Title: Widewalk – Accessibility Toolbar Author: Wallet Up Published: September 1, 2026 Last modified: September 1, 2026 --- Search plugins ![](https://ps.w.org/widewalk/assets/banner-772x250.png?rev=3675159) ![](https://ps.w.org/widewalk/assets/icon.svg?rev=3675162) # Widewalk – Accessibility Toolbar By [Wallet Up](https://profiles.wordpress.org/walletup/) [Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/widewalk.1.0.0.zip) * [Details](https://wordpress.org/plugins/widewalk/#description) * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/plugins/widewalk/#reviews) * [Installation](https://wordpress.org/plugins/widewalk/#installation) * [Development](https://wordpress.org/plugins/widewalk/#developers) [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/widewalk/) ## Description Widewalk puts a small button in the corner of your site. A visitor presses it and a panel opens with the settings they need in order to read you: bigger text, more air between the lines, letters further apart, links they can actually pick out of a paragraph, a calmer palette, a pointer large enough to find. Whatever they choose is kept in their own browser. Nobody else’s view of your site moves an inch. You switch it on once. It works with the theme you already have. The name comes from pavements built wide enough for everyone at the same time: the wheelchair, the pushchair, the delivery trolley, and the people walking alongside them. Widen the path rather than build a second one round the back. **What a visitor can change** Each control steps through its settings as it is pressed, and the button says which step it is on. “Line Height (1.75x)” or “Low Saturation” tells a visitor where they are without making them guess. * Bigger Text, at 110%, 125% and 150% * Line Height, at 1.5x, 1.75x and 2x * Letter and word spacing, from light through to heavy * Invert Colors, then High Contrast * Saturation: low, high, or monochrome * Highlight Links, then Boxed Links * Dyslexia Friendly type * Big Cursor, then Bigger Cursor * Pause animations * Hide images * Text alignment: left, centre, right * Tooltips, which read out the descriptions a screen reader gets and a mouse user never sees Twelve of them, and each has its own switch on the settings screen. Offer the ones that suit your site and leave the rest off. **This is not an overlay** Worth saying plainly, because that word has earned its reputation. Widewalk does not scan your pages, does not rewrite them for everybody, and makes no claim about your legal compliance. Those three promises are what the overlay industry sells, and no plugin is in a position to keep them. Accessibility lives in your own markup. Your headings, your alt text, your colour contrast, your link text, your forms. Five minutes with any plugin will not change what is underneath. What Widewalk does is smaller and it is true. It hands a visitor the settings they would otherwise have to fight your stylesheet for, which is real help to somebody with low vision, or dyslexia, or a migraine coming on, or a phone held up in bright sunlight. Do the underlying work as well. This sits beside it. **It writes your accessibility statement** Any site that offers a panel like this ought to say what it is aiming for and how to report a problem. Most plugins tell you to go away and write one. Widewalk writes it for you, out of what you have actually switched on, and shows you the whole thing before a word of it is published. Choose the complete version, which follows the structure the W3C recommends, or the short one if your site is small. You supply two things: an address where somebody can report a barrier, and the number of working days you will take to reply. Promise something you can keep. Publish it and you have an ordinary WordPress page, yours to edit like any other. Widewalk will not overwrite it later. The wording claims partial conformance and nothing beyond that, because a plugin cannot certify a site it has never seen. **Built to survive your theme** The panel renders inside a shadow root. Your stylesheet cannot reach into it, and its stylesheet cannot leak out into your pages. It has been measured against a theme written for the sole purpose of breaking it: global button rules marked !important, a forced box model, oversized icons, a page claiming the highest stacking order there is. It came through without a mark. Block themes, classic themes, page builders. It mounts on `wp_footer`, which every theme fires. **Light, and quiet about it** * About 7 KB gzipped covers everything a visitor downloads. One stylesheet, one small script, no framework, no jQuery. * Switch the panel off and nothing at all is added to your pages. * No outbound requests anywhere in the plugin. No account, no API key, no third- party service, no fonts pulled from somebody else’s server. * No tracking and no cookies. Preferences sit in local storage on the visitor’s own device, under a single key. **Made to the standard it talks about** * Every control works from the keyboard alone, with a focus outline you can see. * The panel is a labelled dialog. Focus stays inside it while it is open, and returns where it came from when it closes. * Changes are announced to screen readers as they happen. * Motion stops when a visitor’s device has asked for less of it. * Text and background inside the panel meet WCAG 2.2 AA contrast. **Who installs it** Sites whose readers are not all twenty-five with good eyes and a large monitor. Charities, galleries, schools, clinics, councils, artists, shops, small newsrooms. Anywhere that would rather be read than admired. ## Screenshots [⌊The panel open on a live site, with several controls set to different steps.⌉⌊ The panel open on a live site, with several controls set to different steps.⌉[ The panel open on a live site, with several controls set to different steps. [⌊The panel enlarged, for anybody who finds the standard size hard to press.⌉⌊The panel enlarged, for anybody who finds the standard size hard to press.⌉[ The panel enlarged, for anybody who finds the standard size hard to press. [⌊Moving the panel to the other corner, or hiding it for this visit.⌉⌊Moving the panel to the other corner, or hiding it for this visit.⌉[ Moving the panel to the other corner, or hiding it for this visit. [⌊The settings screen. Every control has its own switch, and the accessibility statement is written from here.⌉⌊The settings screen. Every control has its own switch, and the accessibility statement is written from here.⌉[ The settings screen. Every control has its own switch, and the accessibility statement is written from here. ## Installation 1. Install from Plugins Add New, or upload the folder to `/wp-content/plugins/`. 