Amber Hinds

Just to clarify for your dev team, I tested this on a website that was running Usercentrics — I didn’t realize it was different from this plugin.

This is a screenshot of the cookie notice that I tested and where I found all the issues:

The link on this notice says “Powered by Usercentrics Consent Management” and goes to a page on the Usercentrics website.

Apologies that I didn’t realize that this cooke notice banner above is not coming from this plugin. But to make sure the issues get corrected, please note in your system that the WCAG failures I found were indeed with Usercentrics and not with cookiebot.

Out of curiosity, why is your team not making this plugin accessible?

Thanks for getting back to me, @mguenter. I did purchase pro, but for transparency reasons (for other members of the WP Accessibility Day organizing team), I prefer to post issues in a public place. I appreciate that I don’t need to open a new thread for each issue.

We did a comprehensive review of the modal as it is currently configured on https://template.wpaccessibility.day/. This testing was done by multiple accessibility professionals including one blind screen reader user. These are the issues that were identified:

1. The dialog is not consistently getting focus on load.
2. Modal heading should be an H2 instead of an H3.
3. The <dialog> tag needs aria-modal="true" added to it.
4. Show service information “links” (and any others) that expand hidden content need to be buttons. You can correct this by adding role="button" to them and adding support for space bar triggering.
5. Show service information buttons (currently coded as <a>) should have unique names.
6. Hide the middots from screen readers with aria-hidden="true" or by displaying them via CSS (better).
7. All links that have been made buttons with role=”button” need to have space bar handlers added so they can be triggered with the spacebar. Learn more about keyboard expectations when adding role="button".
8. When the “underline” style is set for links, the underline should disappear on hover so color alone is not being used to indicate the hover state.
9. There’s a focus order issue after expanding the individual settings options. This is because the link to configure individual settings is removed from the page when clicked. Removing an element from the DOM causes the keyboard to lose focus. The individual settings button should stay visible in the modal, and all the newly added content should be introduced after it (I.e., it should function like an accordion).
10. Consent choices checkboxes read the label three times because they’re over-engineered.
    <fieldset class="aa5be-ext-5-281"><legend class="aa5be-3">Individual Privacy Preferences: Essential</legend><span aria-hidden="true"><label class="aa5be-ext-7-252"><input name="checkbox[]" type="checkbox" disabled="" style="--aa5be-ext-7-253: 16px;" aria-labelledby="aa5be-251" class="aa5be-ext-7-260 aa5be-3" value="1"><div aria-hidden="true"><svg viewBox="64 64 896 896" focusable="false" style="width:auto;height:100%;" fill="currentColor"><path d="M912 190h-69.9c-9.8 0-19.1 4.5-25.1 12.2L404.7 724.5 207 474a32 32 0 00-25.1-12.2H112c-6.7 0-10.4 7.7-6.3 12.9l273.9 347c12.8 16.2 37.4 16.2 50.3 0l488.4-618.9c4.1-5.1.4-12.8-6.3-12.8z"></path></svg></div><span><span id="aa5be-251" aria-hidden="true">Essential (2)</span></span></label></span><div class="aa5be-ext-5-285"><span>Essential services are required for the basic functionality of the website. They only contain technically necessary services. These services cannot be objected to.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;?&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="aa5be-252" class="aa5be-ext-7-251">Show service information</a><div hidden="" id="aa5be-252"></div></div></fieldset>
    My recommendation on these is to:
    • Move the fieldset and legend from being wrapped around the parent input and just wrap it around the group of sub checkboxes.
    • Remove the aria-labelledby attribute from the input since it’s wrapped in the label tag already.
    • Remove aria-hidden=”true” from the span around the label text.
    • Add aria-describedby attributes to the checkbox inputs referencing the helper text.

Thank you very much for your attention to these issues. Please let me know if you have any questions or need more information about any of the listed issues. I’d love to see the plugin made fully accessible — I can see you’ve already put some effort in.

Hi @mej,

I can’t record the problem because we already removed Widget Options when we identified it as the culprit after painstaking deactivating all plugins and reactivating one at a time. Here’s some site info if you want to try and replicate it though.

