OpenAisle — Accessibility & EAA Compliance for WooCommerce

OpenAisle scans your WooCommerce store for accessibility barriers and turns the results into a clear compliance score, a prioritised issue list, and a timestamped audit trail — all on your own server.

Scanning runs entirely on-site using a bundled copy of the open-source axe-core engine. Scans run in hidden, same-origin iframes of your own store pages; a small bundled scan agent runs axe-core in-page and reports the results back locally — no external content is loaded and nothing leaves your server.

Why accessibility matters for WooCommerce

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) applies from 28 June 2025 and requires many businesses selling to EU consumers — including e-commerce — to make their digital services accessible, using EN 301 549 (which references WCAG 2.1 level AA). In the United States, the ADA has long been the basis for a large volume of website accessibility complaints against online retailers. Beyond the law, roughly one in four adults lives with a disability, so an inaccessible checkout is lost revenue.

OpenAisle helps you find and understand these barriers. It does not provide legal advice, and no tool can promise you will avoid a complaint — but a documented, improving accessibility program is a reasonable, good-faith response.

What it scans

• Your key WooCommerce flow pages — shop, a sample product, cart, checkout, and my-account.
• Real, rendered pages (including content added by JavaScript), so it catches issues a source-only checker misses, such as colour contrast and ARIA problems.
• Every finding is mapped to a plain-language explanation, a WCAG criterion, the WooCommerce flow it affects, and whether it is in EAA / EN 301 549 scope.

Free features

• On-server accessibility scan of your key store flows.
• Compliance score (0–100) and dashboard with a WooCommerce flow breakdown.
• Severity-grouped issue list with WCAG badges, an EAA-relevance filter, and free how-to-fix guidance.
• Catalog alt-text audit — see, across your whole product catalog, how many images are missing alt text.
• A basic accessibility statement template.
• An audit trail of scans and changes you can keep as a record of your efforts.

Pro features

OpenAisle Pro (a separate paid upgrade) adds:

• AI-generated image alt text for your product photos, using your own OpenAI or Google Gemini API key (you bring the key; the free plugin never contacts these services).
• Scheduled accessibility checks with email re-scan reminders (a full WCAG scan runs in your browser; scheduled checks run on your server and tell you when it is time to re-scan).
• Downloadable PDF compliance reports.
• An auto-customised accessibility statement and deeper WooCommerce-flow checks.

External Services

This plugin connects to the following third-party services.

Freemius — used for license management, plugin updates, and (only if you opt in) anonymous usage diagnostics. Data is sent to Freemius only as part of these functions. See the Freemius Terms of Service (https://freemius.com/terms/) and Privacy Policy (https://freemius.com/privacy/).

The following services are used ONLY by the separate OpenAisle Pro upgrade, ONLY with an API key you supply yourself, and ONLY when you explicitly request AI-generated alt text. The free plugin never contacts them:

• OpenAI — if you choose it as your AI provider, the product image and details you ask OpenAisle to write alt text for are sent to OpenAI using your own API key. See the OpenAI Terms of Use (https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use/) and Privacy Policy (https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy/).
• Google Gemini — if you choose it as your AI provider, the product image and details you ask OpenAisle to write alt text for are sent to Google using your own API key. See the Google APIs Terms of Service (https://developers.google.com/terms) and the Google Privacy Policy (https://policies.google.com/privacy).