Accessibility scanner findings explained: PageKiwi

In short: think of your website as a building your website company put up. You choose what goes on the walls: the words, pictures and PDFs. They look after the walls themselves: the header, menus, colors and footer on every page. A finding that shows up on every page is usually the walls.

Check the official rules. Rules and dates change, so check them with the official sources before you rely on them: ADA.gov (the US Department of Justice), the W3C's WCAG pages and Section508.gov. PageKiwi helps you find problems and get closer to meeting the rules. It can't promise a website meets them, it isn't legal advice, and we can't take responsibility for decisions made from it.

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Many website companies give their clients an accessibility scanner, or warnings in the editor before you publish. Those reports use short technical names. This page explains the ones that come up most, whoever made your scanner, so you know what to fix yourself and what to ask for.

Each finding below says:

What it means, in everyday words.
Who it affects.
Who usually fixes it: you, if it's in the content you add (words, pictures, PDFs), or your website company, if it's in the template (the design every page shares).

Scanners name things differently, so each one lists a few of the names you might see. The numbers, like 1.1.1, are the WCAG rules (the international accessibility guidelines) the finding comes from.

Missing alt text

Also called: "Image missing alt text", "Images must have alternate text", "Missing alternative text". WCAG 1.1.1.

What it means: A picture has no alt text: the short description a screen reader reads out in its place.
Who it affects: Blind people and others using screen readers, who hear nothing, or the file name. Also anyone whose pictures don't load.
Who fixes it: Usually you. Pictures in your pages, posts and products have an alt text box in the editor. If it's the logo or a picture on every page, it's the template: ask your website company.

A picture that's only decoration (a swirl, a divider) should be marked as decorative, so screen readers skip it. Some scanners flag those anyway. And no scanner can tell whether your alt text is any good: "IMG_4032" passes, and so does a description of the wrong photo.

Write good alt text, with examples.
How to add alt text in WordPress, and the same for Squarespace, Wix and Shopify.

Empty links and empty buttons

Also called: "Link has no discernible text", "Empty link", "Links must have discernible text", "Buttons must have discernible text", "Empty button". WCAG 2.4.4 and 4.1.2.

What it means: A link or button has no words behind it, so a screen reader just says "link" or "button". It's nearly always an icon: Facebook, an envelope, a magnifying glass, the three-line menu.
Who it affects: Screen reader users, who can't tell where it goes, and people using voice control, who can't say its name to click it.
Who fixes it: Usually your website company. Icons in the header and footer come from the template. If it's a linked picture in your own page, give the picture alt text that says where the link goes.

A close cousin is "Link text is ambiguous": links that say only "click here" or "read more". Those are your words, so you can fix them.

Heading order

Also called: "Heading levels should only increase by one", "Skipped heading level", "Page has no H1", "Multiple H1". WCAG 1.3.1 and 2.4.6.

What it means: Headings carry a level, H1 to H6, behind the scenes. The page has none at the top (no H1), or jumps a level, say from H2 to H4.
Who it affects: Screen reader users, many of whom jump from heading to heading to find the part they want. A gap makes it look as if something's missing.
Who fixes it: Either. Headings in your page's text are yours: pick the level by its place in the outline, not by how big it looks. Headings in the sidebar, footer or the page's title area are the template.

W3C, which writes WCAG, says to avoid skipping levels "where possible". On its own a skipped level isn't always a failure, so treat it as worth fixing, not an emergency.

Headings in order: one H1, then H2 and H3

Low color contrast

Also called: "Elements must have sufficient color contrast", "Low contrast", "Very low contrast". WCAG 1.4.3.

What it means: Text is too close in color to its background, like light gray on white. WCAG asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1, or 3 to 1 for large text (about 24 pixels, or 19 pixels in bold).
Who it affects: People with low vision or color blindness, and many older people, who lose contrast sensitivity with age.
Who fixes it: Usually your website company. Colors for menus, buttons, links and footers are set in the template. If you colored some text yourself, or put words over a photo, that part's yours.

