Kuality vs WAVE
WAVE by WebAIM is an excellent free browser extension for manually checking accessibility one page at a time. Kuality automates the same checks on a schedule, gates CI/CD, and bundles accessibility with 16 other quality checks — all without opening a browser extension.
No credit card · Free forever tier · No browser extension needed
WAVE for manual checks, Kuality for automation
WAVE is best for visual, manual accessibility review. Kuality is built for automated, repeatable accessibility testing at CI scale.
WAVE (WebAIM)
Free browser extension for manual accessibility review
- Visual overlay showing a11y errors in-page
- Free browser extension (Chrome, Firefox)
- WCAG 2.x error classification
- Great for manual QA sessions
- Color contrast checker
- No CI/CD integration
- No scheduled automated scans
- No JUnit XML export
- Checks one page at a time only
- No performance, security, or SEO checks
- No score trend over time
Kuality
Automated accessibility + 16 other quality checks
- WCAG 2.2 AA audits (axe-core — same engine as WAVE)
- Automated scans on a schedule
- CI/CD quality gates (block on critical violations)
- JUnit XML output for GitHub Actions test annotations
- Accessibility score trend over time
- Performance (Core Web Vitals)
- Security headers audit
- Cookie & consent compliance
- Broken link detection
- SEO & meta tag audit
- Free tier — no credit card
Both tools, different jobs
WAVE is ideal for a designer or QA engineer manually reviewing a specific page. Kuality is for automating that review across all your pages, gating CI/CD, and tracking accessibility quality over time — no browser extension required.
No extension needed
Kuality runs in a real browser on our servers. Paste a URL, get results. Works in CI/CD pipelines where browser extensions aren't an option.
Continuous monitoring
Schedule accessibility scans weekly or on every deploy. WAVE requires manual triggering — Kuality catches regressions automatically.
Score over time
Track your WCAG compliance score across releases. WAVE shows current state — Kuality shows trend, so regressions are visible the moment they're introduced.
Free plan. No credit card. No browser extension.