the scan completes.

What does the scan NOT catch?

Automated tools (including ours, axe DevTools, Lighthouse, and Pa11y) catch approximately 30-40% of WCAG issues per Deque's published research. The categories that require manual review and are NOT evaluated by this report: keyboard navigation flow and tab order, screen reader experience, alt-text quality (we detect presence, not meaningfulness), focus management on dynamic content, cognitive load, complex form flows, color/contrast judgment in context, drag-and-drop alternatives, and caption/transcript accuracy. The PDF itself includes a full breakdown of these limitations. A clean ScanAble report does not certify compliance; combine it with manual testing for full coverage.

Can I scan pages behind a login?

Yes. On the homepage, click "Scan a page behind a login?" below the URL field, paste your session cookies in browser format (name=value; name2=value2), enter your email, then pay inline via Stripe Elements — no redirect. Cookies stay in your browser through the entire purchase, are sent directly to the scanner only after payment confirms, and are never written to our database. API customers can also pass a `cookies` array to /api/v1/scan on paid plans. The cookies are never logged, never included in the signed report payload, and never echoed in API responses. Because we don't keep them, the free 90-day re-scan does not apply to authenticated reports; just run a new authenticated scan when you want to verify fixes.

How does the $149 Site Audit work?

Provide a sitemap.xml URL or paste up to 25 URLs at /site-audit. After payment, we scan every page (using the same axe-core engine and full WCAG 2.0/2.1/2.2 Level AA coverage as the single-page audit), then deliver one combined signed PDF with a per-page score table, an aggregate compliance score, and every detected violation grouped by severity. Same 7-day money-back guarantee.

Why is the Site Audit a separate price?

Multi-page scans take ~10 seconds per page in addition to PDF generation. Pricing the $149 SKU separately keeps the $49 single-page Audit Report priced for impulse buyers without forcing them to subsidize multi-page runtime. The Site Audit is for agencies, compliance officers, and B2B vendors who need site-wide evidence, not just a single landing page.

Do you sell or recommend accessibility overlays?

No. ScanAble does not sell, license, recommend, or build accessibility overlays — the JavaScript widgets that promise to fix compliance issues at runtime. Overlays patch symptoms instead of source code, have been publicly opposed by the National Federation of the Blind, and have not prevented ADA lawsuits. We've published our full position at /no-overlay-pledge. We produce audit evidence with source-code fix guidance instead.

Comparison

ScanAble vs Pa11y

Updated April 28, 2026

Pa11y is a free, open-source accessibility testing toolkit — a CLI for one-off scans, Pa11y CI for pipelines, and Pa11y Dashboard for self-hosted continuous monitoring. ScanAble is a hosted service: you POST a URL, you get back a signed PDF audit report or structured JSON, with no servers to run. Both produce honest accessibility findings; the choice is really about who hosts and operates the tooling.

Feature comparison

Feature	ScanAble	Pa11y
License	Proprietary (hosted SaaS)	Open source (LGPL-3.0)
Hosting model	Hosted — no servers to run	Self-hosted CLI / dashboard
Setup time	Paste URL, get results in 60s	Install Node, configure, host the dashboard
Branded PDF report	Verified, timestamped PDF with signature	No PDF — JSON, CLI, or HTML output
Cryptographic signing	Ed25519-signed reports + public /verify page	None
Compliance scoring	Weighted 0-100 score	Pass/fail per rule (no aggregate score)
Free re-scan after fixes	Yes, within 90 days of purchase	N/A — free unlimited self-hosted scans
CI integration	REST API call from any CI	Pa11y CI native command
Continuous monitoring	Scheduled API scans on paid tiers	Pa11y Dashboard (self-hosted)
Data hosting	Reports stored on ScanAble infra	Stays on your servers — no third party sees URLs
Commercial support	Yes (paid tiers)	Community / GitHub issues only

Pricing comparison

Tier	ScanAble	Pa11y
Software cost	Free tier + paid tiers	Free (open source)
Operational cost	$0 — fully hosted	Your hosting + DevOps time
One-time audit PDF	$49 (signed, timestamped)	Not available — would need to build PDF generation yourself
1,000 scans/mo (managed)	$19/mo	Free, but you host the runner + dashboard
Audit artifact for legal/compliance file	Built in	DIY (no signed deliverable)

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Scan any URL for WCAG 2.2 violations. Free preview with compliance score — no signup required.

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