Scanners struggle with text over photos and patterns. They may call it "needs review" or flag text you can read fine. Check a pair of colors yourself with Color check.

Untagged or scanned PDFs

Also called: "PDF is not tagged", "Untagged PDF", "Image-only PDF", "Scanned PDF", "PDF has no title".

What it means: Tags are labels inside a PDF that tell a screen reader what's a heading, a list or a table, and what order to read in. An untagged PDF has none. A scanned PDF is a photo of paper, with no text at all for a screen reader to read.
Who it affects: Screen reader users, who hear nothing or a jumble. People who zoom in on a phone, since a scan can't reflow to fit the screen.
Who fixes it: Usually you. PDFs are documents you upload. Go back to the original document and save it as a PDF again with tags turned on, or put the text on a web page instead. If your website company's system makes the PDFs for you, ask them.

Make a scanned PDF accessible for screen readers
PDFs, agendas and minutes under the ADA Title II rule, for town, county and school websites.

Form fields without labels

Also called: "Form elements must have labels", "Missing form label", "Form field is not labeled". WCAG 1.3.1, 3.3.2 and 4.1.2.

What it means: A box to type in (name, email, search) has no label tied to it. Gray hint text inside the box doesn't count: it disappears as soon as you start typing.
Who it affects: Screen reader users, who hear just "edit text". People with memory or learning disabilities, who lose track of what the box was for.
Who fixes it: Usually your website company. The search box and newsletter sign-up are in the template. If you built a form with a form tool, check each field has a label and that "hide label" is off.

Missing page language

Also called: "<html> element must have a lang attribute", "Language missing". WCAG 3.1.1.

What it means: The page doesn't say what language it's in.
Who it affects: Screen reader users, whose software may read English words with the wrong pronunciation.
Who fixes it: Your website company. It's one setting in the template, and fixing it once fixes every page.

Content or template? A quick test

On one page, in the text you typed: content. You can usually fix it in your editor.
On every page, in the same spot (header, menu, footer, sidebar): the template. Ask your website company. One fix there clears it everywhere.
Not sure: send the finding anyway. The message below works either way.

Some fixes take minutes, like a missing page language. Others, like a new color scheme, can take longer. Fix the ones that stop people doing things first: forms, links and buttons with no words, and PDFs people need, like agendas and forms.

Send this to your website company

Not sure what to say? Copy this into an email, add your website's address, and send it.

Hi,

Our accessibility scanner reports some findings on [your website address] that I think come from the template rather than the content I add, because they show up on every page:

- [the finding's name, as the scanner shows it]: [where, for example the social media icons in the footer]
- [the next finding]: [where]

Could you fix these in the template, or tell me if any of them are mine to fix in the editor? If a finding is a false alarm, could you say why, so I can note it?

Thanks

What scanners can't tell you

Every automated scanner, ours included, gets things wrong now and then. It can flag something that's fine, like a decorative picture or a hidden link that's meant to be there. And it misses things only a person can judge: whether alt text is accurate, whether the page works with a keyboard alone, whether captions match what's said.

The US Department of Justice says the same in its guidance on web accessibility: a "clean" report doesn't necessarily mean everything is accessible, and a report with a few errors doesn't necessarily mean there are barriers. It suggests pairing automated checkers with a check by hand.

So a clean report is good news, not proof, and a long report isn't a disaster. If a finding in a PageKiwi report looks wrong, tell us and we'll look into it.

A second opinion

Want another view alongside your own scanner? Accessibility Check reads one page and reports links and buttons with no words, form boxes without labels, missing page language, heading order and more, in plain words. It reads the page's code, so it doesn't judge color contrast, and it doesn't open PDFs. For a picture's alt text, use Full Check.

Fixing what your scanner finds is part of making your website accessible. Website accessibility: where to start, with the tools that help and what the law asks.

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Accessibility scanner findings explained