Paid tools to help monitor accessibility

I recently wrote about free tools to help monitor accessibility. It's also good to be aware of the paid options that are available. The paid options usually have more features than the free ones. And often there is some level of customer support if you pay for a tool. Both are a great thing if you are trying to ensure your service is accessible.

I'm not claiming I know all the tools available, because I really don't. But these are some of the tools I've seen and used myself. The vendors and the tools are different, so I do recommend that you ask for demos of the tools to see which would best suit your needs.

Tools that can scan the whole site

There are a lot of paid tools available. Some are better than others.

All the tools provide results together with information about the problem as well as how it can be fixed. So from that perspective, they have the same features. The main differences come with the user interfaces as well as how the information is formatted.

I've done quite a lot of research lately into the tools that are available because I'm trying to get a good toolkit collected for my clients. These are the tools I know about the most.

Deque has a lot of Axe tools

Deque has tools to monitor accessibility for both developers and content editors alike. Pricing of the tools is unknown because they don't release that information. My guess is they aren't cheap, but I do know that their tools are very good.

I would imagine their Axe Monitor is a great tool for accessibility monitoring. But because I work at an agency, I haven't seen the software in action. And why does it matter that I work at an agency, you might ask? Because agencies are competing in the same space as they are. So they sell the Monitor product directly to owners of services and not to agencies. I haven't even asked about their pricing from my own perspective, because I don't expect such a tool to be affordable enough for hobby use.

Webwarden

Webwarden is one of the newest tools on the market here in Finland. There are a lot of great features from accessibility to HTML and other quality monitoring. The tool has a lot of potential, and they have a lot of plans to bring in many more features.

The user interface is easy to understand and navigate. They have clearly focused on making the interface easy to use regardless of role.

Their pricing is also more affordable, which is a nice plus for someone like me who needs the tool for hobby project monitoring.

This is the tool I recently started using myself. I think this tool might force the other players in the market to react. And that is also a good thing.

Eficode Accessibility Keeper

Eficode is a quite well-known company here in Finland. They do a lot of things on many fronts, including accessibility.

The user interface is clean and understandable. Though it does provide much fewer features than some other tools, it might make the tool by default a bit easier to use. But the user interface is still very well designed from a cognitive accessibility perspective, there is no denying that.

I have tested this tool myself and the results are very good. I and the rest of the testing group from Exove enjoyed using the tool a lot.

Eficode Accessibility Keeper focuses on accessibility, so it doesn't have as many features as some of the other tools. And they have themselves said that for people looking for all those other features as well, another tool might be a better fit for you. But if you are looking for a tool to specifically monitor accessibility, Accessibility Keeper is a quality option.

Eficode does also provide other accessibility services, such as consulting and training. If you are looking for a single partner for all accessibility-related matters, Eficore might be an option for you.

QAutoEqual

A tool that I most recently learned about is QAutoEqual. The tool is developed by QAutomate.

The tool uses QualWeb as its engine, as does Salvia which was mentioned in the earlier blog post. There are several packages for the tool, the best one for you depends on your needs.

I've been using the trial version of the tool and the tool does bring quality results.

One great feature this tool brings is an accessibility statement. No other tool has this feature yet, and this is very useful for someone who doesn't have experience creating and updating an accessibility statement.

If you are looking for a single partner for all accessibility-related matters, Q-Factory might be an option for you. They offer a lot of quality control and accessibility services. While I haven't used their services myself, I do know some of their public speakers and they do know their stuff.

Siteimprove

Last but not least, Siteimprove. Siteimprove is one of the most known tools available. Their tool offers other qualities on top of accessibility monitoring such as SEO and quality assurance. Far from cheap, but it does have good quality results and a lot of different features.

Siteimprove just recently made an acquisition (https://www.siteimprove.com/press/marketmuse) that will improve their SEO features, among others. To be honest, these possibilities sound really interesting and I can't wait to hear more about the features and benefits.

What separates Siteimprove from other players in the market is that it also provides analytics. If you want one tool to provide all the things, Siteimprove might be the one for you.

Tools to check single pages

There are also some tools that allow you to scan single pages.

Deque Axe DevTools

If you want to take your browser plugin to the next level, you can buy the Axe DevTools browser plugin. It has many more features than the free version. If you can afford it, this is a quality tool. I was really impressed when I saw a demo of their guided tests, which is one of the features available in the paid version.

The user interface is pretty much identical with the free version so it's a great UI. There are just some extra features there to improve the accessibility testing.

The browser extension is available on Chrome, Firefox and Edge.

Siteimprove

Siteimprove also has an Accessibility Checker extension that is available for Chrome, Opera, Edge and Firefox. I've used this plugin and I like it quite a bit.

Siteimprove also has a Browser extension that allows you to check your DCI score. This one is available for Chrome and Firefox.

Tools that can be used in a CMS

Well, this is where Siteimprove seems to be ahead of its competitors, at least for now. This is not really that surprising because they've been on the market longer and have more time to develop supporting tools.

Siteimprove has CMS plugins for at least WordPress and Drupal and many other integrations. At the moment the Drupal module doesn't offer Drupal 11 support, so if you are already running the newest Drupal, you'll have to wait for support.

I've seen the Drupal module in action and to me, it felt quite easy and intuitive to use. But then again I'm maybe a bit of a Siteimprove power user so I do know my way around the tool really well. So I might be a bit biased as well.

My thoughts on the tools

I think the more different tools there are, the easier it is for people to find the right tool for them. We all have our preferences and it's ok to like a different tool than other people do. And paid tools do have their place. They can also be used together with accessibility monitoring services if you want to outsource some of the work to another person or a company.

You can read more about these tools on my accessibility website or of course on the websites of the tools themselves.

I can't wait to see what happens in the tooling space in the future. I'm glad I get to see how the tools develop.