` wp-core

version: 6.7.1
site_language: en_US
user_language: en_US
timezone: America/Chicago
permalink: /%postname%/
https_status: true
multisite: false
user_registration: 0
blog_public: 1
default_comment_status: undefined
environment_type: staging
user_count: 9
dotorg_communication: true wp-paths-sizes

wordpress_path: /home/wp/www/2025
wordpress_size: 63.91 MB (67018882 bytes)
uploads_path: /home/wp/www/2025/wp-content/uploads
uploads_size: 170.59 MB (178880230 bytes)
themes_path: /home/wp/www/2025/wp-content/themes
themes_size: 13.34 MB (13989083 bytes)
plugins_path: /home/wp/www/2025/wp-content/plugins
plugins_size: 193.98 MB (203398550 bytes)
fonts_path: /home/wp/www/2025/wp-content/uploads/fonts
fonts_size: directory not found
database_size: 26.60 MB (27889890 bytes)
total_size: 468.42 MB (491176635 bytes) wp-dropins (1)

db.php: true wp-active-theme

name: WP Accessibility Day (wp-a11y-day)
version: 3.0.0
author: wpaccessibility
author_website: https://wpaccessibility.day
parent_theme: none
theme_features: widgets-block-editor, block-templates, editor-styles, editor-style, responsive-embeds, automatic-feed-links, title-tag, post-thumbnails, menus, html5, customize-selective-refresh-widgets, custom-logo, disable-custom-colors, disable-custom-gradients, align-wide, editor-color-palette, widgets
theme_path: /home/wp/www/2025/wp-content/themes/wp-a11y-day
auto_update: Disabled wp-themes-inactive (2)

Twenty Twenty-Five: version: 1.0, author: the WordPress team, Auto-updates disabled
Twenty Twenty-Four: version: 1.3, author: the WordPress team, Auto-updates disabled wp-plugins-active (45)

Accessibility Checker: version: 1.19.0, author: Equalize Digital (latest version: 1.20.0), Auto-updates disabled
Accessibility Checker Pro: version: 1.10.1, author: Equalize Digital, Auto-updates enabled
Accessibility New Window Warnings: version: 1.0.10, author: Equalize Digital, Auto-updates enabled
Admin Columns Pro: version: 6.4.14, author: AdminColumns.com, Auto-updates enabled
Block Visibility: version: 3.7.1, author: Nick Diego, Auto-updates enabled
Classic Widgets: version: 0.3, author: WordPress Contributors, Auto-updates enabled
Content Control: version: 2.5.0, author: Code Atlantic, Auto-updates enabled
Display Posts: version: 3.1.1, author: Bill Erickson, Auto-updates enabled
Enable Contributor Uploads: version: 1.1, author: Road Warrior Creative, Auto-updates enabled
Entry Automation for Gravity Forms: version: 5.7.0, author: CosmicGiant, Auto-updates enabled
GP Limit Checkboxes: version: 1.3.16, author: Gravity Wiz, Auto-updates disabled
GP Limit Choices: version: 1.7.15, author: Gravity Wiz, Auto-updates enabled
GP Populate Anything: version: 2.1.20, author: Gravity Wiz (latest version: 2.1.21), Auto-updates enabled
