AuditBloc — Automated Web Accessibility & Compliance Scanner

The challenge

Statutory digital accessibility and privacy mandates — including the European Accessibility Act (EAA), US ADA Title II, and the EU AI Act — are actively transitioning from voluntary guidelines to strict legal requirements with severe statutory fines. Yet engineering teams and business owners struggle to understand where their web applications stand. Most existing accessibility checkers only analyze raw, static HTML strings, missing dynamic client-side rendering, single-page application hydration, and interactive dialogs. Furthermore, teams were forced to run multiple disconnected tools: one for WCAG contrast checks, another for cookie consent validation, and manual inspections for AI transparency disclosures. We needed one fast, unified scanning engine that boots a real headless browser, executes client JavaScript, and produces plain-English remediation reports and executive-ready PDFs without requiring paywalls or mandatory user registration.

Our solution

AuditBloc is a modern, full-stack compliance engine deployed at auditbloc.taylancetech.com. Built on Next.js 16 and React 19, it integrates axe-core with Playwright-driven Chromium instances to evaluate live, rendered DOM states exactly as real users experience them. A single URL scan runs three simultaneous audit suites: WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA & AAA accessibility rules, GDPR/CCPA cookie consent banners (verifying prominent 'Reject All' button parity and tracking script containment), and EU AI Act conversational disclosure heuristics. Results are presented with plain-English code fixes, statutory deadline tracking (EAA June 2025/2026, ADA Title II April 2026), shareable persistent permalinks, and downloadable branded PDFs powered by a custom React-PDF rendering pipeline.

How we approached it

• We engineered a Playwright-driven headless browser scanning worker that navigates to the target URL, waits for network idle and DOM hydration, and injects axe-core into the fully rendered DOM context.
• Cookie banner auditing inspects DOM dialog elements, CMP scripts, and button hierarchies to mathematically verify that 'Reject All' and 'Accept All' have equal visual weight, flagging pre-ticked checkboxes and deceptive dark patterns.
• The EU AI Act heuristic engine scans client bundles and DOM widgets for chatbot interfaces and synthetic media components, verifying whether mandatory transparency disclosures are present in visible viewports.
• To keep scan times under 15 seconds without overloading servers, we architected an asynchronous Redis scan queue backed by Supabase PostgreSQL, decoupling high-throughput browser rendering from the Next.js edge API layer.

Implementation notes

Results

• Unified WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA, GDPR cookie banner, and EU AI Act audits in one scan
• Real Chromium headless execution catching client-rendered SPA issues
• Executive-ready branded PDF export and dynamic SVG status badges
• Regulatory compliance calendar tracking statutory enforcement deadlines
• Live at auditbloc.taylancetech.com under Taylance Tech

Technologies used