Auric Accessibility — WCAG 2.2 Linter

Find statically-detectable accessibility problems across your whole project — 70 WCAG checks, contrast, and ARIA errors verified against the specification, not a word list. Inspect any element on hover, scan the workspace, and export an agent-ready fix plan. Entirely local.

Auric Accessibility audits HTML, JSX/TSX, Vue, Svelte, Astro, PHP, XML, plain JS/TS (JSX + CSS-in-JS), and every CSS dialect. Its rule engine is built on a vendored ARIA 1.2 role matrix, the WCAG 2.2 catalogue, HTML-AAM implicit roles, and the HTML autofill grammar — so role, attribute, and autocomplete errors are checked against the spec rather than guessed. It shares the same dependency-free engine as the Auric Artisan CLI, so a project scan and a CI gate report identical findings.

Features

70 WCAG rules across 28 success criteria

Static markup and CSS checks with impact levels (critical / serious / moderate / minor) under a selectable audit profile — 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 (default), or 3.0-draft (auricA11y.a11y.profile). Coverage spans non-text alternatives (incl. image buttons, image-map areas, <svg role="img">), labels and heading order, <fieldset>/<legend>, media captions, duplicate main landmarks, unknown/typo'd aria-* attributes checked against the ARIA 1.2 matrix, keyboard access, focus visibility, page language, link purpose, target size, accessible authentication, and ARIA name/role/value.

Relationship-aware checks use a lightweight source tree to validate required ARIA owned/context roles, role naming, repeated landmark names, <details>/<summary>, and aria-hidden on the document body without running project code. Findings carry confidence and automation metadata so assisted evidence is not presented as certain.

Each finding carries its SC number, level (A/AA/AAA), WCAG version, impact, a one-line fix, and — where a deterministic change is safe — a before/after Apply fix, plus a link to the WCAG Understanding doc. Judgement calls (alt-text quality, link purpose, dialog naming) are suggested for review, never auto-applied.

Inspect — accessibility on hover, with a live preview

Hover an element or a CSS rule, or run Inspect Accessibility of Element (Ctrl+Alt+A), to see inline:

• The element's accessible name and role (or the rule's selector and colours).
• The colours that apply, with the contrast verdict, APCA Lc, and a CVD check on the real pair.
• A before/after preview rendered on real content (heading, body, button), using hue-preserving repair.
• The WCAG issues found there, each with severity/level badges, its fix, and Go to / Open in Studio links.

In JS/TS a <tag> is only treated as an element when it's a real HTML tag or an uppercase JSX component, so generics and comparisons (a < b, Array<string>) are never mistaken for markup.

Project scan + the Issues tree

Scan Project for Accessibility walks the workspace and produces a 0–100 score and grade blending contrast and WCAG findings. Results populate the Accessibility Issues view — click-to-navigate, grouped by type / file / severity, and searchable. A live mode re-grades from the in-memory text of the file you're editing; disk rescans are cache-backed with time-based freshness. Findings that require human judgement stay in the tree as suggestions.

Contrast diagnostics

The same WCAG + APCA contrast analysis as the Color extension: statically resolvable color/background pairs (including var() tokens and CSS-in-JS) get inline underlines and quick-fixes, with CVD-risk hints.

Agent-ready remediation plan

Generate Agent-Ready Remediation Plan turns a scan into a structured Markdown + JSON backlog at .auric-artisan/ai-remediation-plan.*: deterministic contrast fixes with computed candidate colours, WCAG tasks that need semantic review, repeated pattern groupings, a draft accessible token system, a validation checklist, and a prompt string you can hand to a coding agent you bring.

The plan is generated 100% locally and deterministically — there is no model call and no network. It is a remediation backlog, not an "AI" product; the only generative artifact is the prompt template written for an external agent.

Searchable rulebook + manual evidence

The bundled local Knowledge Base combines every live rule with all 86 WCAG 2.2 criteria, eight manual test procedures, official-source provenance, articles, policies, and a glossary. Search it in VS Code, or generate .auric-artisan/knowledge.json and rulebook.md plus a validated team override template. The metadata is ACT-aligned and explicitly makes no conformance claim.

Inline suppression & intentional branding

Acknowledge a finding with auric-disable-line / -next-line / -file (optionally scoped by rule id, success criterion, or category), inserted for you by a quick-fix in the right comment syntax per language. Classify a colour finding as intentional brand identity with auric-brand-* or Mark Line as Intentional Branding — structural findings (missing alt, unlabeled controls, ARIA errors) can never be waived this way.

In practice

Commands

All commands are listed in the palette under the Auric Artisan category.

Keybindings

Settings

A representative subset — there are 22 settings under the auricA11y. namespace (open Settings and search auricA11y).

Part of the Auric Artisan Workstation

Installed on its own, Auric Accessibility is a complete, standalone product with its own activity-bar container (an Overview home + the Accessibility Issues tree).

Install it alongside Auric Color and/or Auric Code Health and the three cooperate automatically. The suite elects a single Workstation host, and Accessibility has the highest priority (Accessibility → Color → Code Health) — so when it is present it becomes the host, presenting one capability-aware Command Center and a union Studio for every installed extension. Suppressed siblings hide their duplicate views and route their commands to this host; the election updates live on install/uninstall (no reload). One coherent experience, never three dashboards.

Privacy

Everything runs locally. Auric Accessibility sends no source code, scan results, or telemetry to any server — the no-network guarantee is mechanically enforced against the shipped build. Scan cache, health records, and the remediation plan are written only to the workspace .auric-artisan/ folder. No account, no API key, no paid tier.

The 0–100 score is a prioritization and progress metric, not an accessibility certification. Automated testing covers only statically detectable issues; manual testing is still required.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.74 or newer. Works in single-folder and multi-root workspaces.

By Auric Artisan · auricartisan.com