Short answers to the questions we are asked most. If yours is not here, send it to us and we will answer it and add it.
AWT keeps itself up to date. You don’t have to do anything: a new version installs three days after it is released, and the theme and the plugin always update together.
The exception is a version that comes with changes that could affect your site. AWT does not update itself to one of those. It tells you, and you install it with one button.
To change this, go to AWT Settings, Tools. You can install every version automatically, get notified and install each one yourself, or turn off update checks so your site makes no update requests. The Check for updates button works even when checking is turned off.
You can still install by hand. Every version is on the AWT theme and AWT Blocks release pages. Upload the plugin first, then the theme. Each time, WordPress asks whether to replace the version you have: choose the “Replace … with uploaded” button. Your settings, pages and content are kept. Keep the theme and the plugin on the same version.
The update check sends nothing about your site: no address, no version, no visitor data. It reads one file that is the same for everyone. The update itself is downloaded from GitHub, where AWT is published. Full detail in the privacy policy.
Yes. They are one product in two halves. The theme carries the colors, the typography and the spacing. The plugin carries the blocks, and the header, the footer and every pattern are built from them.
No, and be careful of any product that says it will.
AWT gives you building blocks that are accessible the moment you place them, and a checker that watches your content while you write it. What it cannot do is write your alt text, choose your heading order, caption your videos or fix a PDF you uploaded. Accessibility is part design, part code and part content. AWT covers the first two and helps you with the third.
Yes. AWT is licensed GPL-3.0-or-later and the source is public. There is no license key, no account and no sign-up. No telemetry, no analytics.
The free version is not a trial and it is not a cut-down edition. AWT Premium will add optional extras later, including support.
No. It shows what it found in the editor sidebar and again in the checklist before you publish, then leaves the decision to you.
That is deliberate. Plenty of findings need a judgment only a person can make, and a checker that blocks the publish button teaches people to ignore it.
WCAG 2.2, level AA. Every block and pattern is reviewed against it.
See our accessibility statement.
AWT sets only one cookie, and only if a visitor uses the light and dark toggle: it remembers their choice. It does not identify or track anyone. If you add analytics, embedded videos or other third-party tools yourself, you most likely need a cookie consent banner for those.
Yes. AWT Settings gives you the palette, the type scale and the spacing, and it checks color contrast while you pick, so you find a problem before your visitors do.
There is a Custom CSS field for anything beyond that. This site is an example: it runs a hand-picked palette on the standard theme with custom CSS and no other code changes.
No product can make you compliant, and any that claims to is selling you snake oil.
AWT removes a large class of the problems audits find, and gives you a foundation you can defend when someone asks. The content you publish, the documents you link to and the third-party tools you embed are still yours to get right.
It coexists with them. WooCommerce, WPML and caching plugins are guaranteed to work.
Coexisting means nothing crashes and your pages keep rendering. It does not mean another plugin’s own screens will look like Carbon: a shop page keeps WooCommerce’s styling. If you hit a conflict, tell us and we will look at it.
English today. Every word a user reads is ready for translation. The theme and the plugin both ship the template file a translator needs, so a new language can be added without touching code.
Separately, AWT lets you set the language of each page, which a screen reader needs to pronounce it correctly. Want to translate AWT into your language? Get in touch.
Because AWT is two halves that need each other, and the directory reviews a theme on its own.
Accessibility is not only how a page looks. It is also catching mistakes before they reach a visitor, and AWT’s checker does that while you write. The checker and every AWT block live in the AWT Blocks plugin, and WordPress gives a theme no way to require a plugin other than installing it separately.
So AWT is distributed from this site and from GitHub instead. You can choose to let AWT update itself, or update it manually whenever you want.
Carbon is an open source design system that IBM builds, publishes and uses for its own products. Accessibility is designed into it rather than added at the end, and it has been tested at a scale no small project could match.
Building on it meant AWT started with a complete, proven visual language instead of one invented from scratch. AWT keeps Carbon’s structure and class names, so anything built against Carbon works here too.