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Run an Accessibility Check and Issue a Certificate

Use this procedure when a council wants reassurance that its website is accessible, or asks why WAVE is showing errors.

Claude does the checking and produces a one-page Accessibility Test Certificate (PDF) in NetWise colours, so every council gets the same format. You run WAVE on the home page, fix what you can on the spot, and send the certificate to the council.

This is a light check, not a full WCAG audit. The certificate says so in its footer.

Before you start

Claude needs the netwise-accessibility-report skill. It lives in the private NetWise AI toolkit repository:

Open the accessibility report skill on GitHub

Set it up once on each Mac. Pull the latest copy of netwise-ai-toolkit, then link the skill into Claude's skills folder. On the first line, use the path to your own copy of the repository, for example ~/Studio/netwise-ai-toolkit:

TOOLKIT=~/Documents/GitHub/netwise-ai-toolkit
ln -s "$TOOLKIT/claude-skills/netwise-accessibility-report" ~/.claude/skills/

Start a new Claude session afterwards so it picks the skill up.

You also need Google Chrome (Claude uses it to print the PDF) and the WAVE browser extension from WebAIM in your own browser.

1. Ask Claude to run the check

In the Claude desktop app's Code tab, ask in your own words. For example:

Run an accessibility check on sistonparishcouncil.gov.uk and give me the certificate.

Claude lists the site's pages from its sitemaps and tests every main page plus about a dozen recent news posts. It uses axe-core, the same testing engine behind most accessibility checkers.

Council documents (PDFs), members, events, notices and galleries are left out unless you ask for them.

2. Review the findings

Claude lists what it found in chat before producing anything. Expect it to cover:

  • Image alt text: images with no description, including linked images that leave the link with no name.
  • Colour contrast: text below the 4.5:1 standard, with where it is and the ratio.
  • Page language and skip to content link.
  • Housekeeping: old theme demo pages or out-of-date pages that are still public.

Some things automated tools flag are deliberately left off the certificate because they are theme-level or noisy: skipped heading levels, map and iframe titles, unlabelled page regions, and "page has no H1".

3. Run WAVE on the home page

Open the council's home page in your own browser and run the WAVE extension. This mainly checks the theme's colour contrast. Claude's axe test covers every page, so WAVE is only needed on the home page.

Tell Claude what WAVE reports. Claude lists WAVE under Tools on the certificate only once you've confirmed you ran it.

Use the extension, not the WAVE website

Some sites, Siston Parish Council for example, sit behind a Cloudflare bot check. The wave.webaim.org website gets the check page instead of the council's site, and its report is titled Just a moment... as a result. The browser extension runs inside your own browser, so it isn't affected.

4. Fix what you can now

Anything fixed before the certificate is produced appears as Corrected rather than Action, which reads much better for the council.

Common quick fixes:

  • Missing alt text on photos: add a description in the WordPress Media Library. For member photos, the member's name is enough.
  • Low-contrast text: change the colour in the page editor, or in the theme colours if it affects the whole site.
  • Theme demo pages: move them to the bin in Pages → All Pages. They can be restored from Pages → Bin if needed.

Claude can make these changes in your browser, but you must log in to WordPress, cPanel or WHM yourself first. Claude is not allowed to log in for you, and that includes WP Toolkit's automatic login.

Claude checks each fix on the live site before recording it as corrected.

5. Produce the certificate

Tell Claude to go ahead. It fills in the certificate template and prints a one-page A4 PDF.

The certificate shows:

  • a certificate number in the form NW-A11Y-<council initials>-<YYMMDD>, for example NW-A11Y-SPC-260925;
  • the client, website, test date, standard, scope and tools used;
  • a verdict stamp: Passed with up to two outstanding actions, Action needed above that;
  • a results table using only Pass, Corrected, Action and Not tested;
  • any housekeeping notes.

Check the PDF before sending it.

Save the PDF straight away

Claude usually produces the PDF in the session's temporary working folder, which is deleted when the session goes. Save or send it before you finish.

6. Send it to the council

Send the PDF to the clerk. Where there is an Action, point them to the details column, which says what to do and where.

Troubleshooting

WAVE still shows "Linked image missing alternative text" after alt text has been added

Check whether the image is hidden. WAVE ignores alt text on an image that is set to display: none. A link that contains only a hidden image counts as an empty link.

This happened on Penkridge Parish Council. The council had hidden its member photos with this rule in Appearance → Customize → Additional CSS:

.c-member .mem-foto img { display: none; }

Hiding the whole link instead cleared the errors, and the page looked the same:

.c-member .mem-foto { display: none; }

Before changing anything, rule out caching by testing a page WAVE hasn't seen before.

WAVE's report title says "Just a moment..."

The site is sending WAVE's website a Cloudflare bot check. Use the WAVE browser extension instead. See step 3.

Claude stops when it tries to log in

This is expected. Log in to WordPress, cPanel or WHM yourself in the Chrome tab Claude is using, then tell Claude to carry on.

The certificate runs onto a second page

The details in the results table are too long. Ask Claude to shorten the wording rather than change the layout. The template is shared, so layout changes affect every council's certificate.

Final check

Before sending the certificate, confirm:

  • Claude tested the main pages and recent news posts.
  • You ran WAVE on the home page, and WAVE is listed under Tools.
  • Every Corrected item was checked on the live site.
  • Every Action says what the council needs to do and where.
  • The PDF is a single A4 page with the right council, website and date.
  • You've saved the PDF somewhere permanent.

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