WordPress itself has an accessibility team and coding standards, but your site's accessibility depends mostly on three things you control: your theme, your plugins, and your content. Here's a practical checklist.
Theme
- Start from an accessibility-ready theme. WordPress.org lets theme authors tag themes that pass a set of accessibility requirements; you can browse accessibility-ready themes. The tag is a good starting point, not a guarantee.
- Check the skip link. Press Tab once on any page. A "Skip to content" link should appear.
- Check focus styles. Keep tabbing. If you can't see where you are, the theme has removed focus outlines. A small CSS fix restores them:
/* Appearance → Customize → Additional CSS */
a:focus-visible, button:focus-visible, input:focus-visible,
select:focus-visible, textarea:focus-visible {
outline: 3px solid #b34700;
outline-offset: 2px;
}- Check the mobile menu. Can you open it, move through it, and close it with only the keyboard? Does the button have a name like "Menu"?
Content in the block editor
- Headings: use the Heading block, not bold paragraph text. Use one H1 (usually the page title), then H2s for sections and H3s inside them. Don't pick a heading level for its size.
- Alt text: fill in "Alternative text" in the Image block settings. Describe what the image means in context. For purely decorative images, leave it empty.
- Links: write link text that makes sense alone. "Download our price list (PDF)" beats "click here."
- Color: if you change text or button colors, check the contrast is at least 4.5:1 for normal text.
- Tables: use the Table block with a header row for data, never for layout.
- Video: add captions; auto-generated captions usually need editing.
Plugins
- Forms: your contact form plugin should give every field a visible label (not just placeholder text) and announce errors clearly. Test it with a keyboard and screen reader. Our guide to accessible forms shows what good looks like.
- Sliders and pop-ups: these are frequent trouble spots. If a slider moves automatically, it needs a pause button. Pop-ups need to take focus, be closable with Esc, and return focus when closed.
- Page builders: some produce messy markup. Check headings and buttons in the result, not just the editor.
WordPress accessibility plugins: what helps and what doesn't
A plugin can help you find problems, or fix one narrow thing, but no plugin can make a whole site accessible on its own.
- Helpful: checker plugins that flag missing alt text or heading problems while you edit, and small utility plugins that add a skip link or restore focus outlines when a theme removed them.
- Check before you trust: plugins that add a toolbar or claim to make your site “compliant” automatically. They sit on top of the page instead of fixing it; here's why overlay plugins aren't a fix.
- Fewer is better: every plugin that outputs front-end markup (sliders, pop-ups, page builders) is something else to test with a keyboard.
Checking your WordPress site
There are WordPress plugins that scan your pages for accessibility problems, and free browser tools like WAVE and axe DevTools work on any site. You can also use our free accessibility checker for any WordPress page. Whatever scanner you use, follow up with the manual checks in our accessibility audit guide, because scanners only catch part of the picture.
Other platforms
Running a store instead? See our Shopify accessibility guide. If you'd rather someone else made the fixes, that's what our website accessibility remediation Fix Sprint is for.
Further reading
The WordPress accessibility team publishes guidance in the Make WordPress Accessible handbook.