Free accessibility widgets for WordPress, compared and measured

Last updated: 4 November 2026

We installed nine free accessibility toolbar plugins from WordPress.org, one at a time, on the same WordPress 7.1.4 test site, and measured what each one adds to a page. Short answer: six of them show a toolbar with no account (OneTap, WP Accessibility, AccessiYes, AccessibleWP, WP Accessibility Helper and ours); Ally, UserWay and accessiBe need an account before a toolbar appears. On our test page those six added between 12 KB and 144 KB. Only two plugins made visitors' browsers contact other companies' servers when a page loaded: AccessibleWP, and accessiBe even before you sign up.

We make one of these plugins, Quicksloth Accessibility Toolbar, so weigh what we say with that in mind. We measured ours with the same script and the same settings as the others, and every number below comes from the plugins' current code and listings, read on 4 November 2026. If something has changed, tell us at support@quicksloth.dev and we will correct it.

An accessibility toolbar helps some visitors; it does not make a website conform to WCAG or to the law. Fix your content and code first.

The short list

Figures from each plugin's WordPress.org listing and the public WordPress.org plugin API on 4 November 2026, when the current WordPress release was 7.1.4. Ratings are the listing's average out of 5. "Toolbar with no account" means a visitor toolbar appeared on our test page right after activation.

Which ones need an account

• Web Accessibility (formally known as Ally). Its readme says "This plugin requires a connection to an active Elementor account". In the code of version 4.1.4 the toolbar script, loaded from cdn.elementor.com with your site's key, is added only after you connect. Before that, our test page had no toolbar. The readme also says that "you must list Elementor as a sub-processor in your privacy notice".
• Accessibility by UserWay. The readme's install steps end with "Sign-up plug-in on Settings-> UserWay page", and the plugin adds UserWay's script from cdn.userway.org only when an account is linked. Until then there is no toolbar, and on every page view the plugin's code asks api.userway.org, from your server, whether your site has an account. In our test each page took a few tenths of a second longer to start loading because of that call. UserWay offers a free widget with its account and paid plans (details).
• Web Accessibility by accessiBe. The readme offers "a 7-day free trial; no credit card required", says to "Sign up to accessiBe in the plugin", and that "Plans start at $490 a year (or $59/mo)". See our accessiBe page.
• The other six need no account. OneTap's readme says "No coding, setup or account necessary"; AccessiYes's says it "does not need a CookieYes account". WP Accessibility, AccessibleWP, WP Accessibility Helper and ours work right after activation. AccessibleWP has an optional "Connect" tab.

Which ones contact other servers

When a page makes a visitor's browser fetch a file from another company's server, that server receives the visitor's IP address and browser details, as with any web request. This is what we saw, plus what the code says for the moments we did not measure.

AccessibleWP's Google Fonts request goes away if you tick "Hide the icons of the accessibility options"; we found no setting for the events sent to api.userway.org (more in our AccessibleWP page). In accessiBe 2.13 the plugin prints "acsb not injected" in the browser console when nothing is set up, and then adds the script anyway.

How much each one adds to a page

Our test page with no plugin transferred about 88 KB. The table shows what each plugin added on top, as the median of five loads with an empty cache (the five gave the same numbers). KB means 1,000 bytes, compressed as a web server would send them. Many sites already load jQuery for their theme or other plugins; for them, the three plugins that need it weigh about 35 KB less.

Two numbers need a word. OneTap's 143.7 KB includes 65.6 KB of extra HTML on every page: the plugin writes the toolbar's labels for all 44 of its languages into each page, so it can switch language without another request. AccessiYes packs its whole widget into one 372 KB script, 92 KB compressed. Neither contacts another server. Bytes are not the whole story either: we did not measure how long each script keeps the browser busy.

Maintained or not

Five of the nine were tested up to WordPress 7.1.4, the current release. UserWay and accessiBe were tested up to 6.9.11, and Ally up to 7.0.8. AccessibleWP was last updated on 3 October 2024 and tested up to 6.6.11; its listing shows this notice: "This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress." That does not mean it has stopped working on your site, but test before you rely on it. Ours is the newest, listed since 21 October 2026, with no track record yet.

