WCAGdesk vs Eye-Able.
Eye-Able is a broad German accessibility platform — assist widget, audits, AI fixes, and compliance documentation. WCAGdesk is built around the one question that platform model leaves open: when a Marktüberwachungsbehörde or a Fachanwalt examines your compliance record, why should they believe it? Vendor logs answer "trust the vendor." Cryptographic records answer with mathematics.
We're not going to claim Eye-Able is bad. It's a real German company with a broad
product: an assistance widget, automated and guided testing, PDF tooling, and a
documentation module they market for the BFSG audits that began in 2026 — "all
actions are logged and time-stamped," in their words. The difference is the
evidentiary architecture. Eye-Able's log is created, timestamped, and
stored by Eye-Able; verifying it means trusting Eye-Able's systems. WCAGdesk's
record is timestamped by an independent RFC 3161 authority, chained with
SHA-256, and anchored to a public blockchain — anyone can verify it with
openssl, without a WCAGdesk account and without trusting us.
Head to head
| Dimension | Eye-Able | WCAGdesk |
|---|---|---|
| Category | All-in-one platform: assist widget, audits, AI fixes, documentation | Evidence-first compliance record for the EAA / BFSG |
| Documentation timestamps | Internal platform log ("logged and time-stamped" by the platform itself) | RFC 3161 trusted timestamp from an independent TSA, per scan |
| Tamper evidence | Not advertised | SHA-256 hash chain per site + Merkle anchor on Polygon mainnet |
| Third-party verification | Requires access to (and trust in) the vendor's systems | openssl ts -verify + public Merkle proof — no account, no vendor |
| Verification spec | Not published | Open spec on GitHub, versioned; MIT WCAG↔EN 301 549↔BFSG mapping |
| Scan engine | Not publicly documented | axe-core 4.11 — same engine as Lighthouse and Chrome DevTools |
| Accessibility statement | Generator included in the platform | Generator included — plus a free standalone version, no signup |
| Abmahnung response | Not advertised | Dated hash-chained record + German response draft for a Fachanwalt |
| Pricing | On request — "talk to an expert" | Public: €149/mo Audit · €299/mo Defense · €599/mo Counsel · cancel anytime |
| Buying motion | Sales-led demos and quotes | Self-serve. No calls, no quote process |
The trust question, made concrete
Since 2026, German market-surveillance authorities audit BFSG documentation, and warning-letter campaigns cite the state of specific pages on specific dates. In both situations your documentation is only worth its evidentiary weight: can a third party confirm that this scan ran on that date and that nobody — not you, not your vendor — edited the findings afterwards?
A platform's internal log, however diligent, is testimony from an interested party. It can be sincere and still be challenged in one sentence: "the vendor's database could have been changed." An RFC 3161 timestamp from an independent authority plus a hash chain anchored to a public blockchain cannot be challenged that way — altering one historical scan breaks every hash after it, and the anchor is on a ledger nobody controls. That is the difference between keeping records and producing evidence.
Where Eye-Able genuinely wins
- Breadth. PDF remediation, plain-language rewriting, translation, guided testing, manual audit documentation, an end-user assistance widget. WCAGdesk deliberately does none of that except PDF/UA scanning.
- Human services. Eye-Able sells expert support and guided/manual testing. WCAGdesk is automated software plus a methodology page that tells you when to hire a human auditor.
- One-vendor convenience. If you want a single contract covering assistance features, testing, and documentation — and a sales process is fine with you — the platform model fits.
Where WCAGdesk genuinely wins
- Evidentiary weight. Independent timestamps, tamper-evident chains, public anchoring, an open verification spec. Documentation that survives the question "why should we believe you?"
- Transparency. Open engine (axe-core), open spec (GitHub), open mapping (MIT), public pricing. Nothing behind a demo call.
- Jurisdiction fit. BFSG § 12 / EN 301 549 / EAA Annex I labels on every finding, German statements, and an Abmahnung response packet built for how German enforcement actually arrives.
- Price certainty. €149–€599/mo on a public page. No quote, no procurement cycle, cancel anytime.
What WCAGdesk does
- Crawls a representative sample of your live URLs on a weekly (Audit) or daily (Defense / Counsel) schedule using a clearly identified user agent.
- Runs axe-core 4.11 against the rendered DOM and stores the engine version, ruleset, and per-URL hash with each scan.
- Issues a PDF/A-2b report carrying an RFC 3161 timestamp. Each batch rolls into a SHA-256 Merkle tree anchored to Polygon mainnet.
- Generates an EAA Article 4 accessibility statement in EN and DE, prefilled with real numbers, refreshed quarterly.
- Defense view assembles an Abmahnung response packet: scan history, remediation log, German draft for a Fachanwalt für IT-Recht.
Honest disclosures
- WCAGdesk is automated. axe-core catches roughly 30–40% of WCAG criteria — the ceiling for any automated tool, per Deque's own published research. For full BFSG conformance you also want manual expert review; the methodology page goes deeper.
- Until Q3 2026 our RFC 3161 timestamps come from FreeTSA (publicly trusted, not a qualified TSA under eIDAS Art. 41). Qualified TSA via Sectigo and AdES PDF sealing are on the roadmap.
- Statements about Eye-Able reflect their public marketing pages as of June 2026. If anything here is out of date, tell us and we'll correct it.
- We are not lawyers. The evidence WCAGdesk produces supports a defence; a Fachanwalt runs the actual defence.
Documentation is a claim. Evidence is a proof.
One free scan of your live HTML, no signup, axe-core 4.11 — and every paid scan after it carries a timestamp nobody, including us, can backdate.