EqualWeb (https://www.equalweb.com) is a digital accessibility platform that uses artificial intelligence and automation to help websites comply with accessibility standards. Its technology suite includes an AI-powered accessibility widget, web accessibility scanning and monitoring tools, and an automated PDF remediation software. All components are built to align with the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) and are designed to adapt to the upcoming WCAG 3.0 framework. A key aspect of EqualWeb’s approach is a hybrid model that combines AI-driven automation with human expert input, ensuring comprehensive accessibility compliance in cases where automation alone cannot resolve every issue.
AI-Powered Accessibility Widget
EqualWeb’s flagship component is its AI-powered accessibility widget, an overlay interface that is added to a website to provide immediate accessibility enhancements. Once installed via a simple code snippet, the widget continuously audits and adjusts the site’s content in real time. It can automatically fix a wide range of common accessibility issues on-the-fly without modifying the website’s underlying code. For example, the system uses machine learning to detect images lacking alternative text and can generate appropriate text descriptions for screen reader users. It also identifies problems like low-contrast text, missing form labels, and improper heading structure, and applies corrections or improvements instantly as the page loads. By addressing most standard issues dynamically, the widget helps websites achieve a baseline of WCAG 2.2 compliance virtually overnight.
The user-facing side of the widget offers a customizable interface that allows visitors to tailor the website to their needs. Built-in tools enable adjustments such as changing font sizes and spacing, altering color contrast schemes, pausing animations, highlighting focus indicators for keyboard navigation, and providing a reading mask or emphasis for cognitive ease. Uniquely, EqualWeb’s latest widget integrates an AI-widget assistant powered by natural language processing. This assistant lets users control accessibility features through voice commands or text chat. For instance, a user can speak or type a request like “increase text size” or “enable screen reader mode,” and the AI assistant will automatically activate the corresponding feature. This voice/text-driven interaction, supported by advanced language models, makes the accessibility adjustments more intuitive and hands-free, especially benefiting users with motor or visual impairments. The widget also supports over forty languages, ensuring that its menus and guidance are accessible to a global audience. All of these capabilities work in concert to personalize the browsing experience and meet diverse accessibility needs, while keeping the site compliant with guidelines (ADA, Section 508, and WCAG 2.2) in real time.
Automated Web Accessibility Monitoring and Scanning
EqualWeb provides an automated scanning platform to continually evaluate and maintain web accessibility compliance. This platform comprises several tools designed for different scanning scenarios, including:
Web Accessibility Monitor
A cloud-based service that performs regular audits of entire websites. The Monitor scans all pages (on a schedule or on demand) for WCAG 2.2 Level AA compliance issues and generates detailed evaluation reports. After each scan, it produces a comprehensive report listing any accessibility violations, categorized by severity and referencing the relevant WCAG criteria. These reports include step-by-step remediation guidance, helping developers understand how to fix each issue. The Monitor also calculates an overall accessibility score for the site and can track improvements over time. For legal protection, the system archives reports as evidence of ongoing compliance efforts, which can be useful in demonstrating ADA and other regulatory compliance. This continuous monitoring approach ensures that as websites evolve with new content or design changes, accessibility standards are maintained year-round.
Web Accessibility Crawler
A Chrome browser-based auditing tool that allows quick, in-depth scans of websites, including portions that require user login or are behind paywalls. This crawler can automatically navigate through public and private pages by following links and scanning each page for accessibility issues in real time. It is notable for being able to evaluate authenticated areas of a site (such as user account dashboards or checkout pages) that many automated scanners cannot reach. Within minutes, the crawler produces an accessibility evaluation report similar to the Monitor’s, complete with an issues breakdown and compliance score. This tool is useful for developers and auditors who need a fast yet thorough accessibility check of an entire site or specific secured sections. By extending automated scanning to pages beyond public view, the EqualWeb Crawler helps organizations ensure all parts of their web applications (not just the homepage or static pages) meet WCAG 2.2 requirements.
Web Accessibility Checker
A free lightweight extension (also for Chrome) intended for testing one page at a time. Geared toward quick manual checks, the Checker allows anyone to validate a single webpage against WCAG criteria instantly. It highlights errors like missing alt text or improper markup on that page and offers recommendations. This developer-friendly tool serves as a first step for content creators or webmasters to identify obvious accessibility problems during development.
Each of these scanning tools leverages AI and rule-based engines to detect accessibility barriers efficiently. The results from the Monitor and Crawler are integrated into EqualWeb’s dashboard, so website owners can see which issues have been automatically fixed by the AI widget and which remain unresolved. Notably, the reports often show a comparison of the site’s compliance with the EqualWeb overlay versus the underlying site without it, quantifying the impact of the AI remediation. By using the monitoring and scanning platform, organizations can proactively maintain compliance and quickly pinpoint any new issues for remediation.
AI-Driven PDF Auto-Tagging and Remediation
Beyond web pages, EqualWeb’s technology extends to digital documents through its PDF auto-tagging and remediation tools. PDF files often pose accessibility challenges because they require proper tagging (headings, reading order, alternate text for images, etc.) to be usable with screen readers. EqualWeb’s PDF remediation solution is an AI-powered system that quickly converts PDFs (and other document formats like Word or Excel) into accessible, standards-compliant versions.