GP Preview Submission: version: 1.3.22, author: Gravity Wiz (latest version: 1.3.23), Auto-updates enabled
GP Read Only: version: 1.9.27, author: Gravity Wiz, Auto-updates disabled
Gravity Forms: version: 2.9.2, author: Gravity Forms, Auto-updates enabled
Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types: version: 3.1.29, author: Gravity Wiz, Auto-updates enabled
Gravity Forms Advanced Post Creation Add-On: version: 1.4.0, author: Gravity Forms, Auto-updates enabled
Gravity Forms Mailchimp Add-On: version: 5.6.0, author: Gravity Forms, Auto-updates enabled
Gravity Forms Stripe Add-On: version: 5.9.0, author: Gravity Forms, Auto-updates enabled
Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On: version: 5.3.0, author: Gravity Forms, Auto-updates enabled
Gravity Forms Zapier Add-On: version: 4.3.0, author: Gravity Forms, Auto-updates enabled
Gravity Forms Zero Spam: version: 1.4.6, author: GravityKit, Auto-updates enabled
Gravity Perks: version: 2.3.14, author: Gravity Wiz, Auto-updates enabled
GravityWP - Merge Tags: version: 1.4.1, author: GravityWP (latest version: 1.4.2), Auto-updates enabled
Legal Signing for Gravity Forms: version: 4.1.0, author: CosmicGiant, Auto-updates disabled
Lock User Account: version: 1.0.5, author: teknigar, Auto-updates enabled
Login Logo: version: 0.10.3, author: Mark Jaquith, Auto-updates enabled
Login or Logout Menu Item: version: 1.2.3, author: cartpauj, Auto-updates enabled
Matomo Analytics - Ethical Stats. Powerful Insights.: version: 5.2.0, author: Matomo, Auto-updates enabled
Public Post Preview: version: 3.0.1, author: Dominik Schilling, Auto-updates enabled
Query Monitor: version: 3.17.2, author: John Blackbourn, Auto-updates enabled
Redirection: version: 5.5.1, author: John Godley, Auto-updates enabled
Screen Reader Text Format: version: 1.1, author: Reaktiv Studios, Auto-updates enabled
Server-Side Cache AutoPurge: version: 1.0.3, author: Suresupport, Auto-updates enabled
Shared Counts: version: 1.5.0, author: Bill Erickson & Jared Atchison, Auto-updates enabled
SimpleTOC - Table of Contents Block: version: 6.6.0, author: Marc T?nsing, Auto-updates enabled
SVG Support: version: 2.5.8, author: Benbodhi, Auto-updates enabled
User Menus: version: 1.3.2, author: Code Atlantic, Auto-updates enabled
User Switching: version: 1.9.1, author: John Blackbourn, Auto-updates enabled
WP Accessibility: version: 2.1.13, author: Joe Dolson, Auto-updates enabled
WP Accessibility Day - Conference Schedule: version: 2.0.0, author: WP Accessibility Day, Auto-updates disabled
WP Mail SMTP Pro: version: 4.3.1, author: WP Mail SMTP, Auto-updates enabled
WP to Buffer Pro: version: 5.2.2, author: WP Zinc, Auto-updates disabled
Yoast SEO: version: 24.4, author: Team Yoast, Auto-updates enabled wp-plugins-inactive (3)

