Accessonaut – Accessibility Widget & Reading Aids

Accessonaut adds an accessibility widget with reading aids to your WordPress website. Visitors open the “Reading tools” button and adapt the page to their needs: larger text, more spacing, a readable font, higher contrast, a reading guide, paused animations and more. Their choices are saved in their own browser and apply to every page of your website.

The widget is provided by the Accessonaut service. This plugin connects your website to it without code: enter the public project ID from your free Accessonaut account, choose a design and switch the connection on.

Reading aids for your visitors

• Text: text size in several levels, line height, letter and word spacing, a readable or monospace font, bold text, paragraph spacing, a narrower text width, emphasized headings and underlined or highlighted links.
• Colors and media: high contrast, dark, light or inverted colors, less saturation, dimming, hidden or greyscale images, image texts, paused or muted media, calmer backgrounds and less transparency.
• Orientation: reading guide or reading mask, no animations, a clearly visible keyboard focus, an overview of all headings on the page, highlighted buttons and form fields, a larger mouse pointer, a skip link, labels and calm scrolling.
• Quick profiles that combine several settings, for example “Low vision”, “Dyslexia”, “ADHD” or “Less color”.
• Read aloud: visitors select text on the page and their browser reads it with a local voice.
• Keyboard operation: Alt + A opens the reading tools.

Your design: central or in WordPress

• Central design: the widget follows the design you save for this website in your Accessonaut account. Changes reach your website without touching WordPress.
• Local design: style the widget in Settings > Accessonaut with five presets and 28 settings, including colors, light or dark theme, icon, widget language, title, a launcher with icon or text, font, font size, panel width, corners, launcher size, separate desktop and mobile offsets, shadow and spacing.
• Optional preview: a sandboxed preview of the real widget shows your unsaved changes. It loads only when you click the preview button.
• No external fonts: the widget uses system fonts or the font of your theme.

How it works

1. Create a free account at accessonaut.com and add your website.
2. Install this plugin and enter the service address and the public project ID from your account.
3. Choose the central or local design, check “Enable” and save.

The plugin adds one deferred script tag to the footer of your public pages, and only after you have enabled the connection. In the WordPress admin it loads its files only on its own settings screen. It needs no API secret and makes no server-side requests.

Free plan

The free plan covers one website with all reading aids and design options. On the free plan the widget menu shows a small credit link (“Reading tools by Accessonaut”, in the widget language). Paid plans remove the credit link and add more websites, larger scans and monitoring. Plans and the credit link are managed by the service, not by a setting in this plugin.

Languages

The widget speaks German, English and Spanish. By default it follows the language of each page, which WordPress sets from your site language, and falls back to the browser language. Visitors can switch the language in the widget menu, and you can set a fixed language in the local design. The settings screen is available in English, German (informal and formal, Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and Spanish.

Privacy

• No cookies: reading preferences stay in the visitor’s browser.
• Nothing is loaded before you enable the connection.
• When the widget loads, the service receives the usual request data, such as the IP address and the website hostname. When a visitor opens the reading tools, the browser sends an anonymous usage notice without cookies, referrer or identifiers. Browsers with Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control send no usage notices.
• Accessonaut is operated from Germany and hosted in the EU. All requests are listed under “External services” below.

What the widget does not do

The widget offers optional display adjustments for your visitors. It does not repair your theme, content or code, and it does not make a website compliant with WCAG, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) or the German BFSG. Combine it with accessible content, manual testing and fixes at the source. Your Accessonaut account offers automated scans and a guided manual check for this.

External services

This plugin connects your website to the Accessonaut service, operated by the provider named at https://accessonaut.com/en/imprint. Nothing is sent before an administrator enters a service origin and a public project ID and checks “Enable”. The hosted service is https://accessonaut.com; another trusted HTTPS origin can be configured.

• Widget and configuration: on every public page load the visitor’s browser loads {service-origin}/widget.js and the public project configuration from {service-origin}/api/widget/config. This sends the visitor’s IP address, ordinary browser request data, the website hostname and the public project ID. The service uses them to check the project and its plan and counts widget page views per day; it stores no visitor data.
• Approved image descriptions (only if this paid feature is switched on for your project): a second configuration request also sends the address of the current page, without fragment and common tracking parameters, so the service can return the image descriptions approved for that page.
• Anonymous usage notice: when a visitor opens the reading tools, the browser sends {service-origin}/api/widget/events at most once per page view and fact: that the menu was opened, the page path without query string and with identifier-like segments removed, a coarse device class (desktop, tablet, smartphone) and which reading tools and profiles were switched on. The request carries no cookies, no referrer and no identifier; the service only increments daily counters for your usage statistics and stores no IP address, user agent or per-visitor record. Browsers with Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control send no usage notices, and the WooCommerce commerce privacy mode sends none either.
• Browser assistant (paid plans, for your own team only): when a member of your Accessonaut team opens your website with a one-time launch link from the Accessonaut dashboard, the widget loads that member’s scan findings from {service-origin}/api/widget/assistant/. Visitors never trigger these requests.
• Administrator preview (optional): only when you click “Load preview from configured service”, your browser loads {service-origin}/widget-preview.html and its assets. A script-only sandbox receives the appearance values, no project ID or account data.

The reading preferences themselves are saved in the visitor’s browser and never leave it. This plugin sends no WordPress users, passwords, posts or API secrets and makes no server-side requests.

Terms of service: https://accessonaut.com/en/terms-of-service
Privacy policy: https://accessonaut.com/en/privacy-policy

The widget’s JavaScript runs on your public website, so only connect a service you trust, and update your own privacy policy.