Tabwalk
NewTabwalk 0.4.0: logins, PDF reports, eight languages

See what’s actually broken. On your own server.

Tabwalk scans your site every day or week, checks each page against WCAG with axe-core, presses Tab through it like a tester and collapses repeated problems into one row. What a machine cannot judge is shown too, not quietly dropped.

Tabwalk Sites / Acme Store / Sep 25, 10:35

Acme Store

Scans weekly · next Oct 2, 10:35
17unique problems on 1,564 elements
6critical
28need a human
50pages checked
CriticalButtons must have discernible textbutton.add38 pages
CriticalImages must have alternative text.gallery img31 pages
CriticalKeyboard focus must not get stuck in one part of the page#newsletter form1 page
SeriousFocused elements must not be hidden under other contentheader.sticky44 pages
Needs reviewLinks must be distinguishable without relying on colormain p > a23 pages

Built for the people who fix sites

Everything in the report points at something you can change, and nothing pretends to be more than it is.

Presses Tab for you

A real browser tabs through every page, the way a tester does by hand. It catches keyboard traps, focus that never shows and focus hidden under sticky headers and cookie banners, and draws each page’s Tab order as a numbered map.

Focus stuck in the newsletter form1 page
Add to cart shows no focus38 pages
Sticky header covers the breadcrumbs44 pages

One mistake counts once

A broken button in a template used on 500 pages is one row with a page count, not 500 rows.

button.add has no name38 pages
.gallery img has no alt31 pages
h1 → h4 jump17 pages

Shows what machines miss

Results axe-core cannot decide are listed as “needs a human”, so you know what to check by hand.

Do these links make sense?23
Contrast over an image12
Video captions correct?4

Keeps watching

Scans each site daily or weekly on its own, shows what is new and what got fixed, and tells Slack, Discord, ntfy or your inbox when something breaks.

Runs on your server

One compose file. No Redis, no cloud account, and no page content leaves your network.

$ docker compose up -d
✓ db ✓ api ✓ worker ✓ web
→ http://localhost:8080

Fails your CI, not your users

A GitHub Action checks a staging site on every pull request and fails at the severity you choose.

Testspassed
Tabwalk accessibility check2 serious
Buildpassed

Eight languages

The interface and the rule descriptions, in the language your team and clients read.

EnglishDeutschEspañolFrançaisItalianoPolskiРусский中文

No magic button. The magic button does not work.

Tabwalk changes nothing on your site and never calls it compliant. It shows what is broken, where, and on how many pages.

$1M

FTC fine for an overlay vendor that claimed its widget made sites WCAG compliant.

22.6%

of ADA website lawsuits in the first half of 2025 targeted sites that already had an overlay.

0

edits Tabwalk makes to your site. It measures, keeps a dated record and leaves the fixing to people.

Sources: FTC final order, Accessibility.Works

Questions and answers

Is it really free?

Yes. The self-hosted version is AGPL-3.0 with no account and no feature limits, and it always will be.

Will it make my site compliant?

No tool can. Automated checks cover only part of WCAG. Tabwalk shows what it found and lists what a person still has to check.

What does it check?

WCAG 2.2 A and AA rules from axe-core, plus a keyboard walk that finds traps, invisible focus and focus hidden under fixed content, on every page it finds through your sitemap and the links between your pages. Each problem lists the matching EN 301 549, RGAA and Section 508 clauses. Best-practice rules are shown apart as recommendations.

Can my team sign in with Google or Microsoft?

Yes. The dashboard has its own accounts, and single sign-on works with Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID, Keycloak or any other OpenID Connect provider.

Where does my data go?

Nowhere. Tabwalk runs on your server with its own Postgres. Pages are opened by a local browser and nothing is sent to us.

Free and open source.
The self-hosted version always will be.

Questions, ideas and pull requests are welcome. If it saves you time, a star helps other people find it.