Which one fits

There is no single best one: it depends on what you need. Some starting points, from the facts above:

• You want fixes for common theme problems, not only a toolbar: WP Accessibility can add skip links, a visible keyboard focus outline, labels for standard WordPress form fields and more, each one on or off in its settings, and its toolbar is optional. Its readme is frank that it "is not intended to make your site compatible with any accessibility guidelines". In the directory since 2012, 4.8 out of 5.
• You want many tools and many languages built in, with no account: OneTap, rated 4.9 from 80 ratings, with labels in 44 languages; it is also the heaviest of the no-account group on our test page. A paid Pro adds more tools (our OneTap comparison).
• You want an accessibility statement generator in the free plugin: AccessiYes says it "includes a free accessibility statement generator"; OneTap's description lists one too. You can also write a statement yourself.
• You want admin tools for image alt text and page landmarks: WP Accessibility Helper has a screen to review image titles and alt text and lets you assign ARIA landmark roles with CSS selectors (our WP Accessibility Helper page).
• You already use, or want to pay for, a hosted service: UserWay, accessiBe and Elementor's Web Accessibility come with accounts and their own dashboards; their scripts load from the vendor's servers. See our pages on UserWay, accessiBe and Ally.
• You want no account, nothing from other servers, no cookies and a light page: ours (13.1 KB, of which 1.1 KB of HTML; 25 visitor tools, English labels until translations are published), WP Accessibility with its toolbar on (11.9 KB, fewer tools: text size and contrast) and AccessiYes (92.7 KB) all fit. Ours is new and has no ratings yet; the other two have years of reviews.

What none of them does

A toolbar changes how a page looks in one visitor's browser. None of these plugins adds missing alt text to your images, fixes a heading order, labels a custom form or makes a theme usable with a keyboard for you. WP Accessibility gets closest, with fixes for some common theme problems, and still says it cannot correct every problem. Read what a widget can and cannot do for the European Accessibility Act and start with our accessibility checklist.

How we measured

• Site: WordPress 7.1.4 with the SQLite Database Integration drop-in, served by PHP 8.3's built-in server on our own machine, theme Twenty Twenty-Five, one test page with headings, paragraphs, a list and links as the front page.
• Plugins: the current version of each, downloaded from WordPress.org on 4 November 2026, one active at a time, default settings, no account connected. WP Accessibility was measured twice, because its toolbar is off until you turn it on.
• Browser: Chromium driven by Playwright 1.63, as an anonymous visitor, five loads per plugin, each with an empty cache and no cookies, recording every request for 8 seconds after the page loaded. Then we clicked the toolbar button once and recorded the next 4 seconds.
• Bytes: a local PHP server sends files uncompressed, so we compressed each file from the site with gzip at level 6; for files from other servers we counted the bytes actually received. Extra HTML is the compressed difference from the same page with no plugin. Your server may use Brotli or another level, which gives slightly different numbers.
• Code: for accounts, cookies and what happens when a visitor uses a tool, we read each plugin's code and readme. Those cells say "from the code".
• Limits: one theme and one page. Without an account, Ally, UserWay and accessiBe show no toolbar, so we could not measure their full toolbars. We did not measure script running time. Results on your site depend on your theme, cache and other plugins.

Our measurement script and the raw numbers for every load are available on request at support@quicksloth.dev.

Questions and answers

Is there a free accessibility widget for WordPress with no account?

Yes. On 4 November 2026, OneTap, WP Accessibility, AccessiYes, AccessibleWP, WP Accessibility Helper and our Quicksloth Accessibility Toolbar all showed a toolbar without any account. Ally, UserWay and accessiBe did not.

Which one is the lightest?

On our test page, WP Accessibility with its toolbar on added 11.9 KB and ours 13.1 KB (11.9 KB for its script and styles, 1.1 KB of HTML). WP Accessibility Helper and AccessibleWP added about 7–9 KB of their own plus jQuery, if your site does not load it already.

Do any of them set cookies?

None set a cookie just by loading a page or opening the panel in our test. AccessibleWP, WP Accessibility Helper and WP Accessibility's toolbar use cookies when a visitor turns on a tool, according to their code; OneTap, AccessiYes and ours use the browser's storage instead.

Will a toolbar make my site compliant?

No. An accessibility toolbar helps some visitors; it does not make a website conform to WCAG or to the law. Fix your content and code first.

Sources

All read on 4 November 2026.

• WordPress.org listings: Web Accessibility (formally known as Ally), Accessibility by UserWay, OneTap, WP Accessibility, AccessiYes, Web Accessibility by accessiBe, AccessibleWP, WP Accessibility Helper and Quicksloth Accessibility Toolbar.
• The WordPress.org plugin information API and the WordPress version check for the current release.
• The readme and code of each plugin version named above, from downloads.wordpress.org.
• Test tools: SQLite Database Integration and Playwright.

Try ours

Open the live demo to use every tool on a sample page, get the plugin from its WordPress.org listing, or read what the plugin does, what it does not do and how to set it up. Comparing one toolbar in detail? See One Click Accessibility (Ally), OneTap, UserWay, accessiBe, AccessibleWP and WP Accessibility Helper.