The idea of an accessibility audit might sound overwhelming, especially if you’ve never conducted one before. But if you’re serious about making your digital content accessible to everyone, it’s an essential step.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to audit your website or application to verify accessibility and uncover how audit data can help you make meaningful improvements that benefit all users.
Whether you aim to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or create a more inclusive experience, this is where it all begins. Let’s dive into each step so you can better understand this intricate process.
1. Define the Scope and Objectives
Before undergoing an accessibility audit, you must set up a clear framework to guide the entire process. Define your scope and objectives to lay the foundation for an effective audit to find and address all barriers.
Outline the Scope
Start by clearly identifying the range of digital assets that will be a part of your accessibility audit. Incorporate everything from these four asset types into the process:
- Websites: Include all your public-facing and internal websites. This might involve multiple sites, particularly if you have separate platforms for different functions or regions. Assess both the main site and any subdomains to ensure comprehensive coverage.
- Web Applications: Include all web applications, like customer portals, e-commerce platforms, and online tools. Web apps often have dynamic content and complex interactions that require detailed review.
- Mobile Apps: Mobile apps have unique accessibility considerations, such as touch gestures and screen reader compatibility.
- Documents: Consider including digital documents like PDFs, Word files, and presentations. These documents often form a significant part of your digital communication and must be accessible to all users.
Set Clear Objectives
After identifying the web content you’ll be auditing, define your audit goals. These include achieving conformance with WCAG and choosing the appropriate Levels: A, AA, or AAA, finding specific accessibility issues, or improving the user experience for individuals with disabilities.
2. Perform Automated Accessibility Testing
It’s best to start with automated testing to spot all your issues. Automated testing tools streamline the audit process and help focus your efforts on resolving the most challenging accessibility barriers.
Choosing the right mix of accessibility audit tools is essential for comprehensively evaluating your web pages and digital assets.
Choose Appropriate Tools
Use automated accessibility audit tools to quickly find missing alternative text, improper heading usage, and color contrast violations. Using free testing tools provides a fast and comprehensive overview, allowing you to detect widespread accessibility problems.
Ongoing cloud-based monitoring software helps track the progress of your automated scans and shows the overall health of your accessibility program. The results from these automated tools can help you create detailed reports, prioritize issues, and solve them faster.
Example: How to Use Automated Tools for Accessibility Testing
Developers and QA analysts use various tools and techniques to make sure their web projects meet accessibility standards. Here’s a look at how they might use an accessibility audit tool, drawing on real-world scenarios:
Automated Testing with ARC Toolkit: Developers often rely on automated tools to quickly find accessibility issues. For instance, if a developer implements a form, they might use the ARC Toolkit to run a test.
ARC Toolkit flags issues such as “missing accessible names” for form fields, which could be problematic for screen reader users. The developer can then inspect the code, fix the issue, and re-run the test to verify that the issue is resolved.
Using a Colour Contrast Analyzer. Let’s say a QA analyst needs to check the color contrast between text and background on a button. They would use a tool like the Colour Contrast Analyzer (CCA).
By sampling colors from the button and its background, they can figure out whether the contrast ratio meets the WCAG standards. This tool is handy for early-stage testers who might not yet be familiar with more advanced techniques.
While automated testing is valuable for finding widespread issues, it can miss more complex or context-specific barriers. There is no substitute for conducting a thorough accessibility audit with experienced professionals.
3. Conduct Manual Audits
Conducting detailed manual audits is essential to reviewing and verifying the automated findings. Manual audits can even help uncover new accessibility barriers that automated tools might miss.
A comprehensive manual audit involves a deeper analysis compared to automated testing methods. Conducting a manual audit can be difficult if your team lacks in-depth accessibility knowledge. However, partnering with an accessibility consultant like TPGi can help you get started while your team learns about the technical nuances of creating digitally accessible products. Choose a consultant who understands accessibility and can also provide comprehensive evaluations, including detailed reports with actionable recommendations.
