Orbit
formerly Access Lens
Overview
Accessibility lawsuits are rising, and existing tools like Lighthouse are complex and overwhelming. We wanted something developers could open, run a scan, and immediately understand what is wrong and why. Orbit is a free Chrome extension that surfaces every issue with element location, a plain-English explanation, and how to fix it. Part of the Gravity brand, an accessibility company. V2 is currently being built from scratch with a cleaner architecture and sharper scope. Prototype live on the Chrome Web Store.
Tech Stack
ReactTypeScriptTailwind CSSAxe-Core
Status
Prototype live, V2 in progress
Process
- V1 shipped as Access Lens, scanning pages with Axe-Core and surfacing issues with plain-English explanations, element location, and fixes.
- Added a color contrast checker and a manual checklist to cover what automated scanning cannot catch.
- V2 is a full rebuild under the Orbit name. Cleaner codebase, React and TypeScript, scoped tightly around what developers actually need during a build.
- The long-term vision is a tool that lets developers test for accessibility continuously during development, not as a final audit.
What I Learned
- Automated tools like Axe-Core catch rule violations but not everything. A manual checklist and color contrast checker are needed to cover what automation misses.
- Plain-English output is a design problem, not just a dev problem. Writing explanations a non-accessibility expert can act on took as much thought as the scan logic itself.
- Chrome Extension architecture is its own world. Background scripts, content scripts, and the popup all run in separate contexts and communicate through message passing.
- Scoping a V2 early clarified what V1 needed to be. Knowing where the rebuild was heading made the V1 boundaries obvious.