2. Activate it. 3. Open Settings Widewalk and switch the panel on. 4. While you are there, publish your accessibility statement from one of the two templates. Read it through afterwards and make it true of your site. That is the whole setup. There is nothing to configure before it works. ## FAQ ### Does this make my site ADA or WCAG compliant? No, and treat anything that says otherwise with suspicion. Conformance rests on your own markup: headings, alt text, contrast, link text, forms, error messages. Widewalk helps a visitor read what you have written. It cannot repair what sits underneath. Use it alongside the real work. ### Is Widewalk an accessibility overlay? No. An overlay scans your page and rewrites it for every visitor, usually with a promise of automatic compliance attached. Widewalk changes nothing until a visitor asks it to, changes it only for that visitor, and promises nothing about your legal position. ### Will it work with my theme? Yes. The panel lives inside a shadow root, so your theme’s rules do not reach it and its rules do not escape into your pages. It has been tested against popular themes and against a stylesheet built on purpose to wreck it. Block themes, classic themes and page builders are all fine. ### Will it slow my site down? Everything a visitor downloads comes to roughly 7 KB gzipped: one stylesheet, one small script, no framework, no jQuery. With the panel switched off, nothing is added to your pages at all. ### Does it collect anything about my visitors? Nothing. No tracking, no analytics, no account, no cookie. Preferences are held in local storage in the visitor’s own browser. The plugin makes no outbound request of any kind, so nothing about your site or your readers goes anywhere. ### Is it GDPR-friendly? There is nothing to disclose, since nothing is collected, nothing is stored on your server and nothing is shared. Preferences never leave the visitor’s device. ### Can I choose which controls appear? Yes. All twelve have their own switch. Offer what suits your site and leave the rest off. ### Do I really need an accessibility statement? If you are offering a panel like this, you should say what you are aiming for, what you know still falls short, and how somebody tells you about a barrier. Public bodies in many countries are required to publish one. Widewalk writes the page in two lengths and links the panel to it. ### Does it work on phones? Yes. The panel is built for touch as much as for mouse and keyboard, and the controls are large enough to press without aiming. ### Can somebody use it with a keyboard, or a screen reader? Yes. Every control is reachable by keyboard with a visible focus outline. The panel is a labelled dialog, focus is held inside it and returned when it closes, and each change is announced. ### Does it respect “reduce motion”? Yes. When a visitor’s device asks for less motion, the panel stops animating. They can also pause animation across your whole site from inside the panel. ### Can I move the button? Yes, to either bottom corner, from the settings screen. A visitor can move it themselves as well, if it is sitting over something they need. ### I already have an accessibility toolbar. Can I run both? Please don’t. Two panels arguing over the same page is worse than either one on its own. Pick the one you prefer and turn the other off. ### Does it need JavaScript? Yes. The panel is a set of controls, and without a script there is nothing for them to control. Where scripting is unavailable, nothing is added to the page. ### Is it available in my language? Every string is translatable, and translations arrive through translate.wordpress. org. Contributions are very welcome. ## Reviews There are no reviews for this plugin. ## Contributors & Developers “Widewalk – Accessibility Toolbar” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin. Contributors * [ Wallet Up ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/walletup/) [Translate “Widewalk – Accessibility Toolbar” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/widewalk) ### Interested in development? [Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/widewalk/), check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/widewalk/), or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/widewalk/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/widewalk/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss). ## Changelog #### 1.0.0 * New: a reading panel on every page, with twelve controls a visitor sets for themselves. Text size, line height, letter spacing, contrast, saturation, link marks, dyslexia- friendly type, cursor size, animation, images, alignment and tooltips. * New: each control steps through its settings and names the one in force, so a visitor always knows where they are. * New: every control can be offered or withheld from a single settings screen. * New: writes your accessibility statement in a complete or a short version, out of what you have switched on, and links the panel to it. * New: the panel can sit in either bottom corner, and a visitor can move it themselves. * Isolated inside a shadow root, so it survives any theme and disturbs none of it. * Keyboard operable throughout, focus held and returned, changes announced, motion dropped when the visitor asks for less. * About 7 KB gzipped on the front end, and nothing at all when the panel is off. * No tracking, no cookies, no account, no outbound request of any kind. ## Meta * Version **1.0.0** * Last updated **14 hours ago** * Active installations **Fewer than 10** * WordPress version ** 6.2 or higher ** * Tested up to **7.1** * PHP version ** 7.4 or higher ** * Tags * [a11y](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/a11y/)[accessibility](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/accessibility/) [accessibility toolbar](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/accessibility-toolbar/) [accessibility widget](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/accessibility-widget/) [wcag](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/wcag/) * [Advanced View](https://wordpress.org/plugins/widewalk/advanced/) ## Ratings No reviews have been submitted yet. [Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/widewalk/reviews/#new-post) [See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/widewalk/reviews/) ## Contributors * [ Wallet Up ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/walletup/) ## Support Got something to say? Need help? [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/widewalk/) ## Donate Would you like to support the advancement of this plugin? [ Donate to this plugin ](https://walletup.app/)