Force Login: version: 5.6.3, author: Kevin Vess, Auto-updates enabled
GP File Upload Pro: version: 1.5.1, author: Gravity Wiz, Auto-updates disabled
Real Cookie Banner (Free): version: 5.0.7, author: devowl.io (latest version: 5.0.8), Auto-updates enabled wp-media

image_editor: WP_Image_Editor_Imagick
imagick_module_version: 1691
imagemagick_version: ImageMagick 6.9.11-60 Q16 x86_64 2021-01-25 https://imagemagick.org
imagick_version: 3.7.0
file_uploads: 1
post_max_size: 60M
upload_max_filesize: 60M
max_effective_size: 60 MB
max_file_uploads: 20
imagick_limits:
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_AREA: 4 GB
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_DISK: 2000000000
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_FILE: 768
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_MAP: 4 GB
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_MEMORY: 2 GB
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_THREAD: 1
imagick::RESOURCETYPE_TIME: 9.2233720368548E+18
imagemagick_file_formats: 3FR, 3G2, 3GP, AAI, AI, APNG, ART, ARW, AVI, AVIF, AVS, BGR, BGRA, BGRO, BIE, BMP, BMP2, BMP3, BRF, CAL, CALS, CANVAS, CAPTION, CIN, CIP, CLIP, CMYK, CMYKA, CR2, CR3, CRW, CUR, CUT, DATA, DCM, DCR, DCX, DDS, DFONT, DJVU, DNG, DOT, DPX, DXT1, DXT5, EPDF, EPI, EPS, EPS2, EPS3, EPSF, EPSI, EPT, EPT2, EPT3, ERF, EXR, FAX, FILE, FITS, FRACTAL, FTP, FTS, G3, G4, GIF, GIF87, GRADIENT, GRAY, GRAYA, GROUP4, GV, H, HALD, HDR, HEIC, HISTOGRAM, HRZ, HTM, HTML, HTTP, HTTPS, ICB, ICO, ICON, IIQ, INFO, INLINE, IPL, ISOBRL, ISOBRL6, J2C, J2K, JBG, JBIG, JNG, JNX, JP2, JPC, JPE, JPEG, JPG, JPM, JPS, JPT, JSON, K25, KDC, LABEL, M2V, M4V, MAC, MAGICK, MAP, MASK, MAT, MATTE, MEF, MIFF, MKV, MNG, MONO, MOV, MP4, MPC, MPG, MRW, MSL, MSVG, MTV, MVG, NEF, NRW, NULL, ORF, OTB, OTF, PAL, PALM, PAM, PANGO, PATTERN, PBM, PCD, PCDS, PCL, PCT, PCX, PDB, PDF, PDFA, PEF, PES, PFA, PFB, PFM, PGM, PGX, PICON, PICT, PIX, PJPEG, PLASMA, PNG, PNG00, PNG24, PNG32, PNG48, PNG64, PNG8, PNM, POCKETMOD, PPM, PREVIEW, PS, PS2, PS3, PSB, PSD, PTIF, PWP, RADIAL-GRADIENT, RAF, RAS, RAW, RGB, RGBA, RGBO, RGF, RLA, RLE, RMF, RW2, SCR, SCT, SFW, SGI, SHTML, SIX, SIXEL, SPARSE-COLOR, SR2, SRF, STEGANO, SUN, SVG, SVGZ, TEXT, TGA, THUMBNAIL, TIFF, TIFF64, TILE, TIM, TTC, TTF, TXT, UBRL, UBRL6, UIL, UYVY, VDA, VICAR, VID, VIDEO, VIFF, VIPS, VST, WBMP, WEBM, WEBP, WMF, WMV, WMZ, WPG, X, X3F, XBM, XC, XCF, XPM, XPS, XV, XWD, YCbCr, YCbCrA, YUV
gd_version: bundled (2.1.0 compatible)
gd_formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, BMP, AVIF, XPM
ghostscript_version: 9.53.3 wp-server

server_architecture: Linux 6.6.58-sure x86_64
httpd_software: Apache
php_version: 8.1.30 64bit
php_sapi: fpm-fcgi
max_input_variables: 1000
time_limit: 120
memory_limit: 3000M
max_input_time: -1
upload_max_filesize: 60M
php_post_max_size: 60M
curl_version: 7.74.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1w
suhosin: false
imagick_availability: true
pretty_permalinks: true
htaccess_extra_rules: true
current: 2025-02-09T01:55:45+00:00
utc-time: Sunday, 09-Feb-25 01:55:45 UTC
server-time: 2025-02-08T19:55:44-06:00 wp-database

extension: mysqli
server_version: 8.0.36-percona-sure1
client_version: mysqlnd 8.1.30
max_allowed_packet: 67108864
max_connections: 300 wp-constants

It seems like it was causing a timeout on form submit on pages which stopped the entry from being saved, emails from sending, or confirmation from being displayed.

I hope this helps you.

Hi @isay81,

Thank you so much for your review. As a non-developer, I agree it can be really frustrating when there are accessibility issues found in your theme or plugins that are difficult to fix. My approach to these issues is to open a support forum post or GitHub issue for the developer of your theme asking them to fix the issue. Sometimes they just didn’t know and if told that something is an accessibility problem will happily fix it.

You can also point them to our free accessibility meetup as a place to learn about accessibility. These are Zoom webinars held twice a month on accessibility best practices. There are recordings available at that link from all the past meetups.

Regarding large text that gets flagged as a possible heading, the intent of that warning is to have you confirm that it’s really just large text and not actually something that should be a heading. If it should be a heading, then you would fix it. If you know that you’re doing it right then you can “ignore” the warning.

If you’re on Facebook, the WP Accessibility group might be helpful to you when you encounter issues in your templates that you can’t fix. People in the group might have solutions.

Thanks again and have a great day. ??

Wonderful! Thank you!

@johnstaples an important thing to understand about the plugin is that it’s not routinely scanning your site. It has triggered scans at certain points.

• In the free plugin, post scans are triggered on post save.
• In the paid plugin, you can also run a full site scan, where the website crawls all posts and rescans them.

When you fix something in your header, you either need to save each post it’s on (in the free plugin) or run a full site scan (in the paid plugin) for Accessibility Checker to see that you have fixed the item and no longer show it in reports.

