Accessibility Tools Overview: A Developer's Guide

If you're looking to make your app accessible, you've probably encountered a lot of options. Some are made for non-technical users looking to reduce legal liability without needing to code. Others are made for developer teams squashing accessibility bugs at the source.

Every solution promises peace of mind, but there can be hidden tradeoffs in the fine print.

In this guide, we'll examine popular accessibility tools, break down their real capabilities for modern dev workflows, and highlight where they fit best.

Jump to section

• What's the difference between accessibility tools
  • Widget
  • Automated scanner & monitoring tools
  • Manual Audits
  • Legal support
• What matters for developers?
• Market overview, competitors, and pricing
• EU and USA enforcement in 2025
• Picking the right tool for developers

What's the difference between accessibility tools

Accessibility tools come in four main flavors, each tailored to a different challenge or audience.

Non-technical users often handle simple marketing sites or web stores. They might slap on a widget or run a basic scanner to "check off" accessibility but can't address deeper code-level issues themselves.

Developers, on the other hand, need to fix issues at the source. They need a workflow that continuously checks for accessibility violations and works with their existing toolchain. All without overloading the development process with errors.

Here's a quick summary to start. We'll break down each tool type in more detail afterward.

Widget

A widget is a short JavaScript snippet that embeds an overlay on your site, letting visitors tweak font sizes, color contrast, or other visual preferences. While this can address certain usability aspects, it doesn't fix deeper issues in the underlying code.

These solutions cater to non-technical users who want a quick way to reduce legal risk. However, regulators and users take issue with widgets. For instance, the US Federal Trade Commission recently fined one vendor for misleading advertising. Advocacy groups also express dissatisfaction about the effectiveness of overlays, highlighting that they may not fulfill true accessibility requirements.

From a developer's perspective, widgets rarely address the code-level violations that accessibility standards require. Worse, the monthly visitor-based pricing often becomes expensive for high-traffic sites, turning a "quick fix" into a costly bandaid that leaves root problems unresolved.

Automated scanner & monitoring tools

These tools automatically scan your site or application for accessibility issues and typically offer a dashboard or CLI for surfacing violations. Their coverage varies—many claim to catch around 50–80% of WCAG issues, although the exact figure depends on your app's complexity.

Scanners are ideal for developers who can diagnose and fix problems themselves, but they can also serve as a reporting tool for non-technical audiences.

Many older scanners rely on page-level scans, which produce duplicate flags if the same component is repeated across multiple pages. By contrast, component-level tools like Chromatic examine each UI piece in isolation, so fixing one Button can eliminate dozens of potential violations at once.

Pricing ranges widely. Open source tools like axe-core are free but require you to handle integrations, test orchestration, and storage of results yourself. Paid tools often bundle CI integration, managed infrastructure, and regression tracking. They charge by number of scans. For a detailed example, read about the key differences between axe (open source) and Chromatic (paid).

Manual Audits

Manual audits involve human testers who thoroughly evaluate your app's accessibility—especially complex flows, dynamic content, or unusual custom components that automated tools often miss.

Although they're vital for comprehensive coverage, audits can be slow and expensive because each scenario is tested manually. By the time a full audit is finished, the codebase may have already changed.

In practice, many teams rely on audits primarily for compliance certification or final QA. A more efficient approach for developers pairs automated scans to catch common issues with scheduled manual audits for deeper or interactive checks.

Since full-time internal auditors can be cost-prohibitive, most companies bring in specialized third-party firms that charge on a per-page or project basis. Rates vary widely, but it's not uncommon for large audits to cost thousands—sometimes more—depending on scope.

Legal support services

Legal protection or insurance-like offerings that help defend against lawsuits or handle demand letters. While these services can be critical in handling immediate threats, they don't fix underlying code-level problems that caused the violation in the first place.

Developers typically only engage with legal teams when asked to address urgent issues or produce documentation proving compliance. Pricing varies widely, often depending on the scope of legal coverage.

What matters for developers?

Most accessibility solutions weren't designed for developers. Some cater to non-technical users while others drown you in repetitive violations or blow your budget. So what truly matters for dev teams?

Catch bugs at the source - components

Many solutions scan pages only. That's okay until you realize your Button component is used everywhere. A single missing label or color-contrast error in that component surfaces on every page, generating a flood of identical issues that pollute reports.

Component-based scans flip this on its head: they verify each discrete UI piece in isolation. This helps you find and fix issues before they spread across pages.

Chromatic automatically detects accessibility violations in React, Vue, Angular, and web components every time you push code. If you've ever sifted through hundreds of duplicates flagged by a page-level scanner, you'll appreciate how much simpler this makes your workflow.

