Fettle Scanner – privacy policy

Last updated: 20 August 2026

Fettle Scanner is an accessibility testing tool for auditors. It runs entirely inside your browser.

What the Scanner does with page content. When you start a scan, the Scanner runs the axe-core accessibility engine against the page open in your tab and reads that page's markup, computed styles and element positions. This analysis happens in your browser. Page content goes nowhere else unless you turn on AI assistance and use it, which is described below.

What the Scanner stores. Audit session data – the pages you added to your sample, the findings, your answers to manual checks, your notes, and the screenshots the Scanner captures as evidence – is written to your browser's extension storage on your own computer. It stays there until you clear the session or remove the extension. Nothing is stored outside your machine, and there is no account to create.

Screenshots. The Scanner captures cropped screenshots of the pages you are testing as report evidence. They are held in the same local extension storage and leave your machine only when you choose to export or hand off an audit.

Question packs. A question pack you import in Settings is held in the same local extension storage. It belongs to the browser profile rather than to one audit, so clearing a session leaves it in place; remove it in Settings when you no longer want it.

What leaves your computer. The Scanner has no server. It sends no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reports and no audit data to the developer. Three things involve the network, and each is an action you take:

• Sample-plan suggestions from a sitemap. If you ask the Scanner to suggest pages for your sample, it requests robots.txt from the site you are auditing and the sitemap files that file points to, so it can read the list of page addresses. It sends nothing but the request itself.
• AI-assisted checks, if you turn them on. AI assistance is off until you set a service address, a model and your own key in Settings, and each feature is off until you turn it on. When you then run an AI-assisted check, the Scanner sends that feature's inputs – named on screen before you turn it on, and reducible there – to the service you set, under your own key. Some features send passages of page text or markup, and Settings says which. Nothing goes to the developer, and no AI result ever becomes a finding on its own.
• Links you click. Individual findings can link to the axe-core rule documentation on the engine author's website. Following one opens an ordinary browser tab, as any other link would.

Handing an audit to the Workbench. Fettle Workbench is the companion reporting app. When you send an audit to it, the Scanner passes the export to the Workbench tab already open in your own browser, and the Workbench asks you to confirm the import. You can also export the audit as a JSON file saved to your computer. In both cases the data goes where you send it and nowhere else.

AI assistance in Fettle Workbench. The Workbench offers the same optional AI assistance, set up separately under Tools, AI assistance. It is off until you set a service address, a model and your own key, and each feature is off until you turn it on. Your key is kept for that browser session, or on your own device if you ask the Workbench to remember it, and is left out of every export, saved audit, backup and auto-save file. Before you turn a feature on, the settings name what it would send and let you leave parts of it out.

Permissions. The Scanner asks for access to the websites you visit because an auditor's site could be any site – it cannot be known in advance. That access is used for scanning, screenshots and the on-page walkthrough, and only on tabs where you ask the Scanner to act.

Data sharing and sale. None. There is nothing to share or sell, because no data reaches the developer.

Changes. Material changes to this policy will be published on this page with a new date.

Contact. Questions about this policy can be raised through the support contact on the Fettle Scanner listing in the Chrome Web Store.