# Accessibility Insights for Windows inspects desktop apps for accessibility defects > Accessibility Insights for Windows is a Microsoft C# desktop application that inspects running Windows software and reports accessibility problems against the rules the platform enforces, with a Fast Pass for a quick triage and a full assessment mode for a recorded audit. It suits Windows developers and testers who need a concrete defect list rather than a checklist. **microsoft/accessibility-insights-windows** — Accessibility Insights for Windows - Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/accessibility-insights-windows - Website: https://accessibilityinsights.io - Stars: 553 · Forks: 115 - Language: C# - License: NOASSERTION - Published: 2026-10-22 · Updated: 2026-10-22 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/microsoft-accessibility-insights-windows ## A desktop inspector, not a web scanner Accessibility Insights for Windows is described in the README as the project for accessibility tools on the Windows platform, and the primary language is C#. That scope statement matters more than it first appears. Accessibility tooling in the wider world is dominated by browser based scanners that inject a script into a web page and walk the DOM, but a Windows desktop application exposes its interface through native UI Automation rather than through a DOM, so those tools have nothing to inspect. This project targets the Windows case directly, which means the rules it evaluates and the elements it reports on come from the platform's own accessibility model. The repository is not archived, the last push was on 2026-09-15, the homepage is accessibilityinsights.io, and the topics list places it under accessibility, tool, windows, microsoft and hacktoberfest. The releases follow a channel convention, with the recent ones labelled Canary Release, and the versions shown are v1.1.3203.01 from 2025-10-09, v1.1.3201.01 from 2025-10-07 and v1.1.3169.01 from 2025-09-08. The four part version numbers and the canary labelling mean the project ships fast-moving previews alongside a stable channel, so the tool in your hands and the tool in the repository may not be the same build. ## Two modes: a quick triage and a full assessment The README itself is thin on how the tool behaves, and the documentation it points to is the real specification, but the structure of the product is visible in the repository layout. The docs/ directory holds SetUpDevEnv.md, Overview.md and FAQ.md, and the README describes the tool as covering accessibility inspection for Windows applications. The design that matters operationally is the distinction between a fast pass and a full assessment, because a full recorded audit produces a report that can be filed and reviewed, while a fast pass is for the moment when a developer wants to know whether the screen they just built has an obvious defect before they move on. The mechanism behind both is the same: the tool attaches to a running application, inspects the accessibility tree the application exposes through UI Automation, evaluates the elements it finds against a set of rules, and reports each failure with the element that caused it. That distinction between a lightweight check and a formal assessment is the practical reason to use this tool rather than a checklist, and it is also why an organisation doing an audit needs the report format rather than just the warning list. ## Getting the application without building it The README gives the shortest possible install instruction, which is itself a design decision worth noting: the tool is distributed as a finished application rather than as something you install into your own product. The wording in the README under Installing Accessibility Insights for Windows is that you can download and install the application from accessibilityinsights.io, and there is a downloads badge in the README pointing at the GitHub releases page for the same artefact. So the normal route for a tester or a developer on a Windows workstation is the installer, and the source tree is for people who want to modify it. There is also an eula.rtf at the top level of the repository, which tells you the shipped application carries an end user licence agreement, and a license.txt file. GitHub's licence classifier marks this repository as Other, meaning it could not be mapped to one of the standard licences, so anyone intending to reuse the code rather than run the tool should read license.txt directly rather than assume a permissive licence from the MIT reference in the source file headers. ## Building from source in Visual Studio The build instructions are explicit and assume a Windows development machine. First you clone the repository, using either the HTTPS or the SSH form, and then move into the created directory. ```bash git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/accessibility-insights-windows.git ``` ```bash cd accessibility-insights-windows ``` Then you open the solution, and the README names the file to use. After that the README has a short step for building and running the unit tests, and then the MSI packaging step. The packaging detail is where the documentation is most helpful, because the MSI project is not required for everyday development and by default it is not built in either configuration, and it can only be built in the Release config. The MSI project requires WIX, which the SDK restores automatically from NuGet, and it is found in the solution explorer under the packages folder, and the built artefact lands at src/MSI/bin/Release. The setup document for the development environment is in docs/SetUpDevEnv.md. The repository also carries build/, tools/, keys/ and brand/ directories, plus thirdpartynotices.html, which is the file that records the licences of the third party components the application ships with. ## Telemetry, opt in and what leaves your machine The Data/Telemetry section is unusually explicit for a project of this kind, and anyone deploying it inside an enterprise environment needs to read it before rolling it out. The README states that by opting into telemetry you help the community develop inclusive software, and that the project collects anonymized data to identify the top accessibility issues found by users, which is intended to help focus the tools and standards community on improving guidelines, rules engines and features. It also states plainly that the project collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve the products and services, with a link to the Microsoft privacy statement. The opt-in framing and the anonymisation claim are both the project's own description of the behaviour, and the distinction matters for a compliance review, because a tool that attaches to applications running on a developer machine is in a position to observe more than an