Regression tests scan for accessibility issues every push

Many accessibility tools run scans infrequently, then dump a massive list of issues—making it hard to see which ones actually block your release. But modern dev teams ship code multiple times a day, so you need a system that immediately flags new violations without dragging you through thousands of preexisting ones.

Accessibility regression testing tools, like Chromatic, scan every commit and track baselines for each test. Rather than burying you under legacy accessibility debt you can't resolve right now, it highlights only newly introduced violations. This ensures you don't let accessibility issues creep in. Fixing them in the PR is far easier than cleaning up after a user complaint weeks later.

As an added bonus, these baselines can help you demonstrate compliance with legislation like the European Accessibility Act.

Comprehensive realtime reports

Traditional accessibility reporting is manual and costly—often taking months, which clashes with modern CI/CD cycles. Rather than waiting for a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) that's already outdated by the time it's delivered, developers need realtime insights to catch and fix new violations.

Tools like Chromatic offer an instant feedback loop that highlights accessibility issues in reusable components and any pages that include them. This birds-eye view helps you see which fixes will have the greatest impact and track progress toward compliance.

Integrations with the developer toolchain

The best solutions slot right into your existing pipeline with minimal setup:

• Frameworks: They support React, Vue, Angular, Web components out of the box.
• CI pipeline: Checks run automatically on every commit, so you don't need custom scripts or manual triggers.
• Git provider: Pull request checks highlight new violations, allowing you to fix them before merging.
• Branch detection: Easily see which branch introduced a regression.
• Notifications: Receive alerts via email, Slack, or webhooks right when issues appear.

Open source tools (like axe-core) are free and powerful, but you'll need to piece together scripts, maintain CI configs, and store results yourself. Paid tools, such as Chromatic, integrate these steps for you—often with a single command or minimal config—making it easier to get up and running with continuous accessibility testing.

Cost efficiency & ROI

Any accessibility issue that blocks compliance is a legal liability. While automated tests can catch the majority of accessibility problems at a low cost, they don't catch everything. Manual audits are crucial for identifying the issues that automated tests can't, but are slow and expensive.

Pragmatic teams maximize ROI by frontloading automation. Tools like Chromatic detect and prevent new accessibility issues early in your pull request, so you're not paying auditors (or scrambling last-minute) to fix avoidable mistakes.

By the time a manual audit happens, the obvious issues are already gone, and auditors can zero in on more nuanced problem areas. This approach cuts down on re-audit expenses and keeps your development cycle running smoothly.

Market overview, competitors, and pricing

Developers have a lot of options but only a few integrate into the developer workflow.

For small or hobby projects, it's tempting to start with an open source solution like axe (axe-core), but that means building your own pipeline to handle tasks like parallel tests and result storage.

Paid solutions, such as Chromatic or Evinced, bundle these capabilities to save developer time and maintenance effort. Pricing ranges from a $149/month sweet spot (Chromatic) to tens of thousands for tools that are enterprise-only.

When evaluating ROI, remember that automations that save a fraction of a developer's time typically outweigh the monthly subscription – especially when compliance lawsuits can cost far more.

EU and USA enforcement in 2025

The bigger your user base, the more likely you'll attract regulatory scrutiny if your app isn't accessible. Hundreds of well-known companies—Rite Aid, H&R Block, Domino's, and more—have faced legal challenges over website accessibility. The laws that you need to consider are:

• Europe: The European Accessibility Act (EAA) takes effect June 28, 2025, compelling all companies doing business in the EU to meet WCAG 2.1 A & AA standards. Read an in-depth guide for developers.
• United States: The Americans with Disabilities Act Title III covers public-facing websites, and while the law doesn't explicitly name WCAG, most courts hold sites to at least WCAG 2.0 or 2.1 at Level AA.

For developers, these regulations increase the importance of continuously validating your code against accessibility standards. After all, once you fix an issue, you don't want it creeping back in a future commit. Automated checks are the practical way to ensure ongoing compliance and minimize legal risk.

Picking the right tool for developers

It's clear that the accessibility market is flush with options that can be tricky to compare. This guide aims to help you navigate the choices and sequence your workflow so you can ship accessible UIs without ballooning costs or timelines. We recommend:

• 🧩 A component-based approach to accessibility
• 🚦 Regression testing to prevent backsliding
• 📊 Realtime issue reporting broken out by branch
• 🔗 Native integrations with your dev toolchain
• 🌎 A mix of broad automated scans and focused manual audits

If you're looking for something that ticks all these boxes, Chromatic Accessibility Regression Testing provides automated accessibility coverage by catching issues at the component level and tracking your progress toward compliance.