Ghost Accessibility Checker

Accessibility on Ghost

Ghost is a publishing platform for newsletters, blogs and paid memberships. Writers work in the editor, which assembles posts from cards: images, galleries, bookmarks, callouts, embeds and buttons. The theme, written in Handlebars, decides how each card and the rest of the page looks.

For a Ghost site, accessibility is mostly a question of content habits and the theme. Writers decide alt text, headings and link wording on every post, while the theme decides contrast, focus styles and navigation. The membership features, such as the signup portal, add forms and pop-ups on top.

Ghost’s theme documentation describes the editor cards, such as image, gallery, bookmark and embed cards, that its themes must style. Each card produces markup that your theme and your writers are responsible for keeping accessible. (opens in a new tab, source: Ghost Docs: theme content)

Common Accessibility Issues on Ghost Sites

• Image and gallery card alt text

  Images dropped into posts with no alt text, or with a caption standing in for it, and gallery cards where each image needs its own description.

• Heading structure in long posts

  The post title is the page heading, so writers should start at h2. Bold text used as a heading and skipped levels break the outline of long articles.

• Embeds and bookmark cards

  Embedded videos, social posts and podcasts load in iframes that need titles, and bookmark cards can produce several links with the same text.

• Membership portal and subscribe forms

  The signup and subscribe forms, the portal pop-up and the announcement bar add fields, buttons and overlays that need labels and keyboard handling.

• Theme contrast and navigation

  Light gray metadata, pale tag links and dark-mode color swaps often fall below the contrast minimum, and mobile navigation toggles lack a name.

How AccessBell Scans Your Ghost Site

1. Enter any public page. Paste the address of a page on your Ghost site into the scanner above. There is nothing to install: no plugin, no code snippet and no login.
2. We load it in a real browser. AccessBell opens the page in headless Chrome and runs its scripts, so it tests what your visitors actually see, including content added by your theme, apps or plugins.
3. We run the WCAG rules. The open-source axe-core engine checks the page against the standard you choose, and every result is mapped to the WCAG success criteria it affects.
4. You see what is wrong in seconds. The free scan lists every issue it finds, ranked by severity, with the WCAG criteria each one fails. Start a free trial to get the failing code and the fix for each one. Our methodology explains exactly what runs and what still needs a person.

What You Get From the Free Scan and the Free Trial

Free, with no account

• 63 automated rules for WCAG 2.2 Level AA, or presets for WCAG 2.1 AA, the ADA, Section 508 and EN 301 549
• Every issue found on the page, ranked by severity from critical to minor
• The WCAG success criteria each issue fails, which you can look up in our WCAG library

With a 3-day free trial

• The failing HTML, so you can find the element in your Ghost editor or code
• How to fix each issue, with a corrected example
• Every page scanned, up to 500 per domain, with daily monitoring and an email when something breaks
• A list of checks that need a person to review, so nothing is missed
• A dated record of your scans and fixes

Start 3-day free trial

How to Fix What the Scan Finds

1. Add a short alt text to each image and gallery picture as you publish, and use the editor’s heading option rather than bold text.
2. Give embeds a descriptive title, and write link text that makes sense out of context instead of repeating the page title or "link".
3. Fix colors, focus styles and navigation once in your theme files so every post benefits, then rescan to confirm.
4. Run a free scan above on your homepage and a few key pages, fix issues starting with critical and serious, then rescan to confirm.
5. For ongoing protection, AccessBell Pro monitors up to 500 URLs per domain every day and alerts you when a theme, app or plugin update introduces a new issue.

Related Guides

• WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content Explained in Plain EnglishWCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content explained simply: how to write alt text for every kind of image, icon, chart and CAPTCHA, with code examples and a test routine.
• WCAG 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence Explained in Plain EnglishWCAG 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence explained simply: why reading order matters, how CSS and layout tables break it, how to fix it and how to test your pages.
• WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) Explained in Plain EnglishWCAG 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) explained simply: the 4.5:1 and 3:1 ratios, what counts as large text, the exceptions, fixes and how to test your colors.
• WCAG Success Criteria LibraryLook up any success criterion the scan flags, in plain language.
• Ghost ADA Compliance CheckerThe same scan with the ADA preset, plus the ADA risks specific to Ghost sites.
• Free Accessibility Statement GeneratorPublish a statement once your Ghost site's known issues are fixed.

Ghost Accessibility — Frequently Asked Questions