Here's how to go from setting up monitoring to your first resolved issue. By the end, you'll know how to work through the rest of your checks.
Add your domain
Setup takes three steps: Add domain, Set page limit and Select pages. You can start it from any of these places:
The Get started page.
Monitor → Overview, by clicking Enable monitoring.
Project → Settings → Monitor, by clicking Set up monitoring.
Once the setup window opens:
Enter the domain you want to monitor, for example
https://acme.com.Wait while Marker.io tests that its scanner can reach your website.
When you see Domain reachable by our scanner, click Next.
Each project monitors one domain. To monitor another domain, create a new project, or replace the domain on this one.
If your domain isn't reachable
If you see Domain not reachable by our scanner, something is blocking the scanner, like bot protection or a password prompt. You can't continue until the scanner can reach your website.
Click Learn how to fix and follow the steps for your setup.
If your website needs login details, open Advanced site access settings and add them.
Click Re-test access.
Scanner errors explains each fix in detail.
Set your page limit
Choose how many pages you want to monitor on this domain. Why? Your workspace has a monitoring plan limit, shared across every domain you monitor. Every plan and trial includes 10 pages.
Drag the slider, or type a number of pages.
Check the Monitoring plan limit bar. Already used shows pages used by your other domains. This project shows what you're setting now.
Click Next.
If you need more pages than your plan allows, click Manage limit to upgrade.
Choose your pages
Pick how Marker.io finds the pages to monitor: Automatic or Manual selection.
Automatic
Marker.io looks for your sitemap and selects pages from it.
Check the sitemap Marker.io found. Click Edit to use a different one.
Optional: open Advanced pages exclusion settings to skip or force pages.
Click Start monitoring.
If your sitemap has more pages than your limit, Marker.io selects your first pages in site-tree order. To monitor more, click Back and raise your page limit.
If Marker.io can't find your sitemap, enter its URL and click Save, or click Auto-detect to try again. Not sure where it is? Most sitemaps live at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and your sitemap is usually listed in your robots.txt file too. You can also click How to find my sitemap.
Manual selection
Add the exact pages you want to monitor.
Enter one URL per line.
Check that the number of pages selected fits your page limit.
Click Start monitoring.
Once you click Start monitoring, your first scan starts. Marker.io runs every available check on your pages. A first scan of 10 pages usually takes no more than 5 minutes.
After that, scans run monthly by default. You can change which checks run and how often in your monitoring settings.
Read your Overview
Once your first scan finishes, go to Monitor → Overview. Here's what you'll see:
Pages monitored: how many pages Marker.io scans. Click Manage pages to change them.
Last website scan: when your website was last scanned, so you know how fresh your results are, and when the next scan is scheduled. Click Change scheduling to set how often scans run.
Accessibility score: your score out of 100, the standard you're checking against, and how many checks are failing.
Top 10 failing checks: the checks that will raise your score the most, sorted by Impact on score.
For the full picture, click Accessibility in the Monitor menu. You'll see every check grouped by severity, and a score for each page.
New to these terms? Understanding checks and issues explains them, and Understanding your accessibility score and checks covers your score.
Resolve your first issue
Let's fix one issue from start to finish. This example uses "Images must have alt text", one of the most common checks. Alt text is a short description of an image. Screen readers read it aloud for people who can't see the image.
Go to Monitor → Accessibility.
In the Failing tab, click Images must have alt text.
Click Open the guide to see why it matters and how to fix it.
Click an issue in the list to open the issue panel.
Use the screenshot, the page link and the image URL to find the image.
Read the Problem and Recommended fix.
Click Show code example if you need one.
Add alt text to the image on your website and publish the change.
Back in the issue panel, click Rescan.
Once the rescan no longer finds the problem, the issue moves to the Resolved tab. When every issue in the check is resolved, the check moves to Passing.
Your score updates after your next full website scan. Until then, the latest bar in your score history is dashed and marked Pending audit. To update it straight away, click Rescan website.
Tip: if an image is only decorative, give it an empty alt attribute (alt=""). Screen readers will skip it.
Can't fix it right now?
Not every fix can happen straight away. You can:
Set an Owner for the check, so the right person gets alerted.
Send it to your issue tracker from the issue panel, for example with Send to Jira.
Learn more in How to manage checks and issues.
Next steps
Now that you've resolved your first issue, set the scanner up for your needs. Choose how often it scans, which pages it covers and which standard it checks against. See Configure your monitoring settings.
Need Help?
If you have any questions, comments, or corrections, chat with us at the bottom right of our web pages.