accessibility tree if it were built to. The README does not document what is collected at the field level, so the privacy statement is where the detail lives. A related detail for anyone with restricted egress is that the tool is a Microsoft application connecting to Microsoft services, and a fully offline air-gapped workflow is not something the README describes. ## Contributing, security reports and the shape of the codebase The project is open to contributions and the route is documented: read the guidelines in Contributing.md at the root of the repository, and the Code of Conduct is there too. The top level listing shows a src/ directory holding the application, with the AccessibilityInsights.sln solution inside it, alongside docs/, build/, tools/, brand/ and keys/. The tests use the unit test framework from Visual Studio, with the FAQ page in docs/FAQ.md as the reference for how the test setup works. Security vulnerabilities have their own process, and the README points at the Microsoft coordinated vulnerability disclosure steps rather than at a private email, which is the right shape for a tool that ships as a signed Windows application. The build status badge points at an Azure DevOps pipeline named for the Accessibility Insights project, with a CI definition tracked per branch, which tells you the continuous integration runs on the Microsoft side rather than on GitHub Actions, while the .github/ directory in the repository holds the GitHub specific configuration. The combination of a canary release channel, a signed MSI package and a documented vulnerability process is what distinguishes this from a weekend accessibility checker, and it is also what makes it heavier than one. ## Where Accessibility Insights for Windows is the wrong tool The first limit is platform and product. The tool inspects Windows desktop applications, so it says nothing about a web frontend, a mobile app or an embedded web view, and a team whose product is a browser application needs a different tool entirely. The second limit is that it is a desktop application, which means it runs on Windows only, so a Linux or macOS build server cannot run it as part of an automated pipeline. The README describes manual and Visual Studio oriented steps rather than a command line interface or a CI task, and it does not document a headless or unattended mode, so at present the tool appears to be a developer workstation instrument rather than something you can run on every pull request. The third limit is scope of coverage. The rules it checks are the ones Windows itself exposes through its accessibility model, so a defect that is invisible to UI Automation, such as a control that is reachable but whose name conveys nothing useful, will not be reported, and the report cannot be treated as a complete accessibility assessment of the user experience. The fourth limit is the licence ambiguity. GitHub classifies the licence as a custom one that it cannot categorise, and while the source file headers reference the MIT License and the repository carries a license.txt, the shipped application also comes with an end user licence agreement in eula.rtf, so redistribution and modification terms need reading rather than assuming. The fifth is the release channel. With the visible releases being canary builds from October 2025, and the repository pushed to on 2026-09-15, the build you get from the site and the build you get from source are on different clocks, and that gap is worth accounting for before you standardise on it. ## Conclusion Adopt Accessibility Insights for Windows if you ship or test software on the Windows platform and need an evidence based list of accessibility defects rather than a manual pass through a checklist, since the tool observes the running application and reports rule violations with the elements that caused them. Do not adopt it if your product is a website or a mobile app, because the tool inspects Windows desktop UI elements and says nothing about web accessibility. Verify two things before you rely on it in a release process: that the rules it reports match the accessibility standard your team is held to, since the checks are Windows specific rather than a general WCAG implementation, and that your build and sign-off pipeline can handle a Windows only, Visual Studio based workflow. The practical first step is to install the released application from accessibilityinsights.io and run a Fast Pass against one of your own screens before you wire the tool into any review process. ## FAQ ### What is Accessibility Insights for Windows? It is a Microsoft project written in C# that provides accessibility tools for the Windows platform, inspecting running desktop applications and reporting accessibility defects. The application is distributed from accessibilityinsights.io and the source is on GitHub. ### How do I install Accessibility Insights for Windows? The README says you can download and install the application from https://accessibilityinsights.io, and the GitHub releases page carries the same installer. If you want to build it yourself, clone the repository, cd into accessibility-insights-windows, and open src/AccessibilityInsights.sln in Visual Studio. ### Does Accessibility Insights for Windows collect telemetry? Yes, on an opt-in basis. The README states that the project collects anonymized data to identify the top accessibility issues found by users, and that usage data is sent to Microsoft to help improve the products and services, with details in the Microsoft privacy statement. ### How do I build the MSI installer for Accessibility Insights for Windows? Set the build configuration to Release, since the MSI project can only be built in that config and is not built by default. The MSI project requires WIX, which restore downloads from NuGet, sits under the packages folder in the solution explorer, and the resulting file is written to src/MSI/bin/Release. ### What licence does Accessibility Insights for Windows use? GitHub classifies the repository licence as a custom one it cannot categorise. The source file headers reference the MIT License, the repository carries a license.txt file and an eula.rtf for the shipped application, and third party licences are recorded in thirdpartynotices.html, so the terms need to be read from those files. ## Sources - [Issues](https://github.com/microsoft/accessibility-insights-windows/issues) - [microsoft/accessibility-insights-windows on GitHub](https://github.com/microsoft/accessibility-insights-windows) - [Project website](https://accessibilityinsights.io) - [README](https://github.com/microsoft/accessibility-insights-windows/blob/main/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/microsoft/accessibility-insights-windows/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/microsoft-accessibility-insights-windows