During an audit, an accessibility engineer uses specialized automated scanning tools to assess various aspects of a web component. These tools can help in evaluating whether all elements adhere to accessibility standards.
The engineer checks for compliance with WCAG criteria by manually inspecting the HTML structure, ensuring that all elements are correctly labeled and that relationships between content elements are clear.
Keep these added best practices in mind for an even more comprehensive manual audit:
Simulate User Experiences
Use assistive technologies like screen readers and keyboard-only navigation to see how various disabilities affect the user experience. By simulating how disabled users interact with your digital content, you can uncover potential barriers they might face.
Involve Users with Disabilities
Involve users with visual impairments and other disabilities in the manual audit process to get their insights. Their feedback helps uncover subtle barriers and ensures improvements align with real-world user experiences.
Remember, manual audits should be conducted periodically. This way, you can support users’ needs and adapt to compliance and conformance changes.
4. Document Findings
After completing your tests and audits, review the data to understand the current state of your digital assets. Organize all identified issues, from minor usability concerns to major accessibility barriers, into a comprehensive accessibility audit report.
Ensure the report includes clear, detailed descriptions of each problem, accompanied by screenshots where applicable. List the related WCAG guidelines for each issue to illustrate their real-world impact and help your team understand the problems better.
Thorough documentation also serves as a valuable reference for future audits and reviews, establishing consistent improvements in accessibility.
5. Prioritize and Plan Remediation
Using the audit report, create a plan to address the identified accessibility issues based on their severity and impact.
Assess and Prioritize
Start by focusing on the most critical issues that affect core functions and user experience. Prioritize challenges that users with disabilities are likely to encounter, ensuring that the most significant barriers are addressed first.
Develop a Remediation Plan
With your priorities set, outline specific, actionable steps for fixing each issue. Create a task list with clear recommendations for improvement and assign each task to the appropriate team member.
This approach fosters accountability, streamlines the remediation process, and ensures that improvements are effectively tracked and implemented.
6. Test Remediated Content
After fixing the accessibility issues, re-testing your digital assets is always wise to ensure the fixes are working.
Conduct thorough re-testing of the remediated content to verify that the fixes meet ADA compliance and WCAG conformance standards. Use the same automated accessibility testing tools from the initial audit to ensure consistency and effectiveness. This step helps identify any new accessibility issues that may have arisen during the remediation process.
Beyond re-testing, it’s important to confirm your improvements were effective. Partner with the accessibility experts or testers who first reviewed your content to assess the changes. Their hands-on evaluation can prove whether the fixes are truly working, particularly for interactive elements and dynamic content.
7. Monitor and Maintain Accessibility
Maintaining accessibility is an ongoing commitment that extends beyond the first audit and remediation process. Regular monitoring and ongoing education are essential for keeping digital assets accessible as they change and develop.
Schedule Regular Audits
Establish a routine for periodic digital accessibility audits to monitor your digital content’s conformance status. Regular audits can also help you identify new issues that might arise as your website or digital assets change.
Educate Your Team
Continuous education is the key to supporting accessibility efforts. From developers to content creators, make sure your team stays informed about the latest accessibility guidelines and best practices. Encourage your team to attend online workshops and share expert resources to help them stay current on the latest guidelines and techniques for accessible content.
Develop a Culture of Accessibility
Integrating accessibility checks into your standard workflows helps support a culture of inclusivity. Making accessibility a shared responsibility helps your team create and maintain digital content everyone can access.
Partner with Accessibility Service Experts for Long-Term Success
Conducting a web accessibility audit is no small feat! It’s a complex, time-consuming process that demands both technical ability and meticulous attention to detail. Without the right tools and knowledge, every step from planning audits to fixing issues can be quite challenging.
Partnering with TPGi can transform this arduous task into a manageable process. Our advanced tools and expert guidance streamline the audit, so you don’t have to struggle with the details.
With TPGi as a Service, you can tackle accessibility challenges head-on, ensuring compliance and a seamless experience for all users. Let us handle the heavy lifting so you can focus on creating outstanding digital experiences with confidence and ease. Contact us for more information.
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