Overview

Inclusive Forge audits European online stores against WCAG 2.1 AA and EN 301 549, the technical standard the European Accessibility Act (EAA) points to. It scans the buyer journey of a WooCommerce store with WooCommerce-specific rules, gives the fix for each finding, records every finding and every fix in a tamper-evident evidence ledger (a hash chain), lets the owner re-test and watch the ledger extend, and keeps an evidence folder an auditor can read. It sells a documented process (scan, fix, re-test, evidence, statement), not compliance: no scanner can certify that a store complies.

Inclusive Forge is a hosted service. The scans, the findings, the evidence ledger and the accessibility statement live in the customer’s portal at app.inclusiveforge.com. A small free WordPress companion plugin connects the store to the portal, proves ownership and publishes the accessibility statement.

Inclusive Forge deliberately does not ship an accessibility overlay, and neither the service nor the plugin applies fixes to a store. The report tells the owner which part of the theme or checkout to change and how; the owner (or their developer) makes the change, and a re-test records it.

Inclusive Forge is built by Avakode (avakode.com) and is one of the twelve tools of the Forge Suite. Its landing is inclusiveforge.com.

Quick facts

• Architecture: a hosted scanner and customer portal (Cloudflare Workers, Browser Rendering and axe-core; nothing scans from inside the customer’s WordPress) plus the free inclusiveforge companion plugin. The plugin adds no JavaScript and no CSS to the storefront.
• Ruleset: 8 WooCommerce-specific rules and 7 general rules, run against reference fixtures with a precision gate. The scanner declares its coverage honestly: 13 of the 50 WCAG 2.1 AA criteria are checked automatically, with the residual manual work stated per criterion.
• Evidence ledger: every finding and fix is a ledger entry with a hash chained to the previous one; re-tests append, never rewrite.
• Monthly scans: the scanner re-walks the journey every month; the owner can also ask for a re-test from the portal or the plugin, within the plan’s monthly allowance.
• Companion plugin (free): prints the ownership tag, publishes the statement with the [inclusiveforge_statement] shortcode or block, shows the last scan and a “Re-test now” button in wp-admin, and checks that the tag really reaches visitors. You connect the store by pasting the Site token and the Webhook secret from the portal into Settings > Inclusive Forge. It is a free download from the Inclusive Forge site and the Avakode dashboard; its WordPress.org listing is not live yet.
• Plans (annual, Forge Builder): Companion $149/yr (1 store), Growth $299/yr (3 stores), Agency $499/yr (unlimited stores). The plans differ by the number of stores; every plan includes the scanner, the ledger and the statement. Sets of two or more Forge tools take the ladder discount (2 tools 15%, 3 tools 25%, 4 or more 35%), kept on every renewal.
• Where to buy: avakode.com/pricing. Paddle is the merchant of record and handles checkout and VAT.
• Free exposure check: a form on inclusiveforge.com (bot-protected): give a storefront address and get a first read of the home page, one product and the checkout. The scanner never goes beyond those three pages without the owner proving ownership.
• Proof of ownership: a store is scanned only after its owner proves ownership: the verification meta tag on the home page (the plugin prints it, or it can be added to the theme by hand) or a file at /.well-known/inclusiveforge-verify.txt. A DNS record is not used.