Hi, HackerNews!

I'm Samy, co-founder of Allchemy Labs. We built Aether, an MCP server that enables engineers to check for, understand, and fix web accessibility issues all from their IDE. Your preferred coding agent can leverage Aether to open a webpage, scan it using axe-core and return a short, prioritized list of violations along with code fixes or guidance. Every suggested fix is re-tested in a real browser before you see it, and once you apply it, your agent can re-scan the page to verify it worked. You never need to open a browser, use multiple tools, or be an expert in WCAG criteria.

Aether uses our own custom ontology architecture to provide grounded insights to any WCAG violations the scanner finds. Every WCAG technique the engine cites must pass our quality gate. Specifically, it must satisfy the violated success criterion, apply to that kind of element, and remediate that axe rule. If nothing passes, our engine will abstain rather than guess.

We compared Aether against standalone coding agent on its own (Opus 5, 30 anonymized live sites, 111 targets). While the results were mixed we have published the results especially calling out specific wins and improvement opportunities for our insight engine. Read the study here: https://allchemylabs.substack.com/p/we-tested-our-own-access...

Try Aether today, no signup needed. npx -y @allchemylabs/aether-wcag-scanner (any MCP client: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex…) Claude Code plugin: /plugin marketplace add https://github.com/allchemylabs/claude-plugins.git then /plugin install aether-wcag-scanner@allchemylabs Without a key you get the browser scan, local template fixes and verification. A free beta key adds the cloud engine: https://beta.allchemylabs.ai/?src=hn

Feedback from people who have used accessibility scanners and/or suggestion engines would be highly valuable to us, as we aim to build a tool that solves real problems and makes people's lives easier.

Happy to answer any questions and hope to hear from you.

Note: Right now Aether only checks WCAG 2.1 AA. Sites behind bot protection (e.g. Cloudflare challenges) return a "blocked" result instead of a fake scan, so point it at localhost or staging.

Show HN: Aether: Check and fix web accessibility issues from your coding agent