Last updated: August 9, 2026

Acceptable Use Policy

AccessWiser is built for site owners fixing their own websites. This page explains, in plain English, what you may do with it, what you may not, and what happens if those lines are crossed.

1. Scan only sites you own or are authorised to test

You may run AccessWiser scans against a website only if you own it or the owner has authorised you to test it. Scanning someone else's website without permission puts load on their servers, and in many places it is a legal problem for you rather than for us.

This is not just a rule on a page — the product enforces it on our servers. Scans are restricted to the domains you have verified on your own account, and verifying a domain means publishing a DNS TXT record containing a token we generate for you, either at _accesswiser.yourdomain.com or on the bare domain. That is proof that you control the domain's DNS, not merely a name typed into a form. Verifying a domain also covers its subdomains, because they share the same zone of authority. A scan request for a domain that is not verified on your account is refused before it reaches the target site, and every scan and every refused attempt is written to your account's audit log.

Control of a domain's DNS is strong evidence that the site is yours to test, but it is not proof that you are legally authorised to test it — holding that authorisation remains your responsibility. If you manage sites on behalf of clients, register and verify those domains on the account that has the client's permission.

2. No building demand packages or finding litigation targets

AccessWiser exists to help site owners find, fix, monitor, and document accessibility issues on their own websites. It is not a prospecting tool for accessibility litigation. You may not use the service, its scan results, its exports, or its reports to:

  • assemble, draft, or support an accessibility demand letter or demand package against a website you do not own;
  • survey sites in order to identify, rank, or shortlist potential defendants or claim targets;
  • solicit claimants, or supply third parties with scan output for either of the above purposes.

Using our own findings on your own site as part of an audit, remediation plan, or your response to a complaint is entirely legitimate and is exactly what the product is for. What is not permitted is pointing it outward at sites that never asked for it.

3. No cloaking — do not serve our scanners different content

You may not attempt to detect the AccessWiser scanner, our user agent, or our IP ranges in order to serve it a page that differs from the page your real visitors receive. That practice — commonly called cloaking — is prohibited.

There are two reasons. The first is that it harms disabled visitors: a clean scan of a page nobody actually sees fixes nothing for the person using a screen reader on the real one. The second is that it works against you. Scan history is dated and retained, and a record showing that a site deliberately presented one version to testing tools and another to the public reads, in any dispute, as concealment rather than good faith.

This rule runs in both directions, and our half of it is written into section 2 of our Terms and Conditions, where you can read what we commit to and how it is held in place.

4. Rate limits and quotas

Scans, API calls, and report generation are subject to rate limits and plan quotas. They exist so that one account cannot degrade the service for everyone else, and so that the sites we scan — including yours — are never hit harder than they should be.

Do not attempt to work around them: no rotating or splitting accounts to multiply an allowance, no automating signups, no scripting around the published limits, and no reselling your quota. If your legitimate needs exceed your plan, contact us and we will talk about the right plan rather than leaving you to route around the limit.

5. Enforcement and reporting

Where we reasonably believe this policy is being violated, we may rate-limit, suspend, or terminate the account concerned, and remove the affected domains. Serious cases — unauthorised scanning in particular — may be suspended without prior notice. Where the circumstances allow it, we will tell you what we saw and give you a chance to put it right first.

If you believe your site has been scanned without your permission, or that someone is using AccessWiser in the ways described above, tell us at contact@accesswiser.com. Include the domain and, if you have them, the dates and times, and we will investigate.

This policy sits alongside our Terms and Conditions; where a use is restricted by either document, the restriction applies.

6. What automated scanning can and cannot tell you

One more thing worth saying plainly, because it shapes how our results should be used. Automated scanning detects only a portion of accessibility issues — judgements such as whether alt text is meaningful, whether reading order makes sense, or whether a form is genuinely usable with a screen reader still need human and screen-reader testing. No tool, ours included, makes a website conformant with WCAG 2.2 AA or compliant with the ADA, Section 508, or the EAA on its own; that comes from remediating your site and keeping it that way. Nothing here or in our reports is legal advice. See what AccessWiser does and doesn't do for the fuller picture.

This policy was last updated on August 9, 2026 and reflects how the service works today. We may update it as the product changes, and the date above always shows the current version.