Using advanced algorithms, the tool analyzes the structure of a PDF in seconds and inserts the necessary accessibility tags to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA and Section 508 guidelines. It automatically organizes content into a logical heading hierarchy, ensuring that titles, subtitles, and sections are properly marked for navigation. It fixes reading order so that text flows correctly for assistive technologies, and it identifies elements like lists, tables, and links to ensure they are tagged and announced appropriately. Critically, the AI adds or improves alternative text for images within PDFs: it uses image recognition and natural language processing to generate descriptive alt text for any figures, photos, or graphs that lack descriptions. This image analysis can detect objects, people, colors, and even interpret actions or emotions depicted, allowing it to create contextually relevant descriptions for visually impaired readers. By automating alt-text creation and other tedious tagging tasks, the tool dramatically speeds up PDF remediation compared to manual methods.
After processing, the output is a PDF document that is fully navigable with screen readers and satisfies accessibility standards. A tagging report is typically provided, detailing what was remediated (such as how many headings or tags were added or adjusted) and flagging any content that might need additional manual checking. This transparency lets organizations verify the changes and address any complex elements the AI might not have perfectly handled (for example, extremely intricate tables or obscure images might still need a human touch). Overall, EqualWeb’s PDF accessibility technology allows businesses to bring large volumes of documents into compliance efficiently, ensuring that their PDFs are as accessible as their websites.
Compliance with WCAG Standards (2.2 and 3.0 Preparedness)
EqualWeb’s tools are continuously updated to reflect current accessibility standards. The platform’s features and automated checks are aligned with WCAG 2.2 guidelines, which include all prior success criteria from WCAG 2.0 and 2.1, plus new criteria addressing things like focus visibility, target sizes for interactive elements, and additional considerations for users with cognitive disabilities. By adhering to WCAG 2.2 Level AA, EqualWeb’s technology covers the requirements of major accessibility laws around the world (such as the ADA in the United States, Canada’s AODA, Europe’s EN 301 549, and others that reference WCAG). The widget and automated fixes are designed to meet these criteria out of the box – for instance, ensuring adequate contrast, keyboard navigability, proper use of ARIA roles, and more – so that websites using EqualWeb can quickly reach compliance with the latest standards.
In addition to supporting current guidelines, EqualWeb has been preparing for WCAG 3.0, the next-generation accessibility guidelines under development. WCAG 3.0 is expected to introduce a more flexible, outcome-oriented approach to evaluating accessibility (moving away from a strict pass/fail checklist to a scoring model) and to expand guidance to cover emerging technologies (such as web applications, VR/AR content, and AI-driven user interfaces). EqualWeb’s development strategy anticipates these shifts by emphasizing a user-centric design in its tools. The AI-driven adjustments made by the widget focus on improving real-world usability for people with disabilities, which aligns with WCAG 3.0’s emphasis on user experience outcomes. Furthermore, the system’s modular architecture allows new rules or content types to be incorporated as standards evolve. For example, if WCAG 3.0 introduces new success metrics or guidelines, the EqualWeb scanning engine can be updated to check for those, and the remediation toolkit can be extended to address newly identified barrier types. By staying agile and informed about upcoming regulations, EqualWeb aims to ensure its clients remain compliant even as definitions of compliance broaden. In practice, this means current users of the platform would require minimal changes to meet WCAG 3.0 when it becomes official, as the core technology is already built with forward-compatibility and comprehensive coverage in mind.
Hybrid Automation and Human Expertise
A defining aspect of EqualWeb’s approach to accessibility is its integration of human expertise with AI automation. While artificial intelligence can efficiently fix many issues (in fact, the company’s AI widget can automatically remediate a majority of common accessibility errors – on the order of two-thirds of typical issues – without developer intervention), there are always edge cases and complex accessibility barriers that automated tools might not fully resolve. Examples include nuanced screen reader behavior in complex interactive widgets, context-specific image descriptions that require subject matter knowledge, or certain dynamic content scenarios where a manual coding solution is needed. To address these, EqualWeb employs a team of certified accessibility specialists who step in to provide manual remediation and oversight.
In practice, EqualWeb’s platform flags any accessibility violations that remain after the automated layer has done its work. These unresolved issues can then be reviewed by human experts. Through the company’s ADA Managed Compliance service (a comprehensive plan offered by EqualWeb), clients receive personalized audits and code fixes from accessibility developers in conjunction with the AI tools. The experts use the platform’s monitoring and crawling reports to pinpoint exactly where compliance gaps persist. They then manually edit the website’s code or provide targeted fixes to eliminate those remaining barriers, ensuring 100% conformance with WCAG criteria. This might involve writing proper ARIA labels for a custom widget, restructuring HTML for better screen reader flow, or providing textual alternatives for complex visual content that AI couldn’t adequately describe. Human specialists also conduct thorough testing, often with assistive technologies, to verify that the site is truly accessible to users with various disabilities.
This hybrid model of AI + human intervention offers a robust safety net: automation handles the bulk of straightforward issues instantly, and skilled auditors handle the subtleties that require judgment or creative problem-solving. It also contributes to continuous improvement of the AI systems – insights from the manual fixes can feed back into EqualWeb’s AI algorithms, helping the tools learn to handle similar issues autonomously in the future. The combination of automated efficiency and expert oversight means that EqualWeb can confidently guarantee higher levels of compliance and usability than an automated solution alone could achieve. It also provides website owners with legal reassurance: by having human experts involved, the platform is able to issue compliance certifications and support in case of any accessibility-related legal challenges. In summary, EqualWeb’s technology innovation lies not only in its sophisticated AI capabilities, but also in recognizing the boundaries of automation and seamlessly integrating human expertise to deliver a full-spectrum digital accessibility solution.
