ABILITY

Description

ABILITY is a WordPress accessibility toolkit that provides configurable visitor controls, heuristic page scanning, and reporting to help site owners identify and address common accessibility issues. Automated tools cannot determine complete accessibility, standards conformance, or legal compliance.

Features:

• Static code scanning for accessibility issues
• Frontend accessibility widget
• Heuristic checks mapped to selected WCAG criteria
• Easy-to-use setup wizard
• Accessibility statement template
• Multiple accessibility controls (high contrast, font size, focus indicators, and more)

Server Requirements & Configuration

ABILITY follows standard WordPress requirements and should work on any host that supports a normal WordPress installation.

Minimum technical requirements

• Web server: Apache (recommended) or Nginx, configured for WordPress pretty permalinks.
• PHP: 7.4 or higher. The page scanner requires the standard DOM/XML extension. WordPress must also have a working HTTP transport (typically cURL or streams).
• MySQL / MariaDB: As required by your WordPress version.

Apache (default WordPress setup)

Most shared hosts run Apache with .htaccess support enabled:

• Ensure AllowOverride is enabled so WordPress can manage .htaccess and pretty permalinks.
• Use one of WordPress’s pretty permalink structures under Settings → Permalinks.
• No special rewrite rules are required specifically for ABILITY; it uses normal WordPress AJAX and admin-ajax.php.

Nginx

When running Nginx, ensure your configuration supports WordPress permalinks and admin Ajax:

• Use the official WordPress Nginx rules (see WordPress.org documentation) to route requests to index.php.
• Make sure admin-ajax.php is accessible (no custom blocking rules on /wp-admin/ AJAX).
• No ABILITY-specific location blocks are required; the plugin uses standard WordPress hooks and endpoints.

If in doubt, configure the server to meet the WordPress Hosting Requirements first; ABILITY will work on any environment that satisfies those.

Standards and legal context

W3C recommends WCAG 2.2 for current accessibility work: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/

Specific legal requirements depend on the organization, website, content, jurisdiction, and applicable law. For example, the U.S. Department of Justice Title II web and mobile accessibility rule for state and local governments uses WCAG 2.1 Level AA as its technical standard. As of the DOJ’s April 2026 Interim Final Rule, the general compliance dates are April 26, 2027 for public entities with populations of 50,000 or more and April 26, 2028 for smaller public entities and special district governments. Review the current official rule and exceptions before relying on any date: https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/

ABILITY is a technical assistance tool. It is not legal advice, does not replace manual and assistive-technology testing, and does not certify that a site conforms to WCAG or any law.