I have noted what your point about the “clear issues” button also clearing ignores. We’ll need to think about whether that’s the correct behavior or not for that button and possibly adjust how it works to give people the choice of keeping ignores or not for the post.

Hi @johnstaples,

WordPress dot org has rules about us using this support forum to answer questions related to our paid version of the plugin. I’ll briefly answer your questions here, but to avoid us getting in trouble with the plugins team, will you please submit any follow up questions via the contact sales form on our website? Thanks for understanding and sorry for the inconvenience.

Brief answers:

1. You can run a full site scan that will crawl all posts on the site and updates reports without you having to save them (as you have to do in the free plugin). You can see this in action in our plugin demo if you want (go to Accessibility Checker > Full Site Scan in the admin).
2. If you have fixed something in a global area of the site (like the header) in the pro version, you can run a full site scan to have that cleared everywhere. If something is a manual review item (say an icon with aria-hidden in the footer) you can create a global ignore to ignore it site wide in paid versions of the plugin.
3. The best way for you to see the kind of reporting that exists in pro is either to try the demo linked above or to watch this webinar that explains all the features or our WordCamp US Showcase Day presentation.

We are very familiar with Monsido – we actually used to pay for Monsido and that’s what motivated us to build Accessibility Checker. We have put a lot of effort into creating rules for accessibility checking that better report in a WordPress environment. The other big difference is scans are run on your server so there’s not per page or per scan cost, and you get the reports right in the admin dashboard. We talked more about that during Showcase Day at WordCamp US.

Thanks for considering our plugin as part of your toolset!

Hi @jennaust722,

I’m sorry to hear that it’s causing performance issues. Can you please provide any additional details about that so we can troubleshoot?

Also, as this is about a Pro feature, you can open an email support ticket in your customer account on our website instead of replying here.

Thank you!

As a follow up to the original question, “what is the best way to stop the warning from getting flagged,” I would remove the <abbr> tag and replace it with visible explanation for the abbreviation on the page. (I.e. “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)”).

If that’s not possible, then there are two other options: (A) add CSS styles targeting abbr elements that remove the underline; or (B) make your abbr accessible and then ignore the warning in Accessibility Checker so it stops showing in reports.

Hi @gslweb,

Honestly, I’m on the fence about this. Yes, abbr tags are underlined by default in the browser, but they don’t actually function like a link and this could be confusing to some users who might try to click on them and not get any functionality. In Chrome, there’s a change in cursor to a question mark when hovering over an <abbr> tag, but there’s not a way to actually reveal the abbreviation unless you code that functionality into the website. There is also zero screen reader support for the abbr tag.

So, we could explicitly exclude this tag from our underlined text warning, but I would actually only want to do that if we added a new warning at the same time: “Use of abbr tag” that tells people they shouldn’t use this tag unless they have written JavaScript functionality to ensure all users have access to the definition. Generally, it’s better to define words on the page or in a linked glossary. I’d avoid the use of the <abbr> tag.

We can add an issue to create a unique warning for that if you think it would be beneficial.

Thanks for the review, Tina! We’re glad you find the plugin helpful.

Hi @johnstaples,

Can you please provide a link to a page that it is unable to scan?

Have you tried ruling out everything that is listed in this documentation article? What to do if Accessibility Checker is not Scanning Your Site.

Hi @johnstaples,

Can you please provide a link to a page where it is unable to find the missing alt? Thanks.

Thanks for the review, @kennethrg. We are actually working on a feature right now to limit visibility of issues based on user role so that contributors, authors, and editors will not see issues in the header, footer, or other areas they can’t edit. It’s a bit tricky with our JavaScript-based rules that don’t use WordPress PHP functions to get the content (instead testing the rendered page) but it something we’re actively working on.

I’d love to get your feedback on that feature when it’s released. Happy to comment here it’s available.

• This reply was modified 9 months, 2 weeks ago by Amber Hinds.

Hi @aleone89, I only have it on a test site, but you can see this in the theme preview available at https://www.ads-software.com/themes/bute/.

The problem is that the developer created the homepage using a a single group block and did not change any of the group blocks to use the main element. In Full Site Editing, skip links only work if there is a main element on the page.

The entire homepage of the theme needs to be reworked and (to be frank) it never should have been approved in the first place.