Creating Scans

This page is the short version — read it once to understand the basics. For each scan type in depth, see:

• Web Scanner — multi-URL scanning of public or authenticated pages.
• Authenticated Scanning — scan pages behind a login.
• Workflow Analyzer — review multi-page states captured with the Chrome Toolkit.

Starting a scan

1. Go to Accessibility → Website Scanner in the product sidebar.
2. Click New website scan. (The form it opens is headed New Scan.)
3. Enter a URL and press Enter or click Add page. Add up to 10 URLs in the same scan — or add several at once with Upload CSV or Add sitemap (neither stops at 10; see Adding URLs in bulk).
4. (Optional) Click Scan Settings — the labelled button above the URL input — to adjust the WCAG version, enable advanced or best-practice rules, or configure authentication.
5. Click Create Scan. Unless you set a schedule, the scan starts straight away with status running — there is no separate queued state. How long it takes depends on the fleet and on your pages; see Scan limits for the timeouts involved.

Scan configuration at a glance

URL list

• Up to 10 URLs per scan. The New Scan form will let you add more; the scan is refused on submit.
• https:// is auto-prepended if you omit the protocol.
• Duplicates are rejected client-side.
• URLs must resolve to a public address — see What the scanner will reach.

Scan name

A name is auto-suggested from the first URL's domain — example.com-1, then example.com-2, and so on — and you can edit it any time.

Scan names must be unique across your own scans. Reusing a name you already have is refused with "Scan name X already exists. Please choose a different name.", both when you create a scan and when you rename one. The suggested names already skip numbers you have used; a name you type yourself may collide. Names are per person, so a colleague can have a scan called Checkout even if you do.

WCAG version

Default is WCAG 2.1 AA. Pick from the full matrix of WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 at Levels A, AA, or AAA. See WCAG levels and versions.

Rule toggles

Full details: Rule categories.

Authentication (optional)

If the URLs are behind a login, open the Authentication tab in Scan Settings and pick one of three methods: Cookies, Login Form, or HTTP Headers. Full setup: Authenticated scanning.

What happens during a scan

If you set a schedule on the form, none of this happens yet: the scan waits for its first scheduled slot and sits at pending until then. Without a schedule it starts as soon as you save.

1. TestKase acquires a real desktop browser from the Device Farm — the browser, OS, and version you picked on the form (default Chrome · Windows · Latest) — and runs each URL in it.
2. Auth (if configured) is applied before the first page loads.
3. Axe-core runs against each rendered page.
4. Results — issues, conformance, HTML page snapshots, HTML snippets — are written to your workspace.
5. The scan appears in the Website Scanner list with status completed (or failed with a message).

Limits

• Up to 10 URLs per scan.
• One run at a time per scan — you cannot start a second run of the same scan while one is going.
• Scans run in your primary organization (the first one you joined). Started from any other organization, a scan fails with "Scans can only run in your primary organization for now."
• Accessibility testing is free. Manual scans use your Live Browser plan (or its 15 free lifetime minutes); scheduled scans use your Automate plan (or its free minutes). Creating a scan with a schedule runs nothing straight away, so it needs only the Automate plan.
• Unlimited pages and re-scans — there is no page quota.
• Report retention: 90 days for every organization — see Scan limits.

Related

• Your first scan — end-to-end walkthrough
• Understanding Results
• Managing scans