Eleventy (11ty) Accessibility Checker

Eleventy (11ty) is a popular static site generator known for its simplicity, flexibility, and zero-client-JavaScript output. Used by government agencies, educational institutions, and accessibility advocates themselves, Eleventy has become the go-to framework for developers who prioritize performance and accessibility.

The Eleventy community has a strong accessibility culture — the project's documentation site is itself a model of accessible web design. However, Eleventy gives developers complete control over output HTML, which means accessibility depends entirely on template quality and content authoring practices. With the ADA Title II deadline of April 24, 2026 applying to many Eleventy-powered government sites, validating compliance is essential.

Eleventy's template-driven output means issues originate from Nunjucks, Liquid, or other template files. CompliScan identifies these patterns on 11ty sites:

• Inconsistent heading hierarchy across templates — collection pages, blog posts, and tag pages often use different heading structures depending on which layout template renders them, creating unpredictable document outlines.
• Markdown content without semantic enrichment — raw Markdown produces limited HTML; images without alt text, links without descriptive text, and tables without proper headers are common in Markdown-sourced content.
• Pagination navigation lacking ARIA — Eleventy's pagination feature generates navigation links that often lack aria-label, aria-current, and proper list semantics, making multi-page navigation confusing for screen reader users.
• Third-party embed accessibility — YouTube iframes, CodePen embeds, and social media widgets injected into 11ty content frequently lack titles, keyboard access, and proper focus handling.

Run a free CompliScan scan on your deployed Eleventy site. Because 11ty generates static HTML, scanning is fast and results are deterministic — the same violations will appear on every visit until fixed.

For heading hierarchy, create a consistent heading convention in your base layout templates and use Eleventy's addFilter to validate heading levels in Markdown content at build time. For images, configure your Markdown renderer to require alt text and warn on missing descriptions during eleventy build. For pagination, update your pagination template to include <nav aria-label="Pagination">, aria-current="page" on the active link, and wrap links in an ordered list.

The eleventy-plugin-a11y provides build-time accessibility checks, but for comprehensive production validation, CompliScan scans your live site's rendered output. The Shield plan ($49/mo) monitors up to 3 sites with weekly automated scans.

Eleventy's popularity with government web teams makes ADA Title II and Section 508 compliance particularly relevant. The April 24, 2026 deadline requires all state and local government websites to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Federal sites must already comply under Section 508, which references the same WCAG standard.

The European Accessibility Act similarly affects European public-sector sites, referencing EN 301 549. Eleventy's clean HTML output makes compliance achievable, but it requires deliberate template design, content authoring guidelines, and regular automated scanning.

Automated tools detect approximately 30-40% of WCAG 2.1 AA issues. For government compliance, this automated baseline combined with manual testing satisfies most audit requirements. CompliScan's PDF reports (available on the Shield Pro plan at $149/mo) provide documentation suitable for compliance audits and accessibility statements.