What runs, who decides, and what isn’t covered.
The method behind each claim Variantly makes, written so a buyer’s accessibility office can check it.
- CaptureThe machine
A headless browser opens each page and each state of a task. It records a screenshot, the accessibility tree, the focus trace, a screen-reader transcript derived from the accessibility tree, and the results of axe and Variantly’s own rules. Short-lived states, like a message that disappears, are captured too.
- TriesThe machine, as a persona you describe
A try works through a task as a persona you describe, signed in with a test account you control when the task needs one. It records each step and what it saw. A try is not a person: it shows how the interface behaves, not how people feel about it.
- IssuesProposed, then decided
Rules report what a rule can detect. AI proposes the rest, and each proposal keeps the screens it rests on. A person decides each task-review issue: Act on it, Check with people, or Intended behavior. Issues from task reviews never set a row in the conformance report.
- Conformance reportA person; the edition, for one row
Each WCAG criterion reads Supports, Partially Supports, Does Not Support, Not Applicable or Not Evaluated. Rules attach what they found to a row; they don’t set it. The AI proposes a value and a person checks a sample, or a person decides it with the evidence open. Supports comes only from a person who opened the evidence, with one exception: the WCAG edition sets Parsing (4.1.1), Supports in WCAG 2.1 and Not Applicable in WCAG 2.2, and no page is read to set it. Every row says which. The report (VPAT® 2.5, OpenACR) is published on a public page that keeps its version history, and its link keeps working after a report is withdrawn.
- RechecksOn a schedule, and after a change
Recordings of your key tasks replay on a schedule, nightly or monthly by plan. A change is reported, never silent, and a report row whose evidence came only from a changed recording is marked stale until a person decides it again. After a change to your product, a recheck looks for an issue’s condition again and records whether it was seen again, not seen, not checked or couldn’t tell, and why. It never marks an issue fixed.
- Not coveredNamed, not assumed
Whether real people hit what a try found. Real screen readers: the transcript is derived from the capture. Pages or tasks you didn’t add. Anything a test account can’t reach. A clean scan does not establish conformance.
Start with your public pages.
Free and private, accessibility only. Nothing runs on signed-in pages until you add a test account and confirm.